A social media incident is anything that can hurt the brand faster than your normal approval flow can react: a wrong post, a hacked account, a pile-on, a safety complaint going viral. The fix is a plan with four parts: severity levels, a named on-call pair, a 60 minute clock and pre-approved holding statements. Write them once, before you need them.
TLDR: Rate every incident S1 to S3, page a named on-call pair, post a holding statement inside 60 minutes for S1, and keep a log. Pre-approved wording is what turns a two hour scramble into a ten minute reply.
Rate the incident in two minutes with three severity levels
Most teams lose the first hour arguing about how bad it is. A fixed scale ends that argument. Rate by reach and harm, not by how loud the comments feel.
| Level | What it looks like | Who is paged | Public reply within |
|---|---|---|---|
| S1 | Legal, safety or security issue, hacked account, a post that is wrong or offensive, coverage by press | On-call lead, approver, legal or comms head | 60 minutes |
| S2 | Fast growing complaint thread, influencer criticism, a broken promo or link | On-call lead and approver | 4 hours |
| S3 | A few angry comments, one bad review, a mistake only a handful saw | Community manager | Same working day |
If two people rate the same incident differently, take the higher level. Downgrade later, not earlier.
Name an on-call pair and publish the rota
An incident plan with no names is a poster on a wall. Every week, two people are named: a community lead who triages and drafts, and an approver who can say yes to publishing without a meeting. Each has a named backup.
- Put the rota in one shared place, with phone numbers and time zones.
- Agree what "on call" means: reachable by phone, able to open a laptop within 30 minutes.
- For global brands, hand over by region so someone is always in daylight.
If your team spans many brands or markets, give each brand its own approver. A regional manager should not wait for headquarters to approve a one line holding statement.
Run the first hour on a fixed clock
The same five moves, in the same order, every time.
- Minute 0 to 10: confirm and contain. Screenshot the post or thread. Pause scheduled content on the affected brand so nothing cheerful goes out into the storm. Secure the account if it looks like a compromise.
- Minute 10 to 20: rate and page. Assign a level and page the people in the table.
- Minute 20 to 40: draft. Start from a holding statement, add only facts you have confirmed.
- Minute 40 to 60: approve and post. The approver signs off in the same thread where the draft lives.
- After the post: monitor and log. Check replies every 30 minutes and write the timeline as it happens.
Pausing the queue is the move people forget. Mydrop's content calendar shows every scheduled post across brands, so one person can hold what is queued while another writes the reply.
Keep three holding statements ready, with blanks to fill
A holding statement buys time without promising facts. Keep one for each situation and have legal approve the wording ahead of time.
- We are looking into it: "We are aware of [issue] and are looking into it. We will share an update by [time]."
- We made a mistake: "We got this wrong. [One sentence on what]. We have [removed or fixed it] and [next step]."
- We are being impersonated or hacked: "Our account was accessed without permission. Please ignore posts from [time] to [time]. We have secured it and will update here."
Do not argue, do not blame the audience, and do not delete criticism you are going to answer. If a comment breaks your rules, hide it and keep a screenshot.
Make the approver reachable without a meeting
The slowest step in most incidents is approval, not writing. Use a tool where the draft, the comments and the approval live in one place. Approval workflows in Mydrop let the approver sign off from a link, and the social inbox keeps the incoming comments next to the draft reply, so nobody copies text between chat apps.
Hold a 30 minute review within 48 hours
When the incident is closed, answer four questions in writing: what happened, what we did and when, what slowed us down, what we change. Update the rota, the table or the statements the same day.
Next step: this week, write the severity table for your brand, name the next two on-call people and get one holding statement approved by legal. That is an hour of work and it covers most of the risk.
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