This document summarizes a case study workshop about how to respond to issues that arise on social media. It discusses four cases that university social media managers might encounter and how they responded. One case involves responding to a student Twitter account, @fduproblems, that was used to report issues on campus. The university manager engaged with the anonymous student running the account and found it helped them address real problems while building trust between the university and students.

1. Case
Studies
workshop
What to do
when…?
Initiative of the State Secretariat for Education and Research SER Annex of the Consulate General.
Swiss Knowledge Network with outposts in Boston . San Francisco . Shanghai and Singapore
June 19, 2013

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Agenda
• Introduction to case scenario
• Groups work on response /actions to
be taken
• Discussion
• Case scenario wrap-up

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Technical Note
• Case scenarios are from institutions in the
U.S.
• Divide in groups of 5
• Case scenarios may merit (or not) an
action / response—Your call!
• Be ready to present & explain your decision

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Case 1: Request for more information
Prepare your response (craft the exact tweet
that you would post) & tell us what level of
priority would this have

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Case 1: Request for more information
Group responses

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Case 1: Request for more information
Discussion

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Case 1: Curve ball
Would you
have
continued the
conversation?

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Case 2: Al Gore’s speech @ Stanford

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Case 2: Al Gore’s speech @ Stanford

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Case 2: Al Gore’s speech @ Stanford
What would you do?
Explain your decision

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Case 2: Al Gore’s speech @ Stanford
Groups present

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Case 2: Al Gore’s speech @ Stanford
No action was ever taken by Stanford’s
social media team.
Wise or not?

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Case 2: Al Gore’s speech @ Stanford
It has a pretty comprehensive comment
policy…

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Case 2: Al Gore’s speech @ Stanford
Make sure you have a commenting policy to
fall back on
Fine line between free speech vs. strong
moderation

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Case 3: Mistakes Happen to the Best of Us!
Email sent
to alumni

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Case 3: Mistakes Happen to the Best of Us!

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Case 3: Mistakes Happen to the Best of Us!
Prepare your response (exact tweet/post)
Explain your decision

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Case 3: Mistakes Happen to the Best of Us!

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Case 3: Mistakes Happen to the Best of Us!
Discussion
Was that response too informal? Just right?
How would you have done it in Switzerland?

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Case 4: A real Hassle

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Case 4: A Real Hassle
You don’t know
identify of account
—but it’s a
student
Has
institutionalized
#fduproblems as a
hashtag
Students follow &
use # to complaint
Legitimate
problems are
being reported

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Case 4: A Real Hassle
What do you do?
Discuss & decide course of action

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Case 4: A Real Hassle
Groups present

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Case 4: A Real Hassle
What Farleigh Dickinson did (see last slides for full description)

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Case 4: A real Hassle
Was this choice a good one?
Pros vs. Cons
Isolated incident vs. longer term issue

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Suggestions
Do you have the name & contact info for
everyone in your organization that handles a
social media account?
Have you published commenting policies on
your Facebook page?
Does your staff know what to do in a crisis
(weather, security, etc.)?

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Case 4: A Real Hassle
1. When did @fduproblems pop up? @Fduproblems started in
August/September of 2011.
2. Did you have a twitter account then? We had a Twitter account long
before then, but it was not actively managed for quite some time. I took over
management of the account in the middle of the Fall 2011 semester.
3. Why is your twitter handle @FDUwhatsnew instead of
FairleighDickinsonU? I did not create the account --a colleague of mine in
FDU's public relations office created it and he chose the handle. I believe the
name was chosen because @fdu was taken already and @fairleighdickinsonu
is too long (Twitter limits handles to 15 characters) and @fduwhatsnew is nice
and upbeat.
4. Did you create this handle to basically respond to the issues that were
coming up? Like I said, I did not create the account. My colleague created it
originally to use a media relations tool. That turned out to be rather ineffective
and I eventually came to manage the account. I decided to make it more of a
community engagement tool rather than as a media relations tool. When I took
over management of the account, I quickly noticed @fduproblem's tweets and
began responding to them (just as I responded to other students' complaints
and comments).

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Case 4: A Real Hassle
5. How did you convince management to let you try this out? I am fortunate
to have a very enlightened director. She doesn't have a background in social
media management, but she does have quite a bit of experience in public
relations and she understands how social media can be a useful tool for
community engagement--which is where PR as a discipline is moving towards.
She trusts my abilities and has given me a very long leash with which to
manage FDU's Twitter account.
I don't remember if I ever asked her about engaging with @fduproblems or if I
just saw the situation and went ahead and did what I knew to be right from a
community relations standpoint. Either way, I knew that she would support me in
my endeavor.

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Case 4: A Real Hassle
6. Did you manage this account yourself? Not quite sure that I understand this
question... I manage @fduwhatsnew myself. For the most part, I crafted the official
responses to @fduproblems. Occasionally, the problems were severe enough that
I ran them up the ladder to my director or higher, but usually, the problems were
all fairly simple, garden variety things that I was able to handle.
7. Was the student body aware of your responses? When I started managing
@fduwhatsnew, it only had about 400 followers and @fduproblems had a
somewhat comparable following. We grew fairly linearly together for the first few
months, until @fduwhatsnew's growth began to quicken and far outpaced
@fduproblems' (today, @fduwhatsnew has roughly double the number of followers
as @fduproblems).
Because @fduproblems was such a popular account, the student body couldn't
help but be aware of my responses to @fduproblems. This is partly because
@fduproblems often retweeted my tweets when I helped them and also because
@fduproblems was more than just a single rogue account --it was a community.
The individual behind the account popularized the #fduproblems hashtag and
students used the tag just as much as they tweeted to @fduproblems. I monitored
the chatter revolving around both @fduproblems and #fduproblems and reached
out to students whenever possible and appropriate.

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Case 4: A Real Hassle
8. Would you say that @fduproblems is somewhat under "control'? It was
a wild ride at first, but I did gain the trust of the founder of @fduproblems and
we developed a working relationship built on mutual respect--I solved problems
whenever possible and didn't treat @fduproblems as a problem student, but as
an opportunity to demonstrate excellent customer service. @Fduproblems
reciprocated by helping me spread messages during emergencies and also
alerted me to other FDU parody accounts. @Fduproblems will never be fully
under "control" since the account changes hands every year and each year I
have to build a relationship with a new anonymous tweeter (see below).
9. Did you ever find out the identity of the account holder? I have not. The
founder graduated and passed the torch on to a second anonymous student.
That second student has just graduated and I suspect I will have a new
@fduproblems student to deal with in the fall.
10. It seems he/she's graduating? Will u miss him/her? Did you feel you
learned more things because of him/her activity? @Fduproblems never
dies; she just changes, so I won't get a chance to miss her. I have learned a lot
about customer service and crisis management from working with
@fduproblems.