INTERVIEW : Monika Czaplicka explique comment sortir vainqueur d'une crise des médias sociaux

Nous avons récemment discuté avec Monika de la manière d'éviter une crise dans les médias sociaux et des aspects positifs que nous pouvons en retirer lorsque nous sommes finalement pris dans une crise. Voici ce que nous avons appris :

Il y a tant de sujets sur lesquels nous devons nous concentrer. Pourquoi avez-vous choisi de traiter crises dans les médias sociaux?

Je pense qu'en fait, je n'ai pas choisi la "crise des médias sociaux". Elle m'a choisi parce qu'il y a presque 5 ans, je travaillais dans une agence de médias sociaux et nous étions en train de rire lors d'une réunion sur Nestlé. La société avait connu une énorme crise parce qu'une mère avait trouvé un rat dans la nourriture de son enfant.

Nous plaisantions en nous disant que ce serait une bonne idée de leur écrire (à Nestlé) pour leur dire que nous pouvons les aider dans cette crise des médias sociaux. Bien sûr, en tant qu'agence, nous ne l'avons pas fait. Mais je me suis dit que c'était une bonne idée parce que personne ne travaillait sur les crises liées aux médias sociaux et qu'elles étaient très populaires.

Some time earlier, there was a big social media crisis with another company. So, I thought, ‘OK, let’s do something about this’.

So I made this fan page which is about social media crises, called Les crises des médias sociaux éclatent le week-end because as we all know, the weekend is when we all have some free time, and people who usually work (during the week) then go on social media.

So, there’s nobody in administration to work out a crisis and there are many people who are interested in them. So, I created this social media fan page and was writing about crises, and I thought, ‘OK, let’s write about something interesting, like case studies’. So I started writing case studies. And I thought, ‘OK, that’s nice.

Let’s make an ebook about this.’ So I started writing an ebook (about) how to handle a social media crisis and so on.

After 130 pages, I thought ‘hm, that’s a bit too much for an ebook.’ So, I thought ‘OK, let’s make a book about it.’ I wrote to Michał Sadowski, who is, of course, the head of Brand24.

I asked him about making a book because he had just published one a few months earlier. He said ‘OK, no problem. I will put you in touch with my publisher,” and that’s how it was.

I published my book about handling social media crises and (that’s when) the fun began, because people started to know me and now I have around 27 or 28 thousand people visiting the social media crisis fan page and I have a group with a few dozen people who talk about it and discuss it and so on.

It’s a huge topic and I really love it, so I think that was a sign from social media: ‘Monika, do it!’

Je pense que vous avez une communauté assez importante dans vos médias sociaux en ce qui concerne les crises.

The fun part is that my friend wrote to me, that he’d been looking through some old presentations at his company, which I absolutely don’t know / never worked at, and so on.

One of the presentations was just about moiComment gérer moi quand il y aura une crise des médias sociaux, ou j'écrirai à ce sujet... Je riais tellement. C'est terrible quand les gens pensent que Je suis Je pense que c'est moi qui crée la crise des médias sociaux et qu'ils doivent s'occuper de moi au lieu de s'occuper de la crise.

C'est une histoire assez intéressante. Étant donné que de nombreuses marques n'ont pas de plan pour réagir en cas de crise des médias sociaux, quelle est la principale cause de cette situation ?

I think, as usual, we think that we are immortal. We think that no problems can harm us, and so on. So, usually, we think that we are safe and don’t need to prepare ourselves.

Of course, this is good thinking for somebody who is, like, ‘yeah, everything’s okay’. But then a crisis comes, approaches, or however you want to put it. It just happens, and they’re, like ‘oh, God, what do we do now?’

So, I think that companies should think about this beforehand, because it’s just like the flu. If you don’t do anything, you will probably get the flu. If you prepare yourself, eat vitamins, or get a flu shot, or whatever, you’ll probably be immune to this.

And it’s the same with social media crises. You can prepare so that you’ll be safe so even if something happens, you can react because you’ll know how to react. You don’t have (to go through) all the emotions because you’re prepared.

You can consult (others) for information. This doesn’t (necessarily) mean me, but everybody, even within your company. You can, of course, test the results and your ideas.

And, of course, you’ll have much, much, much more time because if you do a dry run, you can think about (possible) answers, you can prepare, for example, 3 different answers or statements, or whatever. It’s much better because you’ll just have to apply what you’ve already tried in a real situation.

This is easy peasy and much easier than working with all the media interest, all the people, the tension, and everything. I think it’s really, really better to prepare and if you think that social media crises don’t concern you, you’re just stupid.

D'accord, j'ai compris. Ma prochaine question serait de savoir comment éviter cela, mais d'une certaine manière, vous avez déjà répondu à cette question. Néanmoins, il y a peut-être quelque chose d'autre que nous pouvons faire pour éviter une crise dans notre entreprise.

Bien sûr, car comme l'a mesuré une entreprise américaine (Altimeter Group), environ 75% des crises liées aux médias sociaux ne peuvent être évitées. Il y a donc un grand nombre de situations qui ne peuvent jamais éviter une crise dans les médias sociaux.

First of all, we can prepare, which is kind of obvious. Secondly, we need to be proactive, because usually a company thinks, ‘OK, let’s not interact with people so everything will quiet down and nobody will notice.’

But that’s usually what makes people even more angry. So, if you don’t reply, if you don’t do anything – interact with people, they just think that you’re avoiding them or not treating them like real people. We have to remember that our clients, like any other people, are our partners on the Internet.

So, if we don’t reply to their concerns, problems, questions, they’re just getting PO’d and becoming more and more angry. That’s usually what makes social media crises even bigger, which is something that companies usually don’t think about. They think it’s making things more quiet, which is not true.

Bien sûr, vous pouvez aussi penser à réagir rapidement, car parfois, si vous réagissez rapidement à certaines questions, cela permet aussi d'éviter une crise des médias sociaux. Mais ce qu'il faut retenir, c'est qu'il faut vraiment, vraiment réfléchir aux réponses.

So, it’s not so much that a quick answer will be as good as a good answer in mellowing out what’s happening. Of course, it’s nice if you answer in a few minutes, in 15 minutes, or something like that. But if you post something stupid, it’s kind of obvious that the situation will blow up and people will be more pissed off and more angry than before.

So I always say that it’s better to wait 5 minutes and think about what you’re going to write than it is to post something stupid – because then you’ll have to clean up afterwards and say you’re worry and so on.

Avant de passer à la question suivante, vous avez dit quelque chose d'intéressant - que nous devrions attendre un peu plutôt que de répondre très rapidement. Je suis très curieux : quel est le délai de réponse à une question lors d'une crise dans les médias sociaux ? Vous avez dit 5 minutes, mais parfois c'est 15 minutes. De combien de temps disposons-nous pour répondre dès les premiers signes d'une crise ??

Generally, there is no good answer because when I asked the people who made this survey about social media and answering questions and all this stuff connected with service, surveyors said that, for example, they can wait a few hours on Facebook to get an answer.

Of course, it depends, because if somebody is really angry and they’re waiting for an answer now, you don’t have 3 hours to answer. So it’s rather 5 or 15 (minutes) than an hour. Generally, I think people are willing to wait around an hour or 2 before they do anything on Facebook.

Of course it’s kind of different on Snapchat or Twitter because, of course, there you have to really react quickly and you have just a few minutes. I’m sure that if something is happening on Google+, this is irrelevant.

On LinkedIn, for example, people can wait even more than 2-3 hours, people can wait even half a day or something like that. I think that, generally, if we have no clue what to do, the easiest way to ‘reset the clock’ is to answer that we’ve seen your post, your concerns, and so on; we’re working on it.

You don’t have to write them anything concrete if you have no clue what to do, but then you show the client and other people who are watching, that you have seen this post.

En général, si vous n'avez pas de réponse pendant un certain temps, la personne qui a écrit le message et tous ceux qui l'observent (nous devons nous rappeler qu'un grand nombre de personnes nous observent et vérifient ce que nous - l'entreprise - écrivons à notre client), tout le monde vérifie si nous avons vu le commentaire, si nous avons commencé à travailler dessus, et bien sûr, le problème est qu'en général les entreprises ne le disent pas (lorsqu'elles voient le problème ou commencent à y travailler).

Without any interaction, the person who wrote the comment has no clue about whether we’ve seen the post, or if we’re just avoiding it, or what’s happening. So the easiest way to reset the clock is to wait, about, let’s say an hour, and then write ‘we’ve seen your post and we’re working on it. We’ll get back to you in 5 hours’.

Then people say ‘OK, I will wait’ and they’ll know how long they need to wait. It’s also better to avoid being angry and all the negative emotions around the topic ‘OK, they didn’t answer me in 2 hours. They hate me. They’re avoiding me.’ Or whatever.

D'accord, j'ai compris. Et je pense que vous avez également répondu à ma question suivante, qui portait sur la première mesure à prendre dans une situation de crise. Donc, je pense que c'est "réagir assez vite" mais quelles sont les étapes suivantes ?

Not quite. My first (piece of) advice is to go grab a coffee or tea or whatever you like. Because usually, as I’ve seen in many social media crises, people are so emotionally attached to the situation – on both sides: the client who has a problem or issue, and the company. Usually, all the negative emotions are just crashing down on social media.

That’s why all – OK, maybe not all – but many situations are really badly handled, because they’re so emotional.

So, first things first: cool down. Chill out a bit and distance yourself from the situation, because if we’re very emotional, then usually, if somebody writes to us that our company sucks, we’re emotional because we feel like it’s about us and not the company. It’s really hard to detach yourself from the company where you work or which is yours.

Usually we react very aggressively because somebody’s attacking us. If we chill, take a step back, and see the bigger picture, we can write something which is more factual, something that’s really good rather than emotional.

The first step is really to step back and then of course we can think about – if we didn’t prepare for this beforehand – we can think about the answers. Of course, to prepare the answer, we have to have information.

We need to analyze who wrote the post, what it’s about, who interacted, and if the person who wrote the post is also the person who has the problem, because sometimes somebody else – a blogger, for example – is writing about somebody else or a client. We also have to check who the victim is, who’s writing about it, etc.

Bien sûr, surveillance des médias sociaux tools are very useful at this stage because we can analyze if this topic (is restricted to) just this single post or if a blogger wrote a blog post, did he post it on many sites, or just on our page?

We can check the amount of damage that has been done.

Ensuite, nous pouvons préparer la déclaration. Bien sûr, il y a la règle des "5 C" que vous pouvez appliquer à la déclaration :

Tout d'abord, vous devez avouer. Confess that you did wrong or confess that something didn’t go well within the product / service that you offered, and so on.

Of course, if the problem was not on your side, for example, if it was (due to) bad weather, you can write this. But you have to put some emotions there – good emotions, because a social media crisis is all about the bad emotions that somebody has.

Handling a social media crisis is about making bad emotions go away, so that there are good emotions between you, your clients, and all the people who are watching.

So, if you confess and say something showing empathy, you can (avoid) being seen as a company that is a bureaucratic monster, but you can be seen as a person who understands negative emotions.

For example, imagine you have something, like a computer. You’re working on it, and then it breaks down. You’re really angry because all the work you’ve been doing just got flushed down the toilet without any notice.

So, of course you start screaming at the company ‘your computers are shit’ and so on. If they start to say ‘we understand you’re angry because all the work you’ve been doing is dead,’ you feel much better because you feel like on the other side of the argument, there’s someone who understands your emotions.

Ensuite, bien sûr, il faut avoir quelques contrition because I know it’s hard to say ‘I’m sorry’ because usually we think that if we say we’re sorry, this means that we’re guilty. But this really isn’t what it means. It’s all about the emotions. It’s all about the empathy that you have.

So, even if it is, for example, a company that we work with, like our transportation guy (whose vehicle) broke down at a stop, or something like that, we should say we’re sorry. And do it within our company, rather than say ‘no, this wasn’t our company, we’re super. It’s just the delivery guy, the courier, the postman, or whatever.’

Alors, présentez vos excuses et soyez sincère, car la plupart des gens n'attendent que cela. Ils ne veulent rien d'autre - ils veulent juste vous voir ou vous entendre dire que vous êtes désolé et que vous pensez que ce qui s'est passé était mal.

Vous devez alors contrecarrer because, as I said, you can prepare and so on, but you can also counteract (to accusations that) you don’t write anything back – you can interact with the person and try to make him/her happier.

What you should write depends on the situation, but generally, all good emotions. Don’t write that the client is stupid or that he doesn’t know how to use your product or whatever else, because this also makes it more negative and angry.

Vous pouvez alors correctes the error. So, for example, if the computer is broken, you can send a new one. If the service wasn’t good, you can give some promotion or free stuff, and so on.

This makes the customer happy and her experience with our company better and better.

Bien entendu, en fin de compte, vous devez compenser because if someone had a negative experience with our company, it’s really, really important that we compensate to make it better. And, of course, we have to remember that it’s not about just one person.

There are probably thousands, or hundreds of people, who are watching, who are reading this post. The topic was probably just seen by our fans or friends of the person who wrote it… they don’t want to see that we’re perfect or that we never make mistakes, because all companies do. Products fail and services aren’t as good as they should be.

The most important thing is that people should know that if something is wrong, they can go to the company and they will interact in the proper way. So, they compensate for the problem and they make the experience good again.

I’m a huge fan of Gary Vaynerchuk, and he’s always saying ‘give, give, give, and make it about the people, not your company.’ It’s the same with social media crises.

So if you give, compensate, and say you’re sorry, there’s a 99% chance that you’re handling your social media crisis in a very good way.

Wow, c'était une grosse dose d'informations. Très, très utile. Puisque nous parlons de réactions, de la manière dont les marques réagissent, pouvez-vous nous donner quelques exemples de la manière dont les entreprises ont résolu les crises liées aux médias sociaux de la meilleure façon possible ?

Oui, bien sûr. La meilleure façon est de voir les exemples par nous-mêmes, je vous enverrai donc également des captures d'écran. J'essaierai de trouver des exemples en anglais.

En règle générale, vous pouvez gérer une crise des médias sociaux de différentes manières. Par exemple, s'il s'agit d'une crise relativement mineure, où vous avez juste commis une petite erreur, vous pouvez essayer de vous amuser et d'en rire.

I’m thinking about a social media crisis where I really liked the way that it was handled. Heinz, the ketchup brand, had a problem because their graphic designer made something horrible. Imagine a Savannah with elephants. There’s a storm there, and there’s a huge ketchup bottle.

The copy says something like ‘whether it’s raining or not, Heinz ketchup tastes the best.’ It generally makes you think ‘what the heck just happened? Was he on drugs or something?’ Of course, this isn’t a big social media crisis, but generally, people were saying ‘OK, you need to use a different social media agency’… things like that.

So, they (Heinz) thought ‘let’s delete this because it’s horrible for our brand’ and, of course, people on the Internet are people on the Internet… very specific… they were, like ‘ok, let’s make a fan page and tell Heinz “bring back the elephant!”’ Of course, the company was, like ‘sh**.

We deleted it and they want it back.’ So, they re-posted it but asked the company to help them and they created a contest. Of course, many people loved the idea about the ketchup, the elephant,  the storm, and everything because it was so surreal. So, they started making their own different graphics and pictures of elephants with Heinz… just anything you can imagine.

So, the company (Heinz) said ‘OK, that’s a good idea. Let’s create a contest.’ People posted their pictures, with ideas about where Heinz ketchup could be posted. Of course, there was also a 2nd part to the contest about creating copy to go with this picture of the elephant in the storm: to create the best copy ever.

The contest was a huge success because it made people laugh and have fun. They were very abstract about the topic, and created things for Heinz, like ‘if you eat Heinz, you’ll have great ideas and it will inspire you’.

À partir d'un billet stupide, qui a d'abord été considéré comme un billet horrible, ils ont eu l'idée de se concentrer sur l'inspiration et le surréalisme. En voici un exemple.

Of course, you have to remember that you should never attempt to mock the client. That’s a horrible thing to do because when somebody is being mocked, they feel bad.

There are many negative emotions, etc. If you’re trying to get a laugh out of something, make sure it’s just about the situation or about your company, and not about your fans or your clients.

Dans toute autre situation, vous pouvez utiliser la règle des "5C" : dire que vous êtes désolé, avouer, etc. Cette règle devrait convenir, car elle a été testée. C'est l'idée générale de la gestion des crises liées aux médias sociaux dans les relations publiques, et ce depuis de nombreuses années. C'est une méthode facile et, disons-le, sûre.

Of course, you can also try to think about something unusual.

For example, I remember a brilliant situation. We (our agency) were working with a train company and somebody posted a picture of our train toilet, which was absolutely white. It was all snowy and icy. It looked really horrible.

Bien sûr, la question était de savoir ce qui s'était passé. On nous a répondu que quelqu'un avait laissé la fenêtre ouverte et que le vent avait été très froid, environ -20 ou quelque chose comme ça... et que tout avait gelé. Nous ne pouvions pas répondre au client en lui disant : "Désolé, quelqu'un a ouvert la fenêtre et personne ne l'a fermée. Vous êtes stupide. Vous êtes stupide. Partez".

So, we were thinking ‘what the heck should we do?’ Fortunately, for us, it was the beginning of the Game of Thrones. Some of our fans started to make some mock-ups and mash-ups using Game of Thrones with ‘brace yourself: winter is coming’.

So we took one of those pictures and posted it, saying ‘we’re sorry. This shouldn’t have happened’, etc., and the typical things you have to say to handle a crisis. Because we used this picture with the caption ‘brace yourself: winter is coming’, we also created a ‘smile’ around the name of the company because it’s called Inter-region, but we put Winter-region.

People started to laugh and took it much better than we usually see.

En Pologne, les compagnies ferroviaires sont très détestées, nous étions donc très inquiets. Nous avons utilisé la culture pop et nous nous sommes amusés, et les gens nous ont dit que ce n'était pas grave. Vous savez, nous étions tous dans la même situation, car il faisait très froid à l'époque. Je pense que beaucoup de gens réalisent maintenant qu'ils doivent faire plus attention aux fenêtres dans le train.

Generally, you just have to turn negative emotions into positive ones and try to make the situation as nice as possible.

Of course, you can also sometimes be more edgy. I remember Durex had this problem where one of their bloggers was doing a test with one of their condoms and, of course, the condom broke. In Poland, the reaction was like ‘oh my God. Are we going to end up with a huge number of babies?’

The company answered by saying that the test was cool and they really liked the idea of testing the condoms, but they usually test around 300, not just 1, and that you shouldn’t test it with champagne bottles because the bottle can be sharp so it can break the condom.

Of course, (they mentioned that) you can hold about 30 liters of sperm in the condom, but the force from the bottle opening is very different than with sperm. They wrote everything in a humorous way, with the message that the test was cool but needs to be improved. They didn’t say anything like ‘you’re stupid. You don’t know how to do the test properly.’

They were, like ‘we know that from our tests, the condoms should be as tough as (the rubber from) a car tire. They should be really strong yet you shouldn’t be able to feel anything. Of course, they’re trying to make it as thick, as slim, and as nice as possible.

En général, ils n'ont pas essayé de créer des émotions négatives autour de la mauvaise qualité du test. Au lieu de cela, ils ont dit gentiment que le test était bon mais qu'il devait être amélioré.

C'est l'idée principale. Créez de bonnes émotions et essayez d'être aussi ouvert d'esprit que possible.

Je pense que c'est une très bonne conclusion pour cet entretien. Je pense que je n'aurais pas pu faire mieux.

Une crise dans les médias sociaux peut être un moyen de gagner l'adhésion des gens, de rendre votre entreprise plus professionnelle et d'accroître votre succès. Si vous le faites bien, avec des émotions positives, vous gagnerez.

C'est un très bon message pour clore cette conversation. Merci beaucoup pour votre temps et pour toutes les informations que vous nous avez données !