Dealing with a Crisis

This past weekend, I attended a social media workshop at Ohio Northern University. There were an abundant number of people who attended including students, faculty and business professionals. We learned a lot about the history of social media, how to use social media for improve a business, how to properly use social media, etc., all from different speakers. As helpful as all the knowledge about social media was, there was one speaker who wasn’t afraid to talk about a more sensitive topic.

Alicia Shoults is a marketing and public relations director for the Ohio State Expo Center and State Fair. She came to speak at the social media workshop around 1:30 p.m. about the 2017 Ohio State Fair crisis. If you don’t know, there was a ride incident last year at the Ohio State Fair that left one dead and several others wounded. The incident was ruled an accident, but either way there was a crisis to be dealt with. Ms. Shoults went through the actions she took that day regarding social media and how she handled the accident via social media. Ms. Shoults knew the importance of addressing the issue as soon as possible on the company’s Twitter and Facebook accounts. Within minutes of getting a call about the incident, Ms. Shoults posted a tweet that read, “There has been a report of a ride incident. We are investigating and will report information as available.”

It is important to be the main resource for followers when there is a crisis that involves your company. Ms. Shoults also explained how important is was to publically show compassion for their guests who were at the fair the day of the incident. The second tweet made regarding the crisis that expressed their sympathy towards those affected by the ride malfunction. Posts to follow were updates on the Ohio State Fair, with information on the hours, activities, refunds, operations, etc. They also provided posts with updates on the rides because after the incident, all rides were shut down for further inspection.

Ms. Shoults then went into the repercussions of the crisis. They went dark on social media platforms, such as Instagram, they refrained from posting “normal” content and they cancelled all scheduled tweets for a couple days following the incident. When the company did decide to continue with social media posting, they stayed away from promotional material regarding all rides at the fair. They instead posted about the food, the farm animals, etc. Ms. Shoults explained how it may take about five years for this tragedy to die down, until then they are taking extra precautions with setting up the fair in the summer of 2018 and have already made up a plan of action on how to go about acknowledging the crisis in 2017.

I found it interesting to learn about how to handle social media in a crisis. Of course, no one wants a crisis to happen, but it’s helpful to know the best ways to handle them via social media if one were to arise. The crisis that arose during the 2017 Ohio State Fair hits close to home because I live around Columbus; it was nice to hear that it was dealt with in the best way possible by the team behind the scenes.