Source: www.business2community.com

For companies, bad press has always been a known enemy. In the past, there were angry customer letters, stories on the nightly news, or critical articles in magazines or newspapers. The one advantage that companies have enjoyed until recently in these scenarios was the luxury of time. There was time to see the problem, time to address it, time to craft a response, and time to get the response out there. Today, with the 24/7 news cycle and the online world that is always “on,” that luxury of time has disappeared. Before you even realize what is happening, a video negatively portraying your company could go viral. A tweet could be shared and spread like wildfire. A blog post blasting your new product could take over the online world. These are worst case scenarios, but they are possible in today’s world.

Today, there are two kinds of crises that a brand can experience. There are PR crises and there are social media crises. Sometimes a social media crisis can evolve (or devolve) into a real PR crisis, and often a PR crisis can impact a company’s social media presence. However, an actual PR crisis is usually considered to be more significant than a social media crisis, which could be a negative tweet, a negative blog post, or negative feedback on a Facebook page.

As has always been the case for as long as businesses have existed, the best way to prevent any kind of brand crisis is to make sure that your products and services, your customer service, and all parts of your business appear to run flawlessly and with no difficulties. Barring that, however, the best way to enable your company to handle any kind of crisis to prepare for the worst while hoping for the best. This is true whether or not your company is currently using social media for any part of your business operations. Here are some steps you can follow to make that happen.