PEOPLE’S PERCEPTION ON THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN MANAGING BRAND REPUTATION IN CRISIS

1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Portraying a positive image and maintaining a good reputation is arguably an important part of long term planning in every organization. By managing a crisis effectively and efficiently, the positive perceptions of stakeholders and the public are vital to an organization. An important strategy in managing a crisis is the use of various types of social media in order to communicate with the public to convey current information about an issue or crisis in the fastest and easiest way while building and maintaining the trust of and relationships with the stakeholders. Due to the emergence of social media consumers are increasingly taking an active role in the co-creation of marketing content and their sharing of experiences about companies, their brands and their corresponding products and services. Text messages, tweets, Facebook protest sites, blogs and digital videos enable individuals to create, share and recommend information (Gaines-Ross, 2010). Social media enables firms to engage in a dynamic two-way communication with the customer. However, companies adopting social media as a means of communicating and information exchange must accept that they are losing a part of their control to the consumer (O’Brien, 2011)