Avoid Social Media Disasters

Ever feel like one wrong social media post and your whole brand is going down? Stick around, I'm going to help you guys avoid this. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Dan from millennialmotivator.ca, helping you learn how to create, engage, and inspire. If you're new to the channel, go ahead and click that little bell down there, the subscribe button next to it. You'll get notified when my next video goes live. Typically putting videos out here Monday through Saturday. You can see a new video pop up every day. Today what we are talking about though is social media chaos. More and more we are seeing personalities, brands, celebrities, businesses fall to the bane that is social media. Whether it's Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, it doesn't matter what network you're putting it on, there are brands and businesses out there committing suicide daily after they put in all the hard work to build up their brand online, one wrong post, one wrong comment, one wrong reply or retweet, and they're seeing it all blow up. Stick around if you want to learn how you can make that stop. Okay, number 1, guys, first and foremost, is always have as few hands as possible on the steering wheel for your marketing, okay? Here's what I mean by that. A lot of times you see celebrities, big brands, businesses, They've got a team or an agency that they're using. The reality is the more hands you have on creating content, actually posting out, the higher the likelihood that something's gonna go wrong. Somebody's gonna try something, say something that's off tone, or they're going to engage with a profile they weren't supposed to, and that's when things go wrong. And the world is not going to accept the excuse of, it wasn't me, it was my team. It's just a reality. You have to own up to that. So the first thing that you really need to focus on to avoid just this huge social media disaster is this: as few hands as possible on the steering wheel, okay? Have 1, 2, or 3 people managing your content, when it's going out, who you're engaging with, how you're engaging with them, and what your voice is. Keeping it down to a limited group of people helps keep the focus on how you want to operate your social media very clear, and it Removes a lot of the chances for these problems as far as just social media chaos goes. What else? All right guys, so you've got a few hands on the wheel, that's good. I really hope you take that first point of feedback because it's a huge one. The next is posting on the fly. Now, I am a huge advocate. I manage all my own social, I don't give it out to teams. I like to be able to post real time on the fly my response, usually video replies like this these days. But that has a serious risk to it. If you're not conscious of what you're saying, how you're saying it, who you're saying it to, and how it reflects on your brand in every single post, there's a high likelihood that you are heading down a path for a social media disaster. So how to prevent this? Simple. Go grab a tool like Buffer or TweetDeck. If you're not familiar with those, I'll post the links down below. You can click on those and check them out. But what these tools allow you to do is you can pop in, check it out, Say, okay, here's— here are the posts that we've got planned for the next week, week and a half, 2 weeks. Don't ever go further than 2 weeks, but you've got up to 2 weeks worth of content there. And this allows you as a person or a team to review tone, message, conversations, who you're engaging with, how you're engaging with them. It eliminates the possibility for a wrongly worded, poorly worded, poorly timed post, and it gives you that leeway to be able to go in and make changes before the content hits your social networks. Now, I understand sometimes we just want that quick reply and it has to be there, but having a team that has this constant wealth and database of content that you're willing to put out there and accessible for them makes it a lot easier for you to be able to go, okay, how am I replying? Is it in tone? Can I post something on the fly that isn't going to break down what we're doing right now? It just gives you and your team a bigger picture of what you're doing. So number 1, as few hands on the wheel as possible. Number 2, try to curate and plan your content ahead of time so that you can avoid mistakes of poor timing, grammatical errors, or just poorly worded things that could be misconstrued in another way. Last but not least, let's go. The last big tip that I could give you guys is this. If you screw up, if you say something stupid, do something stupid, you post a picture that you didn't want to post, you, you speak into a conversation in a way that's misinterpreted and misconstrued, here's the best thing that you can do. One, immediately, immediately remove the post. Now, a lot of people have a problem with that. They say, oh well, you're backtracking. Yeah, no duh, I'm backtracking. If you've made a comment that has been misinterpreted or misconstrued and it's just getting blown out of proportion, remove it. Remove yourself from that conversation altogether, okay? The other part of that is this. If you said something and it's controversial and you're willing to stand behind it, fine, But don't, don't just hide in the shadows from that. Be open and transparent and create a reply to your own post. Doesn't matter what network it is, where you elaborate why you're standing behind that post, that concept, and that theory. Now, this is a big one because it requires some humility as you're going out there in your social networks. If you screw up, a lot of the time people think that they have to be perfect. You don't. As a brand, you're not going to be perfect. As a business, you're not going to be perfect. When you screw up, the strongest brands are the ones that can say, I screwed up, that was wrong. So if you do screw up and you acknowledge that you've screwed up, remove the post, put out an apology, a sincere apology, not a, oh, I'm really sorry guys, I'll never do it again. 2 hours later, there's another post just like it, right? Make sure you have a sincere apology. It doesn't happen often. And last but not least, please make sure that if you're gonna back it up, Create more social content that elaborates why you're taking that stance, why that's of value to you, why that's important. That is it for today though, guys. Hopefully those 3 tips of keep your social network tight as to who's putting out content and when they're doing it, uh, make sure that you try to limit how much you're doing on the fly just to eliminate basic mistakes, especially if you have a whole bunch of hands on the wheel. And last but not least, if you screw up, own up. That's it, that's all. Let me know if you have any tips down in the comments below, and I will catch you tomorrow with another great video. See you then, guys.