Use of Social Media in Crisis Management - Research Proposal Example

USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN CRISIS MANAGEMENT STUDENT’S NAME: INSTITUTION: INSTRUCTOR’S NAME: DATE: Introduction Competition has resulted in introduction of more means of reaching customers globally, the markets today are struggling to achieve their competitive strategy, with the changes in technology, the most adopted means of cost cutting when it comes to advertisement is the use of social media. However, social media has become a platform for many activities whereby people express their opinions whether they are negative or positive. The critics posted by persons are clear information to most businesses that use social media to conduct their business activities. Subordinates in organizations spend their time in the social media and them. Therefore, post all the matters related to the organizations, when there is a crisis about a particular organization, social media is the most convenient place to spread information[Car121]. There is a shift towards internet marketing and customer service provision that has gained popularity since adoption of technology in the market industry. A research on social media was conducted and the results analyzed as per the response of internet users[Bod14]. A descriptive research was conducted with the purpose of developing skills related to designing and undertaking quantitative/descriptive research; collecting, analyzing and interpreting quantitative data. In order to come up with conclusions and recommendations, it is important to write a report that will be used in making judgments. The report consists of results from the descriptive research and the findings. The methods used to collect data should also be availed in the report as well. The study was done in order to examine the extent to which social media can help in managing the crisis. Background of the problem In any organization crisis, management is very essential, and it requires planning and dynamic approach criteria because the crisis or the situations happen in very unpredictable ways. It is due to the unpredictable nature of the conditions that can hinder the capabilities of a country to operate efficiently. The effect may be catastrophic as it may harm people, destroy assets and create a bad reputation or image of the country[Koe10]. Over the recent years, crisis management has been an enormous challenge to many firms and countries. However, there have been various efforts to find the best way to curb the problem, the only satisfactory method discovered was the use of social media tools. The incorporation of social media tools in organizations has proven a success in the abilities to manage any management crisis. Social media tools contain readily available software such as online discussion platforms and news aggregators that are of great benefit to the organization that incorporates social media in the management system. Organizations can efficiently and quickly disseminate, acquire and analyze information comprehensively[Whi11]. Social media is capable of preventing crisis management from becoming uncontrollable hence organizations cannot at any time ignore the capabilities and the advantages of using social media tools in the management. An instance of a crisis management was the UK riots in 2011. The problem was at first a protest against police brutality in Tottenham, which escalated to being riots and vandalism. The riots and destruction resulted in too many questions that examined how the social media has played a great part in the UK riots. The riots were concluded to have been catalyzed by the use of social media because the rioters and onlookers used it in their organizations and communication with each other. Social media has significant impacts on politics, transfer of information and social movements. However, the effects and influence that it has on different fields cannot blame it for any sparking of the revolts experienced. It is from the experience and outcomes of social media that many authors came up with a conclusion that despite the fact that social media has positive impacts it still has a negative influence. The positive effects related to social media include facilitating and accelerating the speed and the coverage of communication if it is correctly used. Technological changes have brought about changes in many things concerning business. Since the discovery of internet, companies have found a way of carrying out activities through the use of internet. Online business is the most trending and especially marketing[Lev12]. Organizations and big companies have found the easier and cheaper means to create awareness of their products globally. Since internet has enabled interaction with people globally, marketing through internet will allow organizations to connect with more customers than when marketing through other means such as personal selling and public relations. In the past, the development of marketing has improved as a result of using the social media as a platform for advertising. Most companies and organizations have adopted the use of social media in advertising their products. This was enhanced by the fact that social media consist of people from different places; these social media include twitter, you tube and facebook. The three social media have millions of followers globally. The idea to use social media in creating awareness is the fact that people spend most of their time on the social media. Therefore, when they view a certain advert, they will be interested to get more information concerning that particular product[Fre10]. Since marketing has been done online companies have also adopted the use of the Internet to provide customer care services. This was influenced by the fact that online transaction calls for efficient customer care to enhance the operations and to win the loyalty and trust of clients. Social media has contributed towards the success of many businesses and had the lead to interaction and development of more ideas. The purpose of using social media tools is to enhance product and service promotion[Gil10]. However, competition exists even in the social media. It is obvious that companies try to out way each other by any means, and they will try their best to attain the competitive strategy. Since social media is the platform for marketing, competition has resulted in a crisis when it comes to creating awareness online. This is because where there is competition, rivalry will always exist and hence there will emerge crisis. Crises occur in the social media in terms of insults and abuses from parties in conflict. The primary aim of causing such crisis is to damage the reputation of one party over the other one. Crisis also occurs in the internal environment of most companies and the only place where people will get information concerning the crisis is on the media. On the other hand, crisis can be solved appropriately through the use of internet[Gil10]. This is done through calming the situation by interacting with people in the social media and providing enough information about the crisis, and this will help to calm down the situation. The research is therefore going to analyze how the businesses can use social media to solve crises issues. Objectives of the study In order to conduct the study, it is important to develop the objectives that will guide the research study towards answering the research questions. Since the study is about the use of social media in managing crises, the objectives of the study are; Understanding the Social Media Landscape The medium or channel used for communication in social media does not always refer to the message. The content and the purpose of social media would if used do very little or nothing to ensure that people prepare, respond and recover appropriately in case a disaster occurs. Some scholars define social media as how communication and social interaction has been made easy and facilitated by the use of social media tools such as online internet-based platforms. There are different categories of social media tools that can be used. The first group includes the social networks and blogs[Kie11]. The social networking sites refers to websites like Facebook that help people interact and communicate with other people by creating personal profiles enhancing sharing of information. On the hand, blogs refer to just online journals or maybe discussion sites that are typically used in the posting of either relevant updates or any other related content. The second category is the bookmarking sites. Just as the name suggests, it refers to a place where individuals can store, classify, search and share links through the exercise of folksonomy practices on the internet. The visibility of contents shared through a bookmarking site increases when sharing and tagging happens. The third category is the collaborative projects; these includes Wikipedia. Communal databases that are created by a user-generated content, article or views are referred to as collaborative projects[Kie11]. The fourth category is the content community, which refers to the online communities that creates a platform where people can share a variety of materials. The contents shareable on this platform includes photos, videos, and audios. A typical example of content community is the YouTube. The fifth are the social reviews. Social reviews are those websites that provide a search platform for people for finding any content of their choice from the internet. The most commonly used social study worldwide in the Google search. The social review websites also provide an option of sharing and rating of information[Kie11]. Due to the outstanding features of the social media tools currently used in the present day they have agreed to be better than the traditional forms of media. The traditional forms of media were limited in reach and had poor performance which the present day social media tools have overcome. To determine how businesses can use social media in managing the crisis To evaluate the impact of the crisis on customers through the use of social media To analyze the feedback from customers in the social media on crisis intervention through social media Research questions In order to undertake the research it is important to develop the research questions because they are helpful when it comes to data collection. The problem statement was used as a guide towards developing the research questions; these questions were designed and presented as; How can business use social media to manage the crisis? Can social media enable business to measure the impact of the crisis on their customers? How can business use social media to collect feedback from customers upon crisis intervention? Significance of the research questions to the study The first question concerns the use of social media to manage the crisis; this is relevant to the project because social media is the platform where people meet and exchange ideas and opinions. When businesses use social media to meet customers’ needs through advertising their products and services together with the provision of customer care services, there is a chance that the crisis will occur. Marketing activities have been conducted through the media whereby many organizations have embraced the cost-effective opportunities that follow the use of media. The second question on the use of social media to measure the impact of the crisis on customers is relevant to the study. It is obvious that when there are crises in organizations and businesses, the only place that information will leak is through the social media, this will have an impact on the customers of that particular organization. When they use the same social media to solve the underlying challenge by providing the needed information to the customers, they will thus be able to measure the impact of crisis on customers because they will analyze the opinions made by them. The third question on collecting feedback from customers upon crisis intervention is relevant because it focuses on the customer reaction when the crisis has been solved. Since social media allows people to give both negative and positive opinions, it will help the business to develop an appropriate strategy for solving the problem. The opinions will act as a feedback to the businesses on what they should do to ensure such cases of crisis in the social media will be handled. Literature review The use of social media in public relations has been exhaustively explored and researched many scholars globally. According to [Cur10]who surveyed a total of 283 public relations practitioners concluded that the most widely used form of social media was the email. The authors also discovered that many public health professionals use emails and intranet forms of social media. However, the professionals have not yet embraced social media tools which are more advanced such as social networking and virtual words in their profession. There exists a very vast difference between what practitioners say is happening in their areas of work and what should be happening [DiS11]. Many of the people globally are believed that they do not use social media very often which means that they do not actually spend much time on social media. Social media is a platform where people globally interact and share views; they form the most visited sites when it comes to the use of internet. The reason for the name social is because it consists of people from the diversity who come together to the particular social media and exchange ideas. There are three popular social media that are Face Book, you tube and twitter. These social sites are frequently visited by people of any age except the young[Yoo11]. Business, on the other hand, has found it easier to use social media to reach more clients and meet their objectives making use of social media tools. Creating awareness of the products and services has been done through social media, also marketing research use social media to find out the taste and preferences of potential customers. Social media, therefore, has become a place to conduct many activities related to making profits and attracting customers globally. For example, when customers give opinions and comment on particular products or service, companies will use this information to enhance their products and services (Máire 2006). Companies have therefore created pages where customers can post their opinions on what they feel about the enterprise. It has become a habit for most business to use social media for advertising purpose, however, there is more of social media than just marketing and customer services, and that is of managing a crisis that has occurred within the company. [Bes]The data above shows the rate at which social media tools including Facebook, twitter, google+, blogs and YouTube are used in the business world. Organizations can use this data to find out which social media tool will best work out for them. From the data Facebook has the highest economic value which implies that many companies would opt to use twitter in the management of crisis. This shows that Facebook has got the majority of people using and following the updates so as to get information. Twitter has the least economic value hence a company that uses twitter platform to manage social media crisis may not fully accomplish its objectives. In the event of managing the crisis by the use of social media, companies should also have in mind the importance of good reputation on social media. A crisis will occur with the intention of damaging the reputation of the targeted business. Crisis occurs in the form of negative post directed to the targeted company or business or even negative posts that reveal the company secrets. In this case, company reputation is important because it will contribute towards a successful crisis management. There are two main reasons as to why companies should be keen on maintaining their reputation in social media (Bianchi, C. & Andrews, L. 2012). The first reason is that the word of mouth is very powerful and can influence a thousand people especially through social media. For example, when a company uses a person to influence people globally by posting about the positive attributes of the company. By doing this, the company will gain popularity because this person will be able to depict the good experience that the company gave him. The second reason is the social search whereby most companies have adopted the use certain acronym to enable people on the social media to access their pages easily. This in consideration of the hash tag that is used by people on Twitter has attracted most companies who have created pages while starting with a hash tag. A study was conducted to find out what motivates people to conduct their business online. It was discovered that the rate of social desirability influences people to have accounts in social media whereby they can be able to access information from various companies. Therefore, the most motivating factor that influence people to go online or rather shop online is the social aspect they find on the internet. Managing crisis through social media Many people think that a business acquires marketing benefits when it incorporates social media in the management of crisis. The belief is, however, different from the reason for why many companies are currently starting to incorporate social media tools into their management. Many companies are presently using social media as a tool for listening and providing all the necessary customer service. In the case of a crisis or a disaster in a business or organization, the use of social media has proven a successful way out of dealing with the situations. A crisis comprises of a simple website outage to even an adverse publicity[Yat11]. It is always a good trend for a business to keep their management crisis methods updated all the time. For effective crisis management, the threats should be handled sequentially. The most important key factor in a crisis management that must be looked into is the public safety. The other areas of concern include reputation and financial crisis management, but they are considered after the assurance of public safety. Many organizations design a crisis management scheme so as to protect its shareholders from threats or reduce the effects of the risks. Managing a crisis is a process that is designed to either protect or contribute to reducing the impacts and the effects that the crisis has on the organization's staff, stakeholders and the management. The public has in the recent years raised expectations on how a company’s public relation manager should handle a crisis in case it happens[Gil08]. Some of the expectations include a quick action and response to solve the problem, an open and honest channel of communication and an open and transparent dialog through the social media. In the past, it was hard for people to reach any organization's management or staff. However in the present day it has been made easier to reach and also communicate because of the social media platforms such as Facebook, and twitter. A social media platform such as Twitter has been embraced by MNC’s and NGOs to ensure an efficient communication with several stakeholders[Cor14]. Maintenance and a regular upfront are a significant costs are some of the key factors that stakeholders should consider and address when incorporating social media into a medium for solving and managing crisis. Moreover, a company should also expect the lead-time to shape the internal infrastructure for the regular and most frequent social media activities. The success of the anticipation entirely depends on the leadership and an efficient management of the social media accounts. However, the lead time used to set up social media infrastructure during the time of crisis is not always available when it requires an immediate course of action. A corporate crisis is defined as an issue that hinders or prevents an organization from achieving it objectives and the ability to control its immediate environment. In case a corporate crisis occurs an immediate action should be taken and responded to strategically so as to manage any public reaction and quickly recover from the crisis and get back to normal. A company should always take into account and consider the influence that the use of social media will have on the company’s image. For any business, the use of social media should allow and give the customers an opportunity to give out their opinions and ensure the spread of their views quickly and far away. The word of mouth and social tech are two very influential reasons as to why the management of social reputation is necessary [Han13]. The most popular social media that have been mentioned above can be used in managing the crisis, and most companies have developed strategies on managing crisis and calming down situations that could lead to damaging the company reputation. Use of Twitter to manage the crisis Twitter is a social media that has many followers, and you find that businesses can be flowed on Twitter as well. Most companies have their customer follow their pages, competitors, and potential customers have an opportunity to follow their preferred companies. Due to the number of people following company pages, it is important for the company always keep up to date with the activities they post on their pages. This is because competitors may decide to post negative opinions on behalf of the company; dormant pages of most companies have encountered such incidences. Companies should be able to respond quickly towards negative comments posted by people on Twitter, by doing this they would have managed a crisis because the more negative comments people post, the more the company loose customers and they will not be able to influence customers because they would have depicted inability to handle negative attitude towards them[Hwa12]. Use of you tube in crisis management You tube being the most popular video engine search has gained popularity since it can post videos and people can view globally. You tube is the best and the most efficient way of sending public announcements to people anytime a company requires to make a statement concerning either the performance or an ongoing situation. In this case, people can view the video and post their comments concerning the video. Companies’ use you tube to post various events that occur in their company. Also, they use you tube for advertisement as well. Sometimes companies can have internal challenges for example conflicts among staff and can lead to rivalry or either fight, posting such videos on you tube will degrade the company because of the reputation they hold. In most cases, competitors are responsible for leaking out such video and convince people how bad the company is. Others can even post videos on customers who have consumed products from a certain company and are affected; it is obvious that competition will often result in negativity among companies who are competing. Since you tube happen to move multitude of young generation, companies who use it to advertise their products and services should always try to manage social crisis by ensuring that imposters do not post something that portray negative nature of the company[Alf08]. Use of face book Face book allows people to interact when they are friends; one can create their profile where they can log in and interact with their friends globally. A company that has a Facebook fan page is likely to use it to focus on the comments and feedbacks from their clients. It always necessary for a company to ensure that its Facebook fan page is updated regularly. The purpose of the regular updates is to ensure that the fan page settings allow fans to post, comment and be seen by both the non-fans and fans. Companies have used face book for various purposes such as conducting marketing research, provision of customer service, advertising their products and also carrying out the transactions through face book. Companies also have pages on face book where customers can post their opinions. Also, groups have been created to manage communication among people and to respond to their comments. Companies can, therefore, manage crisis that could occur in face book through regular checking of their pages or groups in order to respond towards negative comments. Since face book has helped in promoting many businesses as a result of influence by friends and also the fact that it is rated the most visited social site than others[Bea13]. Example when a company has some shortage of their products and there I high demand, when the company post on their progress towards ensuring that the shortage is being operated, customers will relax and perhaps give opinions that could help the company. The company can share their profile where customers will access company information and give views. Social media is public and therefore people have the right to post anything they think, when they post negative comments on a company page, it is the responsibility of the company to respond and follow up on the issue. Critics are always used by businesses to shape up their ways of meeting the needs of their customers. It is important for companies always to respond to tweets, comments and mentions when it comes to social media because they more they delay, the more the customers will develop negative attributes on the company. The manners in which companies handle their responses also matter because it presents the image of the company. Furthermore, customers are always keen on the responses from the company towards comments, it is from the responses and how the business handle them that enable customers to give attributes to the company.[LPa08] Methodology Since the study is descriptive, the methods that will be used in collecting data are the use of survey method whereby a survey will be conducted in the most popular social media and data drawn from the number of companies who have managed to maintain their reputation in the social media. The survey will be conducted while taking into consideration the objectives of the study which are to determine whether social media can be used in managing crisis, to identify the impact of crisis on customers and to determine the feedback from the customers after crisis intervention. The assumptions that to be made in the study are; businesses are accessible to every social medium, consumers choose their best social media from where they can get access to information concerning their preferred company, most consumers are aware of the social network and they have accounts. Data collection Since the study is about determining the extent to which social media can be used to manage the crisis, the method used to collect data will be secondary data collection. This will be done through the survey and findings from past analysis in social media and crisis management. Ethical considerations When conducting a study, ethical considerations should be applied. For the study, it is important to consider ethics because the respondents are the ones to provide data. Since the audiences need to be assured of their privacy when it comes to giving, information ethical considerations will enable them to provide the needed information. Firstly, privacy is the most important consideration on respondents, they will, therefore, be assured that the information gathered from them will be used for the purpose of study only, and, therefore, the information would not be disclosed. Secondly the researcher will ensure that respondents understand the aims of the study by interpreting to them. Another consideration is about the appreciation of the respondent, for their time to answer the questions. Lack of appreciating the respondent may lead to incorrect data and information. The respondent should also be given a chance to express their feelings and during when they are expressing they should be listened keenly. Analysis Data collection requires analysis so as to use the results in making conclusions and recommendations. The results that will be analyzed will answer the questions of the study. After collecting data, analysis will be done to so as to find the results and conclusions. They are the most accurate applications used in data analysis. And they give appropriate results since they analyze both quantitative and qualitative data. Data cleaning and data coding are part of the analysis Data cleaning ensures that the collected data is appropriate for analysis; it, therefore, involves the process of going though the response collected and determined whether they provided relevant answers. It is all about ensuring that the respondents chosen provided the answers to the questions targeted to answer the research problem. Data coding is the process of entering the data into the SPSS software and in this case it is inclusive of developing variables. 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