Good advice, Sprout Social. Unfortunately, far too few brands took it.
I manage more than 20 brand profiles on social media. I am nowhere near the busiest community manager in the world, but I’m definitely not the least. But the relative size of my workload aside, the first thing I did when news began to come out of the explosions at the finish line of the Boston Marathon today, was to double-check and make sure I didn’t have any tweets or posts auto-scheduled for today.
I tweeted a reminder to brands early on, as did many other influencers. At this point, if pausing all flip “look at me!” marketing activity isn’t your first response in a crisis, than you are sorely in need of a good, hard look at your crisis communications plan.
Once again brands – in a crisis, don’t forgot check your scheduled tweets, posts, etc, and for pete’s sake, hold the flip ones!
— Halley Knigge (@halleyrebecca) April 15, 2013
Don’t get me wrong. I’m saying anyone who tweeted anything other than Boston today is a jerk. I’m just saying that in the face of tragedy, we all benefit from a human voice and human judgment. Your marketing efforts can wait until tomorrow. Your empathy can’t.
