Not everything can go to plan on Facebook, the audience you hoped would share and promote your brand can turn on you in a heartbeat. It’s times like these you need to know how to handle the angry mob without causing a stampede.
Creating an energised, positive conversation is a difficult thing when you’re helping to run the Facebook page for a well known high street brand. You want simple content that will entertain your followers and hopefully get them to like or share it.
Posts which stimulate conversation are great too, anything as simple as “What’s you favourite flavour of crisp?” or “where would you like to see us open a new branch” are guaranteed to get some replies. It’s a question anyone can answer.
A big brand needs a good social strategy and a posting plan. The type of content you’re posting can often be influenced or in support of a current campaign, i.e. “September is going to be about getting ready for Autumn” or “February is all about wearing pink”, etc.
However, there will be times when you need to fill time between campaigns and have to think of something cheap to produce that will get some likes and shares and maybe cheer up some of your followers.
The Five Stages of Facebook Grief
A few years ago, we found ourselves in that very situation. Instead of our usual promotional offers or questions about “What’s your favourite product?” we thought we’d try something a bit different. We tried a picture of a cat in a box. It did really well. The client was happy and it got lots of likes. It was cute, upbeat and a bit different. We decided to try it again a week later and went about finding the BEST picture of a cat we could find.
We found a Buzzfeed article titled “10 funniest pictures of cats on the internet” or maybe it was “8 Cats having a worse day than you”. We had a good chat and settled on a great picture of a very unimpressed cat in a cute little hand-made jumper. We thought it would be quite shareable, this was the era of Grumpy Cat after all.
We checked with the client, they thought it was great. Monday rolled around and we posted Jumper Cat with a nice message:
“We’re updating our Facebook page, do you like our new look?”.
1. Denial and Isolation
And then… they started to appear.
Grumbles at first, quickly turning into anger, lots of anger. “How could you do this to a poor defenceless cat?”, “Why are you condoning this type of cruelty?”.
We started to suspect that we may have made a mistake.
On social media, you have to handle situations carefully. You need to be calm, considered and not rush in trying to fix a problem and making it all the worse. You should also avoid just deleting a post and hoping nobody saw it. People always see it.
We decided to keep an eye on it, have a cup of tea and it’ll all blow over.
2. Anger
…It didn’t.
The anger increased. People were seemingly trying to out do each other with their indignation. The comments started to become more and more extreme. “I’m NEVER going in your shop EVER again”, “I have taken a screenshot and I have sent it to the RSPCA!”, “I HAVE TOLD ALL MY FRIENDS AND FAMILY ABOUT THIS AND WE’RE NEVER BUYING ANYTHING FROM YOU EVER AGAIN!”.
Things were getting out of hand.
Then the client’s CEO rang. The tone and extremity of the comments on the Facebook wall were the thing of CEO nightmares. At a glance it gave the illusion that all of Facebook were speaking as one, and they hated what we’d done. The comments were spanning into the hundreds now.
3. Bargaining
Action had to be taken.
You’ve got to be careful with this kind of situation, deleting the post could result in people getting even angrier and all that rage could spill out onto your other posts or other social channels. Nobody likes to feel ignored, especially when it’s about something you feel so strongly about.
As an initial measure we quarantined the post by hiding it from the Facebook wall. The post would still be visible for those had actively engaged with it, but new visitors wouldn’t be able to see it. We’d ring-fenced the group so we could deal with them away from the public forum.
4. Depression
Emails were sent, words were had, there was a shared sense of “What did we do?”.
And it was still only Monday.
5. Acceptance
Phase two, we wrote a nice post apologising for any offence Jumper Cat may have caused.
“Hello everyone, we posted a picture of a cat this morning that some of you weren’t happy about. We’re very sorry if this caused some of you any offence — we’ve taken it down now and it won’t be making an appearance ever again.”
Then something we hadn’t expected started to happen.
“What!? I loved that little guy”, “I can’t believe people are so stupid to complain about this”, “Ever tried getting a cat to do something it doesn’t want to do, goodbye arms!”.
We started to get flooded with positive sentiment, people demanding to bring Jumper Cat back.
In fact, all the posts were positive. There wasn’t a single detractor posting to the contrary. The positive sentiment continued to grow. Positive posts started to pile up.
And then a follower of the brand created the ‘Petition to get Jumper Cat Back’:
Make sure you guys “like” and “share” We REALLY need to show these people they can’t give into the petty demands of a few…
People started to dress their cats in jumpers in an act of solidarity:
They created memes:
We’d started with rage and ended with some sort of peaceful protest to bring back a picture of a cat in a jumper.
So What Happened?
When things kick-off on social media, it can feel like the whole world is united behind a cause. You often hear of things “going viral” or a “social media backlash” against something or someone.
With a hot-topic issue such as animal cruelty people can be (and rightly) very vocal in condemning something that they perceive as cruel. People who are very vocal and passionate about their feeling about an issue are likely to have similarly minded friends. So when they start shouting, they bring their friends with them. And their friends bring along their friends. Before you know it you have huge swathes of people getting very angry and supporting an issue. They want to see some clear resolution. Of all these angry voices only a few were original followers of the brand and saw Jumper Cat when it was first posted.
Therefore, when a completely separate thread was opened apologising for Jumper Cat these friends of friends of friends weren’t watching, but the core Facebook group did and that attracted a new crowd. Those who understood Jumper Cat was a bit of fun and couldn’t believe some people were upset about it. So they started to become united behind this new cause. And they brought their friends, and their friends’ friends.
Neither group were directly communicating, primarily because it’s easier to get behind a cause than it is to be on the front lines battling and arguing. In the end we ended up with two separate threads of passionate people essentially agreeing with themselves and backing each other up.
It’s good to be prepared for the worst, as you never know when your brand will wander or get pushed into a hot topic issue. Quarantining the conversation and directly responding to the right people at the right time will help address the issue without inviting more to join in or go off on a different tangent.
And most importantly of all, if you are going to post a picture of a cat, make sure it’s a happy one.
Originally published at experiencerequired.co.uk on August 21, 2015.
