What are the best practices for HR to handle social media crises and protect the brand reputation?

Information spreads like a wildfire through social media and you won't be able to get ahead of it with a responsive strategy. Your first priority is to right now stop and create a proactive strategy. As people begin to spread a social media story with their own spin on it, soon what really happened is far from any journalistic proof. The best defense is a good offense. Organizations can take charge of their own brand by having their own influencers. Have a group of trusted advisors with whom you share information; counteract negativity with the truth; deliver a first-person account through your own channels, and, above all, be open, transparent, and honest in all your dealings internally with employees. These are your best ambassadors.

Create awareness about social media impact in reputation, clear disclaimers of ownership of personal opinions and to avoid linking or relating brand or employer to personal posts

Agree, once a post is up, there is no damage limitation, instead focus in creating ownership and sincere support for all potentially affected

Brand must build successful brand marketing exercises with the support of their brand ambassadors. Successful business activities must be used to build success stories to be marketed as a event builder. The brands own information flow system should be proactive towards such events. When such an event unfolds the brand should create another positive event which can be used as a redirected event to reduce the impact and create a positive noise around the “unwanted event”. With HR marketing strategies HR can drive employees to develop the own brand building exercise having close control by HR. HR should be selective using brand ambassadors only. Brand must focus on its own brand building exercises rather than negating the “unwanted event”.

Communication applied with effective action is the best form of correction to uphold and improve a brand's presence with stakeholders. It is common yet unfortunate that organizations choose to focus efforts on the PR, image and communication of the brand, instead of implementing effective action into corrective initiatives. Too often now, consumers instantly dismiss notions of PR apologies and presumptuous statements form organizations, because they seldom have any action behind the words. This is a point of branding that is applicable to all organizations across all industries. Be a doer! Imani Powell CEO NewLife Health & Wellness, Inc.

Understanding your employees' experience day-in-day-out will help to build a proactive approach to social media challenges. Employees are your best brand ambassadors, and when their experiences are good -- when they feel cared for, appreciated, and valued -- they are more likely to represent your organization in a positive light. Many employers do survey their organizations to get a pulse on the employee experience. However, it's what you do with the results of those surveys that really matters. Your employee experience strategy should promptly analyze data and be able to respond to weaknesses in how employees experience your company. You can't possibly fix everything. But demonstrating that you want to listen and improve is vital.

Policies should evolve as times do so, active social media presence will only increase over the years, so should the way we look at it as an employer