The Juice Academy Guest Speaker: Max Sparrow from BetFred

Recently, The Juice Academy played host to a very interesting guest speaker during Cohort 2’s latest session, Max Sparrow.

Not to be confused with the pirate Jack Sparrow, Max is the Social Media Manager at BetFred. This includes a variety of different aspects including; creating content for a wide range of social media platforms, developing campaigns and, of course, crisis management.

As I am sure you are already aware, crisis management is a necessity when it comes to Social Media, as it allows you to be prepared for any situation that may occur, no matter what the size of the crisis.

In severe events, Max explained the importance of having a set procedure for these situations to make everything run smoothly. Within minutes of an event, the CRM Manager and Social Media Manager are contacted by the IT Team and immediately a conference call is arranged, allowing the team to draft a response which will then be sent out on all social channels.

In summary of Max’s explanation of crisis management the key points are to always:

Have a set procedure for every circumstance, no matter how impossible it may seem

Send out the key message to your followers/fans explaining the situation

Do not panic

Prioritise response and keep everyone updated

After Max had covered everything we needed to know regarding crisis management, he introduced us to a new term, ‘Bashtags’. These are when hashtags go wrong, which then can be used to post critical or abusive content aimed towards an individual or brand.

He explained how when you are creating a new hashtag for a social campaign, to always think of what problems may occur from using the hashtag. This is because no matter how small the problem may seem at the time, it may lead to damaging the brand’s reputation as well as creating negative publicity.

Finally on behalf of The Juice Academy and Cohort 2, I would just like to say thank you to Max for a great session as we learnt a lot. It was very insightful and taught us not only the importance of having a crisis management procedure, it also taught us that whenever we are thinking of using hashtags for a campaign, always think of what could go wrong with it.

By Connor Jones, Apprentice Social Media Account Exec at BJL