Case Scenarios in Community Management Workshop

transcript

Case Studies workshop

What to do when…?

Initiative of the State Secretariat for Education and Research SER Annex of the Consulate General.

Swiss Knowledge Network with outposts in Boston . San Francisco . Shanghai and Singapore

June 19, 2013

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Agenda

• Introduction to case scenario

• Groups work on response /actions to be taken

• Discussion• Case scenario wrap-up

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Technical Note

• Case scenarios are from institutions in the U.S.• Divide in groups of 5• Case scenarios may merit (or not) an action / response

—Your call!• Be ready to present & explain your decision

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Case 1: Request for more information

Prepare your response (craft the exact tweet that you would post) & tell us what level of priority would this have

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Group responses

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Discussion

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Case 1: Curve ball

Would you have continued the conversation?

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Case 2: Al Gore’s speech @ Stanford

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What would you do?

Explain your decision

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Groups present

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No action was ever taken by Stanford’s social media team.

Wise or not?

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It has a pretty comprehensive comment policy…

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Make sure you have a commenting policy to fall back on

Fine line between free speech vs. strong moderation

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Case 3: Mistakes Happen to the Best of Us!

Email sent to alumni

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Prepare your response (exact tweet/post)

Explain your decision

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Discussion

Was that response too informal? Just right?

How would you have done it in Switzerland?

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Case 4: A real Hassle

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Case 4: A Real Hassle

You don’t know identify of account—but it’s a student

Has institutionalized #fduproblems as a hashtag

Students follow & use # to complaint

Legitimate problems are being reported

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What do you do?

Discuss & decide course of action

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Groups present

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What Farleigh Dickinson did (see last slides for full description)

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Case 4: A real Hassle

Was this choice a good one?

Pros vs. Cons

Isolated incident vs. longer term issue

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Suggestions

Do you have the name & contact info for everyone in your organization that handles a social media account?

Have you published commenting policies on your Facebook page?

Does your staff know what to do in a crisis (weather, security, etc.)?

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Case 4: A Real Hassle1. When did @fduproblems pop up? @Fduproblems started in August/September of 2011.

2. Did you have a twitter account then? We had a Twitter account long before then, but it was not actively managed for quite some time. I took over management of the account in the middle of the Fall 2011 semester.

3. Why is your twitter handle @FDUwhatsnew instead of FairleighDickinsonU? I did not create the account --a colleague of mine in FDU's public relations office created it and he chose the handle. I believe the name was chosen because @fdu was taken already and @fairleighdickinsonu is too long (Twitter limits handles to 15 characters) and @fduwhatsnew is nice and upbeat.

4. Did you create this handle to basically respond to the issues that were coming up? Like I said, I did not create the account. My colleague created it originally to use a media relations tool. That turned out to be rather ineffective and I eventually came to manage the account. I decided to make it more of a community engagement tool rather than as a media relations tool. When I took over management of the account, I quickly noticed @fduproblem's tweets and began responding to them (just as I responded to other students' complaints and comments).

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5. How did you convince management to let you try this out? I am fortunate to have a very enlightened director. She doesn't have a background in social media management, but she does have quite a bit of experience in public relations and she understands how social media can be a useful tool for community engagement--which is where PR as a discipline is moving towards. She trusts my abilities and has given me a very long leash with which to manage FDU's Twitter account.

I don't remember if I ever asked her about engaging with @fduproblems or if I just saw the situation and went ahead and did what I knew to be right from a community relations standpoint. Either way, I knew that she would support me

in my endeavor.

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Case 4: A Real Hassle6. Did you manage this account yourself? Not quite sure that I understand this

question... I manage @fduwhatsnew myself. For the most part, I crafted the official responses to @fduproblems. Occasionally, the problems were severe enough that I ran them up the ladder to my director or higher, but usually, the problems were all fairly simple, garden variety things that I was able to handle.

7. Was the student body aware of your responses? When I started managing @fduwhatsnew, it only had about 400 followers and @fduproblems had a somewhat comparable following. We grew fairly linearly together for the first few months, until @fduwhatsnew's growth began to quicken and far outpaced @fduproblems' (today, @fduwhatsnew has roughly double the number of followers as @fduproblems).

Because @fduproblems was such a popular account, the student body couldn't help but be aware of my responses to @fduproblems. This is partly because @fduproblems often retweeted my tweets when I helped them and also because @fduproblems was more than just a single rogue account --it was a community. The individual behind the account popularized the #fduproblems hashtag and students used the tag just as much as they tweeted to @fduproblems. I monitored the chatter revolving around both @fduproblems and #fduproblems and reached out to students whenever possible and appropriate.

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8. Would you say that @fduproblems is somewhat under "control'? It was a wild ride at first, but I did gain the trust of the founder of @fduproblems and we developed a working relationship built on mutual respect--I solved problems whenever possible and didn't treat @fduproblems as a problem student, but as an opportunity to demonstrate excellent customer service. @Fduproblems reciprocated by helping me spread messages during emergencies and also alerted me to other FDU parody accounts. @Fduproblems will never be fully under "control" since the account changes hands every year and each year I have to build a relationship with a new anonymous tweeter (see below).

9. Did you ever find out the identity of the account holder? I have not. The founder graduated and passed the torch on to a second anonymous student. That second student has just graduated and I suspect I will have a new @fduproblems student to deal with in the fall.

10. It seems he/she's graduating? Will u miss him/her? Did you feel you learned more things because of him/her activity? @Fduproblems never dies; she just changes, so I won't get a chance to miss her. I have learned a lot about customer service and crisis management from working with @fduproblems.

Case Scenarios in Community Management Workshop

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