Every morning, I listen to the news. I've been doing this since high school and now well over half my life, as I've changed from radio antennas to apps. Sadly, with all the recent tragedies — from mass shootings in the US and terrorist attacks to devastating earthquakes and other natural disasters — my lifetime habit has become essential to my work.
As one of Moz's community managers, it's my and my team's responsibility to take care of all of you. Whether you interact here on the blog or tweet at us, we're here to help you out, share something awesome, or just send you a cat gif. In addition to being online marketers, each and every one of you has cares and concerns outside of our world. And we are a global community.
Over the years, our team has developed and evolved responses to these tragedies, particularly when it comes to social media. Right now, the valiant Megan leads our social efforts. I'm not going to sugarcoat this: it absolutely sucks that we have to have these processes. I can also tell you that I'm not the only one on my team who's starting to feel desensitized to, in particular, the violent tragedies.
Why this is important
In times of crisis, we turn to social media for news, for eyewitness reports, and for safety check-ins for ourselves or those we care about. When a brand continues to post about the "7 best SEO tips" or the "14 moves to dance like Drake" and everyone else is focused on the current breaking tragedy, your brand looks tone deaf. As if you put your social media on automation and left it like Wall-E, running until the end of time.
Your brand is made of people. Your community is made of people. Acting like a person during tragedies is the most concrete action you can take from those "humanizing your brand" books ubiquitously living on marketers’ shelves.
Recognizing the pain in your community, while still recalling that you're a brand
My team has evolved a policy that if a tragic event dominates social media, we put our social media on pause. It may be on pause for a whole day or a few hours. We then reassess if it's okay to start tweeting or Facebooking about online marketing again.
In the past, we've added some messages of support for those suffering the most. We've even experimented with telling our audience what we were doing to help.
This tweet, which I wrote and take full responsibility for, came off as callous to some — as if Moz was trying too hard to be a responsive brand in order to gain virtual brownie points. It also sparked a debate amongst Moz's entire staff.
In order to maintain our values of transparency, our team used to send all-staff emails to let them know that we were pausing social media. (We don't do this anymore because, sadly, these tragedies are too prevalent. Additionally, our entire company has started using Slack — think IRC with a better interface — which means these get discussed in our open team channel.) Our staff debated the impact of tragedy on Moz's audiences, and we didn't all agree.
Our team also decided that, when it comes to offering up good thoughts to those directly impacted by these tragedies, it's also best to not post this type of message on our social channels — unless we hit the moment right. I know, this sounds like it goes directly against Moz's core value of Empathy. But we never want to sound hollow or like we're joining the bandwagon too late. For instance, we did not change our Facebook profile icon to reflect the French flag after the recent attack on Paris. We talked about it, but decided it was too late to do it without looking like we were just following a trend or just trying to look like we’re a brand who cares.
Instead, most Mozzers tend to take to their own social media accounts in these moments. We're all people, right? We may not speak as Moz, but it's a different way of showing us as human. (We also do this for other happy times, such as marketing chats. For example, Roger Mozbot (@Moz) doesn't participate in #SEOchat discussions; one Mozzer will, tweeting from our personal handles.)
Train and empower the entire team
We make these calls on a case-by-case basis. Everyone on our team is empowered to make the call and take the actions to pause our social media. EVERYONE.
We used to wait for our Director of Community, Jen, to give her opinion or to confer with our executive team. But this is the reality of the world that we live in: If you're waiting for your CEO to tell you to stop, you are waiting too long. You are on the front lines of your community, and you are the one who must make that call.
If you pause it for a couple hours because you're worried, it's better to not send out messages at all than to be the jerk tweeting about your discount on dog food while everyone else is focused on a school shooting.
Christy is all-around awesome, but her community team focus is primarily our Q&A forum. However, because everyone on our team is trained and empowered on how to deal with crises (or fill in when people are on vacation), when this happened on a holiday, Christy jumped right in and paused our social media.
How do you pause your social media?
Like most brands, Moz uses social media management software to do all the things. We specifically use SproutSocial. Currently, (to my knowledge) no social media management software has a pause button. However, several — like SproutSocial and Buffer — have mentioned they are working on them as their response to the seemingly endless stream of tragedies.
This means we must manually stop each and every post scheduled to go out during the time we're pausing for. For SproutSocial, we either turn posts into drafts or reschedule them for later days.
We choose a time frame during which we don't share updates. The length of this time frame may depend on the extent of the tragedy and news cycles, or if it happens during working hours or not. Typically, we go for a couple hours, a half day, or an entire day. Before this timeframe is up, we then reevaluate if we should start posting again.
During this time, we will still respond to customers and others who are messaging us directly in need of help or other assistance. We don't stop being community managers; we just pause our outgoing social media blasts.
Pause those social media ads, too!
Don't forget to pause ads as well, or work with your paid manager to do so. Ads are usually more sales-y in subject matter. And who cares about buying SEO software — even if we think it's pretty cool — when there's a huge earthquake and people are dying?
There's no sleep button on life
We're huge believers in having a community team who's trained on all things. (If you want to know more about that, watch this presentation from Jen.) Our team, who's trained on and has access to our social media, currently spans four US time zones because there is no sleep button on life. Even if we may be snoozing, the world turns.
Each one of us holds a responsibility to our community and brand. Sometimes, this means we stay up until the wee hours of the morning because there's a tool outage. And sometimes this means we stop what we're doing and jump in, or we reach out and ask for anyone on our team to help.
I was at a conference and on paid time off when the Paris attacks happened. I saw it come through early on my Twitter feed, which meant that I hopped into our Slack channel on my phone and told our team what was happening. It was working hours for us, so it was pretty seamless to alert everyone and get someone else to stop all the social media.
Don't capitalize on tragedy
This should be common sense, but apparently, it is not. Remain sensitive to the issues at hand.
Do not tweet on a hashtag trend without investigating the trend's topic, as this boutique did during the Aurora shootings:
And don't pull an NRA, like you haven't watched the news (also during the Aurora shooting aftermath):
Don't act like you care, but actually just want people to give you money, like the GAP during Hurricane Sandy:
And worse, don't offer a discount and discount code to your community affected by tragedy. People whose houses and communities were destroyed during Hurricane Sandy didn't give two shits about a sale at American Apparel just for them:
Your community has its own tragedies, too
Community managers also must pay attention to what's happening in your community. The world itself may be floating along just fine, but your community could be distracted. Recently, our community lost the wonderful Dana Lookadoo.
In Dana's honor, our team paused social media for the day. Jen also wrote a lovely blog post about how much she impacted us, gave the community a place to grieve, and helped set up a scholarship in her name. We did this because we loved Dana, and it came from our hearts. (Miss you, Dana!)
Sometimes your industry news needs to take a backseat
Don't let industry news trump tragedies that are bigger than your community. It may be really important to your community and industry, but with few exceptions, it's probably not as important — or it can wait.
The 2014 Isla Vista massacre took place right when SEOs were seeing impact from the Panda 4.0 (#26) update. I spent a lot of that extended holiday weekend on Moz's social media. Our community was blowing up about Panda. This was right before we started a policy about stopping social media. But I remember getting so angry when watching my own Twitter feed, seeing every SEO paranoid about Panda and every other person concerned for the human life lost. From my personal account, I unfollowed a lot of SEOs that weekend and got pretty depressed about our community.
Take care of yourself
Which leads into the last bit of community manager advice: In the wake of tragedies, make sure you take care of yourself. There's nothing shameful with stepping back and saying you need help managing your brand during times of tragedy. There's nothing bad about asking for a second opinion from someone when you've reached your limit. I should've reached out to my team during that weekend.
Self-care looks different for everyone, but it just means to be nice to yourself in times of stress and when you’re feeling overwhelmed. It may mean unplugging for an afternoon or taking a walk. Or playing with your cat or treating yourself to your favorite meal. My friend Rachelle Abellar published some great books with self-care tips, advice, and ideas if you need inspiration.
Self-care is essential for every person. It's okay if you're burned out and need to take a break, or if you're so agitated, you just need to lie down for a bit. Take care of yourself. Your community needs you to be a whole person.
And now, I'm going to do some self-care and watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
Hey Erica, great article.
I managed social for an NGO during the time of the Haiti earthquake, and the adrenaline of that kept me rolling for a continuous 18hr a day, 14-day long stint. But even when it's your job to talk about national disaster - delivering news and raising awareness of a cause - it's still so important to remember what not to cover, but instead to leave to human dignity and privacy. It wore me out, but I learned heaps in the process about when and what to use social media for.
What an incredibly important job and balance with a ton of learning. I do hope you did get some quality sleep after that. It's amazing what adrenaline will do.
I'm curious how your tactics changed and evolved to help preserve human dignity and privacy and would love to hear more.
Great article, @Erica. Community managers really need to pay attention to the things that happen around them - not all times are for promoting your brand. Empathy is good, but make sure you keep it under control (hope I don't sound too harsh here). The point is, as you've clearly stated: "take care of yourself. There's nothing shameful with stepping back and saying you need help managing your brand during times of tragedy. There's nothing bad about asking for a second opinion from someone when you've reached your limit."
Take care,
Community Manager of PopArt Studio
Hey, Pyramid friend. :)
Hi there, do I know you?
Thanks. Yep, we definitely need to take care of ourselves while we're taking care of our brand. It's one of the reasons why I love having such a great and supportive team at Moz. I know not all other community managers have the same support.
Truer words I haven't seen in a while. Not all have what you have - a supportive team. Glad at least someone's having a good time. :)
Maybe what I'll say next may sound like flattery still I'll say it. The article is immensely helpful for bloggers and carries a message in the very first line saying that "Every morning, I listen to the news... doing this since high school". The message to every new blogger is that being a blogger we must be spontaneous and aware of what's happening around us. One should not bound to a particular interest or passion instead should look for ways beyond the horizon. Coming back to the topic, the points "Recognizing the pain in your community", "There's no sleep button on life" and "Don't capitalize on the tragedy" are the key takeaway for me. I would like to conclude here by leaving special thanks to Erica for bringing up such a master piece.
Thanks for your kind words! :) I definitely believe that we're becoming such a global community that as online marketers, we have to acknowledge and seek the understand what's going on in the world around us.
Hello Erica,
Feel the same every time but never thought about it. You are correct, first being human is more important during the times of tragedy. It also gives emotional relief,confidence, and more important thing, with the help of social media, we can send the message to the community that we are united even during the worst time. Big Thumbs Up to you.
Social media doesn't happen with people, even if it's a brand. :)
This is a great article. We live in a world where there is no "sleep" button and where all of our life is social so knowing how to react when news like the ones we hear almost daily strike can make a huge difference in the footprint we leave around us. Thanks for this!
The times we struggled the most at Moz were the times we were unprepared. Best!
Wow, this post makes so much common sense! Never thought programmed posts could be such a bad thing sometimes hahaha. Gotta be sensitive with our public and always remember that a brand is made by its clients... About the NRA post, I'm so shocked! Never saw that tweet before, just like the American Apparel one, but it's also good to see that big brands really mess up sometimes too, we're all humans in the end, and social media can't be managed by machines. It's a person working for people :)
It is true that brands are all run by humans, and sometimes those humans make really bad decisions. When I see people being like "brands turn off your social media automation" -- as if the tweets just magically write, schedule, etc. themselves -- I raise my eyebrow.
Given the 140 characters of Twitter, it's easier to write than "the people on the social media team for brands, it's time to take a look at what your third-party software is set up to do on your behalf over the next couple of days". Said because I'm guilty of having made the above comment.
Truth. But sometimes I do see commentary that makes me actually question how people think brands with any kind of popularity effectively run their social media as if we should all be logging into Twitter directly. (Which we all know is the best way to tweet that photo of your cat to the brand's audience. :)
I am absolutely agree with every single point you made in this valuable post. We are not just brands and businesses but the human first. We must feel the pain and share our feelings with our communities.
Erica, I just finally had the chance to read this -- great essay! I particularly like the subtext of the whole thing: Companies need to think about more than profits.
Too many people think that businesses are merely cancerous tumors that aim -- and should aim, in fact -- to consume as much resources as possible in pursuit of the selfish goal of maximizing profits by whatever (legal) means necessary. "What? There was a tragedy today? Who cares -- sell more widgets!" That's a very American view of business -- at least since Milton Friedman in the 1970s and the "greed is good" 1980s. It's the idea that only the shareholders matter. When I did my MBA, the first thing my finance professor taught us was this: "Businesses exist only to maximize returns for the shareholders."
What?!
But there's another way to look at business -- and it's a more balanced, European way. Business are not cancers -- they are entities that interact with and contribute to the societies in which they are located. Employees use their salaries to buy stuff and put money back into the community. Corporate taxes fund government construction of local roads, bridges, and schools. And in return, the community buys stuff from the business. And so on. It's the idea that all of the stakeholders -- everyone in the community -- matter.
And when a business rightly sees itself as part of the community, it needs to be sensitive to that community. There's a time to sell widgets and a time to close the shop for the day. And there's a time, as you write, to talk on social media and a time to be quiet. If only more companies understood that fact.
Thanks for the great piece!
Hi Erica, amazing post. everybody include me should think more in the remain of people when we do a strategy of social media, because is sometime we don't have in consideration the mood before to tlak about certain topic. Great work and keep this way to thinking.
In an age where the pressure to post quickly is intense and the risk of damaging a reputation with an untoward or insensitive post, this is an especially timely and smart post of how to craft a sensible strategy before something happens.
Bravo and thank you!
It's definitely something that's been on my mind a lot lately. Glad it's helpful.
Yes its very true, we recently were affected by heavy floods here in Chennai, India. Lot of people had suffered badly. When we opened social media pages there were a some promotional posts inbetween some really caring and helpful posts. People started to see these brands who did not pause their social media publishing as a heartless brand. Luckily we paused all ours and our clients social media posts that were scheduled through Hootsuite.
its great to wake up and the first thing you read is an amazing written and educative blog.....Thank you @Erica and the other ladies and gentlemen for the helpful comments.
SEO at KL Translations
Hi Erica. This is a very important issue for many brands. However, I don't believe that is the case for Moz. Of course there are events that shock the whole world but there are events (like some shootings you mentioned or smaller natural disasters) that go unnoticed here in Europe so we don't know why you stopped posting. Have you ever thought of that through that perspective?
Nevertheless I believe you should do what you believe is the most correct for the majority of your fans and followers. I am just saying that sometimes we miss you here in Europe and don't know why you won't "talk" to us ;)
We will always "talk" to you on social media; we just pause our content postings. But if you comment to us on social media, we definitely respond.
I do think it's a hard balance with a global community because I wholly agree that we often don't hear (or perhaps aren't as concerned) about what's happening and it's true impact globally. Even though we have all these tools.
Great read. Was just thinking about it yesterday, some Russian newspaper managed to advertise a battle of extrasenses tv show in an article about Bowie.
That NRA tweet... damn
Ugh, brands, stop that. Someone found this similar "gem" on LinkedIn yesterday re: Bowie. I was almost like "hold the presses, I need to edit this post."
Yeah, incredibly tone-deaf.
This is amazing post Erica and i totally agree with your position.
But we live in non-ideal world where such tragedy happens daily. We know for some of them, but for other we didn't know about. So question should be "how big disaster should be to pause all?". I know this sound too cynical, but this is true. And sometime even single loss (like Dana) can touch you (or your team, company, comminuty) more than explosion in chemical factory somewhere. And this is "moral question" what to do then?
Situation when you're "sit down and wait for C-level decision" is sh!tty and probably should be avoided if you have internal rules in your team. But even with clear written rules, something may happen that surprise you. Like "Black swan" theory.
I remember in 9/11 how first reaction was chaotic and then panicked. I was online waiting for conference call with few west coast persons when i get news. Over next few days communication was stopped and i understand this. We stop all rush work just to give our partners time for recovering and estimating damages. For many of them this was life changing event. Before we're discuss "hit by bus" scenario, but then we also discussing "9/11 or meteorite crash" where all company and/or data was extinct.
And this event's can't be scripted nor given some scenarios for reaction. Probably communication manager should have some kind of freedom and works independent then. Just a little bit.
In response to the question about how big of a disaster to pause, I'd look at what my community is saying on social media and take my cues from that. If I have a Twitter list of customers or brand advocates, I would look at their tweets. Is this something affecting them? Are they talking about it? How big is the impact to them?
+1
I agree that we can't prepare for everything, but it's good to have a foundation to start somewhere. Could we predict a 9/11 in our social media management plans? No. But by having a plan for a smaller disaster, we can take the immediate steps and then go back and discuss as a team what we need to do. If nothing else, it buys us a little time and keeps us from acting like assholes.
I do think if there's a complete technological disaster, I won't have a job anymore and my youth on a ranch will probably be much more handy than any other ability. :)
@Peter Absolutely Agree..and it make sense.
Erica, Great post! Couldn't agree more regarding brands needing to recognize when and when not to weigh in, and definitely not exploit situations. I wonder however if there isn't helpful content a brand can prepare and share in advance, even if it isn't directly in its wheelhouse. For example we on the east coast are bracing for a huge snow storm this weekend (hopefully not a tragedy but could be). I think in advance of that it would have been ok for a brand to share socially articles like I chose to tweet personally from Lifehacker:
The Right Way to Prepare for a Winter Storm https://buff.ly/1Pn6Zzy
or
All the Best Things to Do When You’re Snowed In https://buff.ly/1nDmCqb
To me a brand can have such content at the ready in advance to simply be helpful, non promotional and show they care.
Thoughts? And if you agree any other such ideas?
Hi Erica,
I read this article .Its really different article post from other post.Thanks for discussed your story here.Its really interesting for reading.
For me, once correctly used, social media marketing can give your business positive results. However, a social media marketing strategy should not be a technology outlet; instead, a people-driven phenomenon. A business has successfully executed social media strategies if it knows the ways to use empathy to connect with its audiences. And it is really important, surely!
Interesting article, every day I learn more new things in this blog, I hope to follow your concerns and take into account all the knowledge put into this article, thank you very much
Excellent post Erica McGillivray,
Really we are living in a world where Social media is always awake. You want keep track your social media world then you have to active on your social media accounts on regular basis.
I want to agree with you on this topic entirely but i can only be to some extent. Pausing marketing campaigns is a good move during crisis, but I don't think it's right to unfollow SEO people just because they were tweeting about SEO update not about the shooting incident in US (unfollowing is ok if all those seo community guys were from US). Bad incidents happen everyday in this world but people react to only a few. It's all about how you are connected to affected place and people. I don't think Moz or any other US or European brand would pause their social campaign due to a terrorist attack or natural calamity happened in South Asian and African countries unless it operates there and have business interests. I didn't unfollow Moz and any other SEO guy for their SEO related content posted during any of the unfortunate incidents happened in India. As far as gun shooting incidents are concerned, they are now quite common in US, and everyone around the world can't have the same feelings as you do for people of US (of course we all pray for the victims every time it happens).
I hope, I am not looking insensitive.
Hi Devendra,
Just to clarify, I was unfollowing people from my PERSONAL Twitter account, not Moz's. And I believe all the people I unfollowed that weekend were men who lived in the US. One of the major reasons I was so upset by the Isla Vista shooting was because the shooter specifically targeted women and blamed them (and his inability to get a date) for his actions. As Canadian writer Margaret Atwood said, "'Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them." Without getting too much into my personal history with gun violence from men, it was highly emotionally upsetting for me to see every single woman tweeting about the horror and men tweeting about SEO. Anyway, since it's my personal account, I can unfollow anyone I want for whatever reason.
While I agree geography is important, at Moz, we do have a global community. I believe we did pause our social media when the major earthquake happened in Nepal.
Thanks
Thanks for clarifying Erica, and explaining the reason behind that particular shooting incident. Now I can understand your pain and emotions at that time. Few men are like that when they propose a woman and get rejected, they don't hesitate to ruin her whole life. And I had no intention to question your right of following and unfollowing anyone, you can even do it without any reason.
I am glad Moz took a pause for Nepal earthquake. But I never saw Moz taking a pause or tweeting about a natural calamity or terrorist attack in India. If I remember correctly, not even in mid 2013, when around 10000 people died, 8000 were missing and hundreds of thousands went homeless (these were official figures, unofficial figures were much much more) in India's Uttrakhand state due to floods, landslides and cloudbursts. We expect it from Moz or any other brand whose website receives so much love and adoration from Indians (apart from 35% traffic from the country, as per Alexa stats). Few good words at the time of crisis gives people strength to face it.
Thanks!
Hi Devendra,
One thing to note is that we're constantly enhancing this process, and in 2013 we were still working through how to handle a tragedy. We're like anyone else, in that we can't always be perfect, we may mess up along the way. One thing for certain is that we never do things will ill intentions, and every day, month, and year we hope to improve even more. :)
We have determined that in most cases, it's best for us to simply pause promotion (we still respond to folks). We'll only make a statement if perhaps there is a direct relation to Moz staff, or some similar impact. We've found it's better to simply stop promotion, and show our respect that way.
Thanks Erica, very good post. Nice to read & learn
very informative article. Thank you.
Excellent article, Erica. Now, this is a very rarely touched subject, picked up some great tips. Cheers, Niraj (Founder at hiverhq.com)
Glad it was helpful!
Also wanted to let you know that in our comments' section, we encourage people to fill out their profiles instead of leave their title/company as a sigh off on the post like you do on some forums.
Great article and examples of how to react on social media when dealing with tragedies. In such a noisy space, taking a second to pause can have such a huge impact.
Thanks!
Great! "pause" is good idea :)
I'm really crossing my fingers that social media management tools work hard to impliment an easy button to help us with pausing.
Thank you Erica, this was comforting to read and a nice change from what I am used to seeing in this industry. I was never a fan of people saying 'too soon?'.
Yeah, it can be really awkward for brands when they do something that triggers that "too soon" feeling.
People do not realize the importance of Social Media for companies...!
Great job! Thank you for sharing!
Wonderful Article, Sharing some of the wonderful stuff is awesome. Thanks for sharing this Erica.
Erica, the first of all I appreciate your intention to cheer up people who are in doubts if they should stop their social media activities when something sad is happening around, but they didn't receive any message from a boss. Because they should.
On the other hand, I found your comment about the length "Typically, we go for a couple hours, a half day, or an entire day." very cynical. In case that you want to be so correct and moral (that u even write about it), a few hours or one day is a cynical joke. Those things are buzzing more than a few hours or a day. People are discussing it intensively at least for one week. To be honest, the lenght you mentioned ruins your good intention, and turns it into something self-centered (I'm a good human and cool business because I think about the things that matter, and now I sell it to you as a part of my brand.), the way businesses are. Hopefully, you will extend the lenght.
Hi Misha,
It's up to the brand and the team to measure and gauge their own community to see how long they might pause it. At risk of sounding even more cynical, there were more mass shootings in the US in 2015 than days (at least at the beginning of December), which if we were pausing every time for a week, we might as well toss in the towel now. (And this doesn't even count natural disasters, what's happening outside the US, etc.) My time suggestions were to get people started, and in many cases, based on average lengths we've paused Moz's social media. Eventually people do start talking about other topics because that helps you heal, move onto the next steps, and can provide emotional relief, and yes, sometimes those topics are work-related.