Crisis comes in all shapes and forms. For a business, it can be a multitude of things. It can be anything from an industry crisis, a sudden organizational reshuffle, to even tragedy at your business location. While riding out the crisis situation is number one on the priority list for a business, they tend to forget about their social media in the middle of all the hustle. And that's a gap in which things can potentially go wrong.
Very wrong.
But it's understandable. You're a growing business and your team probably has its hands full - maybe issuing a public statement, scheduling urgent meetings, discussing recent developments. So what's the end result? Your social media communication goes on the back-burner for the time being.
But even if you have decided to keep it on the lowdown and not make any new social media content, you have to remember that you may have a string of posts sitting in your scheduler, automated to go out. If that doesn't answer the "How bad ignoring my brand's social media during a crisis be?" question; here is an example
Exhibit A: Remember that embarrassing time when late comedian Joan Rivers' Facebook was posting smartphone promotions, just days after her demise? That's a classic case of social media scheduler gone berserk! It is also just a scheduler doing what it should - publish social media posts as scheduled.
There are other (not so severe) instances where you'd want to halt all social media activity. In any case, you definitely don't want a previously-scheduled post to accidentally be published when you are doing either of the following two:
i. Holding-back communication
ii. Curating context-specific communication
So that brings us to an important question. How do you micro manage all your scheduled posts, at a possibly tense hour? Zoho Social has an answer.
Enter Pause/Resume
A feature so straightforward, the name pretty much gives it all away. Recently rolled out by Zoho Social, Pause & Resume are one-trick ponies that can actually go a long mile, when you want to put a break on your social media postings. They've been designed for all those times your brand wants to go on a social media hiatus or hold all scheduled posts, or in case of an emergency.
Just clicking the 'Pause' button that's neatly tucked into your Brand Settings on Zoho Social, effectively puts everything in your scheduler on hold. This is especially useful when you're holding back on social media posting, or handling a crisis that requires you withholding your regular stream of marketing updates and promos. You can just as easily resume posts in a single click by (you guessed it!) hitting the 'Resume' button from the same place - and put your scheduler back on track.
Now, how do we see this being used?
We find that any type of social media emergency can be split into types:
The Crisis:
If you're facing anything from a product-line failure, to a Twitter backlash or an internal issue within your brand that's become public news, it's not the best time to be pushing a chirpy/informative post on social media. You'd want to watch what you say, closely.
Because your social media audience is probably waiting for your reaction, a response or any communication at all. Not for a #Throwbackthursday post that somehow slipped through the cracks of a forgotten scheduler. This is where Pause/Resume again finds its utility, so you don't make untimely posts and make your content irrelevant or make the air awkward. Because even if you've frozen your scheduler with Pause, the feature doesn't stop you from updating live posts on social media. This ensures you only get out the communication you need to, in times of trouble.
The Hiatus:
Are you in the process of revamping your content strategy? Or maybe, a complete re-branding effort? Planning to temporarily hold back your regular social media updates?
If you answered Yes to any of this, you need the Pause/Resume more than we can tell you. Because all these plans all have one thing in common - they require that you clear out your content pipeline, even if temporarily. You don't want your scheduler to say, churn out a blog post with your old logo and theme, after you've just re-branded. That kind of mishap can be embarrassing.
Similarly, having to manually cancel every one of your scheduled posts can be a huge pain. Reposting them can be an even bigger pain if things don't go quite as planned. With Pause/Resume you can easily freeze and unfreeze your social media scheduler based on these changes.
Oh, and don't worry. Even a scheduled post with a date and time that gets lapsed when your brand is on 'Pause-mode' can be easily retrieved later, edited and re-purposed. (We really thought of it all!)
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