The Epicenters of Social Media Crises

CHRISTIAN FALLER THE EPICENTERS OF SOCIAL MEDIA CRISES Website: www.christianfaller.de In early 2012, a random panel of 30 social media crises was analyzed to reveal their origins. The epicenters of those crises have been measured regarding three parameters: For the purpose of this research, a crisis is defined as a situation with a consider- able deviation in volume of negative voice, surrounding a brand, as compared to the baseline volume.* 1. The channels of origin 2. The triggers of crises 3. The causes for the outbreak CHANNELS WHERE CRISES ORIGINATE Origins of crises 2001-2011* Origins of crises 2011 There is a fundamental shift in the Shift in the distribution of distribution of channels towards (a) Twitter and (b) Facebook Crisis Epicenters* 10% 53 18% 26% 7% 50 2011 2001-2011 142 53% 13% 26 While Facebook grew by only 3%, it is now nevertheless the second 18 17 22% 17% biggest source of social media crises. Twitter, on the other hand, almost tripled its share, growing to 13 20% 10 an enormous influencer in the Twitter FB Youtube Blogs Others I Twitter Others Youtube Blogs IFacebook social media landscape. MOST COMMON CRISIS TRIGGERS 13% 33% of crises are triggered by OPPOSING STAKEHOLDERS of crises are triggered by Opposing stakeholders account for 13% of corporate crises. These are mostly deliberately caused situations, initiated by NGOS. THE ORGANIZATION ITSELF 54% A large amount of crises turn out to be triggered by organizations themselves. This is counting official marketing initiatives, as well as individual employee beha- of crises are triggered by THE ORGANIZATION'S CUSTOMERS viour, which reflects back on the The clear majority of crises stems from the organizations' customers. As the most important stakeholder, they account for over half of all crises. employer brand. THE TOP 10 CAUSES OF CRISES 1. Negative customer experiences; and 28.6% 2. Violations of ethical guidelines 25% are the top two causes of crises. This means that one out of four crises is 3. Inappropriate content 10.7% caused by poor customer feedback: 4. Rogue employees 10.7% 5. Failure to respond quickly 7.1% 6. Violation of legal guidelines 3.6% 7. Security breach 3.6% This proves that negative conversations are already happening, no matter if a brand engages in social media or not The second major factor are violations of Inappropriate response 3.6% Christian Faller ONLINE MARKETING 9. Community censorship 3.6% ethical guidelines through organizations themselves or their employees. Website: www.christianfaller.de Twitter: @chris faller 10. Lack of fact checking 3.6% Email: [email protected] This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. *Resources: - Fearn-Banks, K. 2011. Crisis communications: A casebook approach, 4th Ed. New York, NY: Routledge. - Owyang. J.: Altimeter Group. 2011. Social Readiness: How advanced companies prepare internally. Retrieved: April 18, 2012 from: http://goo.g/vqEjı - full list of literature available at www.christianfaller.de