When Social Media Attacks: How to Calm The Storm

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Although there are 1,000,001 GREAT reasons to use social media to your full advantage as a small or large business or brand, one of the things you HAVE to have on your radar and plan for is a viral attack.

In social media, especially as brands we are largely dealing with customers... most of whom are happy to provide stellar feedback and recommend you when people are looking for suggestions. THIS is why social media is such a massive aspect of marketing today and a must-do when it comes to launching word of mouth campaigns.

There is a flip side, though. A dark, scary place where one unsatisfied customer, however legitimate or radical their concerns may be, can negate all of the work you've done to grow a following.

In the "days of yore" it took contacting media outlets, constant negative spin or a terrible tragedy to send a businesses' marketing efforts into a tail spin. These days, one unhappy customer with the right "friends" or "followers" can turn your whole business upside down.



Case in point, Brides by Tara, a Peterborough-based bridal shop that sells local brides a variety of styles of wedding gowns and formal dress.

In this instance, Brides by Tara sold a dress to a woman and her mother, for the woman's wedding. A few months after giving a substantial deposit on the dress, the young woman passed away unexpectedly. From the stories being told across social media streams, it seems that the woman's grieving mother has attempted, unsuccessfully, to contact the bridal store and get the deposit back. When she final did reach them, after 10 opened (read receipts, people!) but non-responsive emails, they indicated that the dress was already being manufactured overseas and the deposit would not be remitted.

This post floated past my news feed only moments ago. 

It hasn't been conveyed the overall tone of the conversation between the two parties, but it's easy to see that the customer is unhappy.  In today's social atmosphere, one major mis-step can cause a veritable disaster which is exactly what Brides by Tara's Facebook Page is dealing with right now.

These concerned consumers have blasted this page in only an hour with tons of negative comments.

The worst thing you can do? NOTHING. 
Which up until this point is exactly how this bridal shop has been handling this issue. No response is not the best response.

The second worst thing? Deleting/Denying. 

While it's terrible to make no mention of the smoke and hope the fire goes away, ignoring the situation generally only fans the flames. What's worse could be ignoring the situation and deleting the posts/information from concerned social media followers.

The best thing? Address it head on!
By setting the pace at which your consumers can consume this information, and giving your business a leg up with a positive outlook and quick response/action, you can take back the reigns of a story gone wild and although some damage may already be done, you will certainly regain trust with long time clients.

The best approach here would be to cough up the dough for the deposit this time and apologize to the family for their loss. Yes it sucks that you have to take a hit on the cost of the dress, but it'll much less than the hit on the cost of your entire business. Especially a small local one like Brides by Tara.

In the future, create a clause on your website and on your sales contracts stating that in the instance of unexpected death, a certain percentage of the deposit will be refunded, however, depending on the delivery time unfortunately there's little the store can do.

These "in case of" clauses, like lightning, rarely strike twice, but having the back up plan in place will give peace of mind if it were to ever happen again.

Chances are, looking at the half-done facbook page and irregular posts, this business doesn't afford much time/thought to their social strategy. Maybe now, in the wake of such a nerve-racking (and still growing) attack from their consumers, they will reconsider their approach.



Update: May 8th, 2013 - 5:15 pm

The store has now deleted the majority of negative comments on this page, only responding to ones in favour of their stance without making an official statement. Also, they've turned off the comment option so that concerned parties cannot comment or post on their page.

Update: May 20th, 2013 

The store has posted a "full disclosure" post on their facebook page regarding the events. Although they've garnered some support from this, the original family hasn't made a statement regarding these circumstances. This good will gesture, although a bit late, shows that BBT has taken some steps towards repairing their brand's image.

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Christella Morris is a Social Media Strategist and Design Expert based in Bowmanville, Ontario. She writes two blogs The Social Mom and Crawl The Line, and manages a multitude of online communities.