The AV Marketer

One morning you get to work and notice you've gotten a lot more notifications than usual. And they're still coming in. They’re coming in emails and in alerts from social media—which is your responsibility since your employer thought it would be an easy side task.

You panic. You have not been trained for this and have not even considered the possibility. You don’t have a day-to-day strategy let alone a crisis management plan.

Like a tree crashing in the forest, if your product drops and no one shares it on social media, it’s like it never happened. You may get some sales through standard means, but to really count now, you need a strong social media presence.

In the early days of my social media career, I worked with smaller clients who were worried and reluctant. They knew they wanted to be seen and heard in the big, wide world of the web, but even though they hired a professional to navigate, they still feared it would swallow them whole. They worried they would be exposed to the competition. They were concerned about how they would manage their reputations. Mostly, though, they were afraid of making mistakes. I learned to assure them that they would certainly make blunders and bloopers. Then I assured them there are ways to mitigate them. Sometimes you even come out better than had you avoided a mess in the first place.