10 Strategies for Social Media Management in Times of Crisis

Happy New Year! But even though everyone wanted to kick off the 2020 New Year, unfortunately, sometimes it does not go the way we planned.

Of course, we are all aware of the global crisis of the COVID-19 outbreak, the virus was officially announced at the beginning of the year and in just a couple of months, it has spread all over the country. When it was declared a pandemic, everything changed. Many initiatives such as lockdown, MCO, CB, and many others have been announced by the government. Business owners and employees alike started to be worried about what might come next.

The reason you are reading this article is that you are worried about your business and social media presence,

• You have to sustain your business at this time of crisis, but what should you do?
• What can you and what can you not say on your social media accounts?
• What are the strategies or techniques you can implement amid the COVID-19 outbreak?

Bearing in mind that should not be insensitive at all! but you need to stay active on social media accounts and show support to others as well.

Of course, you need you to stay active on social media accounts and show your support to others as well.

No need to worry, this article got you covered!

How the COVID-19 Outbreak Could Affect Business

Every year, tech giants have their annual conference such as Google’s I/O 2020 and Facebook’s F8 Developer Conference which was cancelled due to the outbreak of COVID-19. Others like Twitter, Tik Tok, Intel, Vevo, Amazon and many more pulled out of the South by Southwest festival which is a well-known parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and conferences. So not only SME are affected, COVID-19 spare no one.

The Role of Social Media in Times of Crisis

Do you agree that the important and vital role that social media plays nowadays cannot be denied as we are living in a technology era? Even the Gen Alpha are on popular platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, Snapchat, and many other generations are on platforms included LinkedIn
Anyhow, besides engaging with your family and friends on social media, it does have an effective role in crisis time.

Examples of Using Social Media During COVID-19 Outbreak Crisis

The Red Cross Society

A great example is, The Red Cross utilized social media to empower the public to either seek or give help during a disaster, says Laura Howe which is the agency’s senior director of public affairs. These goals were accomplished with the help of The Red Cross through the photo-sharing site, Flickr.

In Malaysia, we can see that many initiatives have been taken by the government during the COVID-19 outbreak, such as official Telegram group chat (reaches 1M subscribers in 1 week after launching), sharing infographic on their social media pages and cooperating with well-known businesses to launch awareness campaigns. 

10 Social Media Management Strategies Amid COVID-19 Outbreak 2020

1. Update Your Social Media Profiles

If you have changed your working hours or any of your business practices, make sure you create a social media post about it and update that on all your local listing, besides only updating that on Google My Business (still a priority).

2. Create a Social Media Policy

It is a must to have a documented social media policy, because it will allow you to have accurate guidelines for all your employees on what to and what not to post. It will also reduce the risk of them posting irrelevant or sensitive posts.

3. Pause Any Scheduled Posts

PAUSE all your scheduled posts, showing your support is very important and remember to be kind. Avoid posting memes and funny posts because it will show that you’re insensitive and won’t do you any good.

4. Keep Your Tone Empathetic and Upbeat

You don’t know what others are going through so bear in mind that your followers may have loved ones suffering from COVID-19 or at high risk from complications from it, stay supportive and empathetic.

5. Do Not Argue

As all of us are having hard time, we can’t run away from negative comments and you may notice a rise in it, however, deleting any negative or block whoever disagrees with you won’t change anything, instead, respond to all of your comments whether good or bad with utmost empathy and respects

6. Minimize on Posting Promotions

Another important strategy to manage your social media is to minimize posts related to direct sales, discounts or posts that look or sound like asking people to purchase something from you. By minimizing these posts, it will prevent others from thinking you’re trying to profit off this and are insensitive to people that are enduring financial problems and job loss. On the other hand, if you’re in essential needs industries then you need to come up with a home delivery service, there are already many others there that you can utilize, such as DeliveryEat, FoodPanda, PgeonMart, and etc.

7. Start Using Call-To-Action (CTA)

It is true however that you need to have revenue to sustain your business. During this time, no one likes to be kept hanging without knowing what to do and you want to prevent your customers from getting bored too. So, customers need a call to action to direct them towards external sources of advice, and you can also prepare some practical tips on how to minimize the impact of the emergency.

8. What to Do If Delivery Service Is Not Applicable?

What can you do if your business does not require delivery service? Go on explaining your plans and strategies until you are back on track again.

9. Avoid Certain Topics

It is always about the timing and amid the ongoing events, you need to make sure to pick up the right content.

Here are some recommendations: 

Avoid any topic about travel for the time being (travel agents can start thinking out of the box).

• Create contents like giving others ideas, movie recommendations and suggest what to do while they are home and encourage staying home.
• Make your tips relevant to your industry and for the ongoing events so people can relate to it.
• Talk about COVID-19 but not in all your posts; go for 30-50% only. Make sure your news is from a trusted source like WHO and MKN (Malaysia). You do not want to be accused of spreading inaccurate news.

10. Reconfirm Your Commitment to Your Customers

For Example, you can make sure to over-communicate and provide customers with plenty of information about how it is dealing with COVID-19.

You can post messages like these in your social media accounts to inform you customers about the closure and how they can reach you if needed:

• We will temporarily close our stores, offices and other operations at the end of business starting from 18th March 2020 until further notice.
• We will have a team who will be working from home to ensure all needs and inquiries are attended and to provide support needed.
• We encourage our friends everywhere to take the extra precautions necessary to safeguard their health and that of others.
• We apologize for that over the next few weeks; there will be delays in orders and customer service requests.

It could have been a simple statement announcing that you will close your retail stores or office on 18th March 2020 onward. But the results will be different if you took the time to communicate and share more information with the customers to assure that it is all for them.

With that, I hope that these tips will benefit you and make your social media accounts active during this crisis we are all facing.