4 Crisis Management Tips for Your Digital Brand

Crisis management concept.

The digital world opens up a plethora of benefits to your brand, but it can also hurt your reputation in seemingly irreparable ways should your brand be the brunt of a crisis. With the internet at your customers’ fingertips, it is easy for social media comments to quickly become viral. Your reputation can quickly be at stake should you make one wrong move in a customer’s eyes. The crisis management tips you thought you mastered could prove to be ineffective at solving your current crisis.

However, when you are actively involved in a crisis, it is important to lean on that same digital network that could be helping to ruin your reputation in the first place. Any business in today’s market should have a crisis management plan in place should its digital brand become affected by a problem.

At one time, ignoring the problem could have worked to push it under the rug for a while. But today’s internet will not allow for ignorance on behalf of a business. Your digital brand could make or break your overall brand, and it is important to reflect your company’s mission through your digital brand.

Here are four crisis management tips to help your digital brand maintain its image during, or recover from, a crisis.

Respond to Your Critics Professionally and in a Timely Manner

One of the most important crisis management tips to defend your digital brand during or after a crisis is to ensure that you are responding to your critics in a timely manner and with the utmost professionalism you can.

During a crisis, your brand is likely to be bashed in ways you did not think possible. Social media opens up new doors for people to share their complaints. As soon as one person shares a complaint, others are likely to follow, even if their particular complaint is in reference to a situation from months or years prior.

It is your responsibility, still, to respond to your critics quickly. You have the opportunity to quell some of the backlash from the crisis by responding to complaints as they come in. You can offer factual information to defend your brand and let your customer know what you are willing to do to fix it.

However, ensure that you are never implying that a customer is wrong or invalid in his complaint. You must handle your responses professionally. Consider creating a crisis management team that can help you in these situations in the future. You can hire people skilled in communicating via social media channels to promptly respond to complaints or concerns in the event of a crisis.

You are, of course, going to disagree with many of the complaints issued against your company. But, it is not wise to express your disagreement or argue with customers in a public platform. Your current and future customers are essentially looking at you to see how your business is handling the current crisis. Make sure they see a calm, cool, and collected team of individuals who genuinely want to help right the company’s wrongdoing.

Be Honest and Transparent

If your digital brand is under attack following a crisis, it can be easy to skirt around the issues to avoid the problem and complaints. But this can be disastrous to your digital brand once your audience catches on.

One of the best management tips to help your digital brand in the midst of a crisis is to be as open and honest as possible with those who care enough to become involved in the situation at hand. Remaining silent on key issues will only cause an increase of distrust among your followers or customers.

Provide your followers with relevant, factual information. Do not be afraid to admit what went wrong. This will lay the foundation for trust in your company. Also, do not remove any social media posts that have negative comments against your company. In the midst of a crisis, it is important to remain

Lina Wang

Lina Wang is CEO of Atlantis Global, a US company that specializes in Ecommerce, Gaming and Venture Funding. She is popularly known among her circle as "The Poker Princess" and juggles her ecommerce, gaming business, marketing consultancy and family life with a passion for startups. Considered among the Top 30 Content Marketing Strategists globally, she also edits a popular Women’s Poker Magazine. Whether it is startup funding, developing cutting edge ecommerce platforms or even a friendly bit of poker strategy advice, she can be reached at lina@linawang.org