The Social Media MBA Guide to ROI: How to Measure and Improve Your Return on Investment

5Safeguarding ROI

Learning Objective

The single most detrimental effect on your ROI is a crisis amplified via social channels. Ironically, the better the job you do setting everything up, the faster the news will spread, and the quicker your ROI will be impacted. However, the better you are prepared, the quicker you can diffuse the situation.

In this concluding chapter we will look at some examples of what triggered a crisis and perhaps more useful, how to prepare to deal with it.

Trying to control a social media crisis is like trying to put the genie back in the bottle. However, this does not mean that managing the crisis and taking steps to prevent a repeat isn't out of your control.

When things go wrong in social media, they tend to spiral out of control quickly. In October 2013, the social sharing start-up platform, Buffer, was hacked by a spam hack. A spam hack means that someone has accessed your account and is sending spam emails or communications to your contacts.

As to be expected, Buffer was flooded with queries and messages from their users, asking why the message was sent out. They rode out the storm by answering each and every one of the messages they received, whether they were from users or industry commentators. The speed, warmth and transparency with which they responded to their followers meant that they were able to generate positive feedback for how they managed a negative situation. Buffer used every element in their social armoury to respond to the attack ...