Social Media Crisis Management Checklist

The comms lead verifies primary and backup contacts for: comms lead, legal counsel, social manager, customer support lead, executive sponsor. Stale rotations are the most common reason a crisis stalls in the first hour — confirm phone numbers, not just Slack handles.

Pull the pre-approved holding statements for product issue, employee conduct, executive misstep, and customer harm scenarios. Confirm legal still approves the standing language; outdated entity names and brand taglines are common gotchas.

Confirm Brandwatch, Sprout Social, or Talkwalker queries cover the brand handle, executive names, product names, and common misspellings. Spike-detection thresholds should match your normal baseline mention volume — too tight produces false alarms, too loose misses the actual crisis.

Record the originating URL, author handle, follower count, post timestamp, and current engagement count. Take dated screenshots — original posts get deleted and you need the receipt for the post-mortem and any legal action.

Before issuing any public response, check the underlying facts with the relevant internal team — product, support, HR, or legal. A holding statement that contradicts what actually happened becomes its own crisis.

Compare current mention volume against a 30-day baseline in your listening tool. A 3x spike on one platform with neutral sentiment is different from a 10x spike across platforms with negative sentiment — the second is a real crisis, the first may be organic discussion.

Tier 1 (severe) covers customer harm, legal exposure, executive misconduct, or active media coverage. Tier 2 (moderate) covers product complaints with viral momentum or coordinated negative campaigns. Tier 3 (contained) covers isolated complaints and routine negative feedback.

For Tier 1 events, the executive sponsor and outside counsel join the response call before any public statement. Document the briefing time and attendees — regulators and plaintiffs' attorneys may later ask when leadership was informed.

Acknowledge the situation, express what the brand cares about, commit to a follow-up window. Do not assign blame, speculate on cause, or promise specific remedies before facts are confirmed. Keep under 280 characters for X; longer versions for LinkedIn and the dark site.

Capture the timestamped approval in writing — Slack DMs aren't documentation. Legal reviews for liability and regulatory exposure (FTC for advertising claims, SEC Reg FD if material to investors); comms reviews for tone and brand voice.

Apply the requested revisions and route back through legal for a second sign-off. Track changes against the original draft so reviewers can see what moved.

In Sprout, Hootsuite, or your scheduler, pause every queued post across every channel — including dark posts and ad creative on Meta and LinkedIn Campaign Manager. A cheerful brand tweet landing during a crisis is the screenshot that goes viral next.

Post simultaneously across X, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram with platform-appropriate formatting. Update the dark site or status page in the same window so reporters reaching the homepage land on the official account.

Prioritize mentions from accounts with 10K+ followers, verified journalists, and customers reporting direct harm. Use the approved talking points — never freelance. Move sensitive conversations to DM or email, but post a public acknowledgment first.

Send the talking points and FAQ to support, sales, and account management leads. Include the escalation path for any inbound that goes beyond the script — those need to come back to comms, not get answered ad-hoc.

Log mention volume, net sentiment, and share of voice each hour into the crisis tracker. The trend curve — not the absolute number — drives decisions about whether to escalate response or stand down.

Once facts are confirmed, replace the holding statement with a substantive update: what happened, what's being done, who is affected, and how to get help. The window the original holding statement promised must be honored — missing it is the second crisis.

Build a single document with timestamps for: inciting post, internal detection, executive briefing, statement approval, publish time, follow-up. Pull approval timestamps from the data settings on this run so the record is auditable.

Export the seven-day window from Brandwatch or Sprout: total mention volume, sentiment breakdown, top voices, share-of-voice change, and earned media pickups. Compare against the pre-crisis baseline to quantify residual brand impact.

Blameless format — what worked, what didn't, what to change. Cover detection lag, approval bottlenecks, message effectiveness, and channel coverage. Capture concrete playbook changes, not vague resolutions.

Apply the post-mortem action items to the standing playbook: holding statement templates, escalation triggers, listening queries, on-call rotation. Versioning matters — the next crisis owner needs to know which playbook is current.

Distribute to the crisis squad, executive sponsor, legal, and customer-facing leads. Keep specifics out of any wider distribution if pending litigation or regulatory review is plausible — coordinate that scope with legal counsel.