Social Media crisis- Mismanagement
In 2011, it became public knowledge that former Penn state football coach Jerry Sandusky was found guilty of over 44 counts of sexual abuse against boys. Penn state football team had over 350,000 Facebook likes and very engaged fans. How the university handled the crisis could have been better.
http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/8577643/jerry-sandusky-moved-prison-death-row-inmates
When the scandal hit, the social media team was instructed to stop posting on Facebook. They were told to wait until the school president made an official statement. Over 10 days later, staff were only permitted to post about the Blue Ribbon campaign (sexual abuse non-profit organisation) while remaining silent about the crises.
Recommendations about how things could have been handled better:
- Have a crisis plan already in place with messages about where the school stands on misconduct, abuse, violence. These could be ready to go and put up immediately.
- Even if the school did not want to talk about the specifics of the charges, they should have at least issued statements on Facebook and Twitter regarding concern for the many victims.
- Continue supporting the Blue Ribbon campaign and mix messages with landing pages to their website/how to donate.
- Release statement of concern and direction from the president much sooner. At least a tweet as soon as crisis hits.
- Publically state how the school intends to support the victims of their former staff.
Great post and great recommendations for what could have been done better. I agree with all your recommendations, especially having crisis messaging ready to go out right away on social media. It is shocking that Penn State did not issue immediate statements of concern for the victims and families.
ReplyDeleteGreat recommendations! It's a huge fail to tell the social media team to halt their posts. This was their opportunity to leverage the platform to get their message out. Even sillier is to allow them only to post about the campaign. These postings are not going to resonate and become inconsequential when the public's interest is still on the crisis and how the unviseristy is responding to it. It's like a company keeping their advertising campaigns going during a crisis. Imagine your ad appearing alongside a negative article about your brand. Would that ad really resonate positively?
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