How to recover from a social media PR disaster - Essay Example

How to Recover from a Social Media PR Disaster Social media has become a major marketing tool for businesses today. It certainly cannot be ignored and have a great impact on any company’s sales and profits. This is mostly because the internet users are increasing day by day and people are becoming more aware about the products that are available in the market. So to identify, and get to the major chunk of the market, social media is the cheapest and most effective way to achieve these targets (Saravanakumar & SuganthaLakshmi, 2012).

Talking about the social media disaster, it has the potential of destroying the image of any company. According to Zachary Sniderman’s article “How to: Recover from a Social Media PR Disaster”, social media disasters can hurt a company the most and often leaves a long lasting negative impression in the minds of people. There are few ways identified in the article which can lead to a social media disaster. These are: 1) The inappropriate opinion, that is when an approach goes out over your social existence that is unsuitable to your brand, 2) The insensitive statement is when the company associates itself with an event that is not acceptable to majority of the people, 3) The early hype of a product that is created well before the products release which is mostly interpreted as false information, 4) The false reward is when a company makes a false promise to reward its customer and 5) the hack which is hacking of company information (Sniderman, 2011).

Sniderman has provided enough evidence to prove his point right. The question that arises is that whether due to the fear of social media disaster, should companies stop using social media as a medium of marketing? Discussed earlier, social media marketing is one of the most important techniques in developing a brand name and image of the company and it simply cannot be ignored if a company wants to be successful in today’s cut throat market. Sniderman explains the ways to handle the social media disaster and the ways to maintain the company image.

According to him, one needs to be honest and truthful to its customers. When a mistake is made, a company or business should tell its customers that the mistake has been made rather than hiding their mistakes or trying to justify them. This is the right approach which will not only help in retaining a company’s image but also will help the company in gaining its customer’s confidence (Sniderman, 2011). Secondly, having the knowledge of the markets, customers and the rumors may help the company overcome the expected disaster and can save the company from a big fall.

The recommended solution is to have brand ambassadors of the company who will rightly disseminate all the information about the product, the customers and the company overall. This is an extremely good option especially for companies that are operating at large geographical areas and have a large customer database. Brand ambassadors will represent the company and will help them by providing important information about the market and help shape the consumer perception about the company (Sniderman, 2011).

The most helpful and useful of all the solution given by Sniderman is that the company should make long term relationships with its customers and inform them about their mistake. It is only being honest to customers and making them feel a part of the company that will help companies recover from social media disasters. Company being honest to their customers and making them feel as part of the company is not only a tactic to overcome the social media marketing disaster but is also considered to be a basic marketing and management tool.

Most importantly, companies, when faced with such a social media image crisis, should not over-react and deal with things calmly and in the right manner. Panicking in such kind of a situation would cause the situation to even worsen. It is just about dealing with things in the right manner. I agree to the author’s view on how social media marketing can be a disaster for the company and also to the solutions provided by him to overcome the disaster. Customers are everything to the company and social media can help increase the number of customers as well as decrease their number.

It is only about taking right decisions at right time. Being honest to customers, having all the information about them and the market the company is operating in, keeping all your eyes open and facing such situations lightly that is without panicking, will have a positive impact not only on the brand image but also in high sales and growth. Works Cited Saravanakumar, M., & SuganthaLakshmi, T. (2012). Life Science Journal . Social Media Marketing, 4444-4451. Sniderman, Z. (2011, August 24). HOW TO: Recover from a Social Media PR Disaster.

Retrieved from Mashable: http://mashable.com/2011/08/24/pr-disaster-recovery/