Going viral is every marketer’s dream, until your brand post starts trending for the wrong reasons. Suddenly you’re scrambling, wishing you could erase every repost from the internet. Shares multiply by the minute. Public sentiment flips. Partnerships falter.
A single viral post can severely damage your brand—sometimes, much worse, because they travel faster and farther before you realize.
Still, it’s not all doom. Your social PR team can either avoid or reduce the fallout if they are properly guided. In this article, industry leaders will share real-time tactics to help them respond effectively.
1. Spot the Warning Signs Early
Most viral backlashes start with subtle signs like:
- A sharp spike in engagement level
- A shift in the tone of comments
- A flood of quote tweets
- Or even a blue moon jump in brand mentions
For Anna Zhang, Head of Marketing at U7BUY, if it’s too good to believe, bring in a lens.
“Anything that deviates from your usual metrics, zoom in quickly to know if it’s serving your brand or not. Look out for sarcastic replies or comment threads filled with confusion and outrage. Sometimes, sudden activity from influential accounts can also be a pointer”, Anna shares.
Your social management team and PR must go beyond surface metrics like number of likes and positive comments to see what’s truly going on.
Bring in monitoring platforms like Agility PR to track trends, raise an alarm for unusual mentions, and analyze sentiment surrounding your content. In addition, employ trained assistants as extra eyes to occasionally proofread each published post.
2. Build Your Real-Time Response System
Nicolas Breedlove, CEO at PlaygroundEquipment.com, says unwanted virality can strike anytime.
“You shouldn’t wait till then before your team scrambles to contain the spread or damage already done. Start now. Set up a cohesive real-time response system. This includes a set of rules guiding your social media management operations template for response from your PR team and who’s doing what, when.”
- Who writes the response?
- Who approves it?
- Who monitors mentions and escalates urgent feedback?
- Who handles public sentiment?
- Who’s taking down the post?
- Which stakeholders should be contacted?
- How to escalate a crisis and to whom?
- When should everything go code red?
Clarify and document every step to ensure no one hesitates when the pressure hits.
Besides the frontline crisis management team, you should have a behind-the-scenes support system that fast-tracks approvals, manages internal communications, and delivers timely instructions. If your team is stretched thin, consider partnering with an executive assistant staffing agency to reinforce your operational capacity and keep everything moving smoothly.
3. Take Control of the Narrative Fast
According to a research paper published by Vosoughi, false news travels 6x faster than the truth. Every second you delay means additional views, comments, and retweets of the wrong post, which inadvertently paints your brand in a bad light.
Once your crisis management and response system detects an issue, swoop in as fast as possible. At most, you should spin into action within half an hour to an hour.
- Take down the post
- Release an apologetic statement
- Engage all comments with a proper apology
- Politely reach out to outlets stirring the fire for a takedown if possible
Eric Do Couto, Head of Marketing at Visualping, believes “this is not the time to call up a board meeting. Schedule that for later. This is also not the time to justify the intent of your post—whether you’re in the wrong or the public just needs something to chew on.”
4. Adjust Tone to Match the Mood
The thing is, you can’t dictate to your audience how they should react. However, you can silently guide their reactions from negative to neutral or, ideally, to positive. And that’s where your social tone comes in.
“When your audience is at the peak of their outrage, don’t go in trying to sound sassy or relatable. You’ll only complicate things more. Nothing is funny right there, even if your previous posts have succeeded with the same tone in the past”, Lacey Jarvis, COO at AAA State of Play, shares.
Instead, adopt a calm, sincere, apologetic, or factual stance.
- Let them know what went wrong
- Then acknowledge your mistakes and the damage caused
- Show you’re working to restore the situation
Jarrod Epps, CEO at CPR Certification Labs, adds that, “your PR team shouldn’t be the one doing the apologies. That’s for your company’s top leadership, maybe even the CEO, since their words carry more weight. But your PR team can review each statement released to ensure they conform, in tone, style, and appropriateness, to the situation at hand.”
5. Pause the Content Calendar and Escalate
This is not the time to release more ads or follow up your campaigns with more tweets. Here’s why:
- There’s a real possibility that other scheduled posts carry the same flaw that caused the backlash
- Releasing new content while the original issue is unresolved can come across as insensitive or out of touch with your audience
So, press the brakes on your marketing wheels. Review everything in your queue. Pause all automated posts, promotions, and scheduled content until you’ve assessed the situation entirely.
If the crisis starts gaining wider attention, escalate. Bring in leadership, legal, or your crisis comms lead. Executive assistants can be invaluable here as they can help coordinate updates, track who’s informed, and keep internal approvals flowing as fast as external reactions.
6. Regain Trust With Transparency
Internal steps usually stay internal. But that’s only on a typical day. When there’s a virality crisis, carry your audience along. Beyond the apology, let them see you’re taking a concrete step. For instance, you can tell them as you:
- Remove the problematic post
- Sanction the individuals or teams responsible
- Introduce a new system for better content review and approval
- Set up a dedicated review team to vet sensitive communications
- Change the internal policy for proactive measures
- Reevaluate recruitment practices if related to a lack of cultural awareness, biased language, or insensitivity
Your statements, not your efforts, will reflect how intentional you are about addressing the issue.
Wrapping up
The best tip? Prevent the wrong post from going viral by establishing a robust content and PR team. However, you can’t be too sure it won’t happen despite all proactive measures. So, implement systems like Agility PR to identify warning signs.
Build real-time response guidelines with instructions on who’s doing what and when. Take control of the narrative as fast as possible—deflect non-sprint meetings till later. Also, adjust the tone of your subsequent posts, including apologies, to match their mood and gradually nudge them positively.
Immediately pause all content, escalate if things get worse, and rebuild trust by transparently communicating what you’re doing to resolve the situation.
