#041 Social Due Diligence

Social media is a tool in your toolbox.

How does social media play into the role of mergers and acquisitions within an organization? Beth is joined by Liv Myers, a Customer Success Specialist for Chatterkick, to give you all of the answers you may need.

Social media is a tool in your toolbox that you can use to your advantage. It gives you a chance to respond to your consumers in an authentic way that feels right both internally and externally. Creating a checklist to keep ahead of what people are posting and sharing on all of the social platforms is extremely helpful in these situations.

Biggest Takeaways From This Episode

Here are our biggest takeaways from this episode:

• You have to respond to what people are saying and sharing in a way that feels good both internally as well as externally.

• Your employees may be going to your social accounts for updates, more so than your customers or prospects.

• You need to involve your marketing team in these decisions as they know your brand’s voices.

• Don’t be afraid to hide comments that don’t align with your brand.

• Create a checklist to keep ahead of what people are saying on social.

CREATING AUTHENTIC RESPONSES

There are some canned responses that people will call you out for being inauthentic. As a CEO, you will want to be available for your team if they have any questions about how to respond to comments. You could also work together to create a language that is friendly, professional and consistent.

Want your question to be answered on the generation social media podcast? Tell us what it is here!

Transcript

This text below is a straight up audio transcript of the episode. In our humble opinion, we think the audio podcast sounds much better in its original form. We have not edited the transcription below so there are indeed some grammar errors (some quite funny, in-fact).

Intro (00:02):

You don't have to be a millennial to be socially savvy. We believe anyone can join Generation Social Media, and your journey starts now. This is the Generation Social Media podcast by Chatterkick.

Beth Trejo (00:19):

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Generation Social Media. Today I have a special guest, um, Liv Myers here at Chatterkick, and we are gonna talk about social media and how it plays into the role of mergers and acquisitions within an organization. Um, we're calling it social due diligence, and I'm so excited to have Liv here today. She has been part of this, um, with our clients and also has a Masters, um, in, um, communications and organizational leadership. Leadership. Okay, great. Um, so welcome Liv to the podcast.

Liv Myers (00:52):

Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited to talk about this. Uh, it's been kind of top of mind for some of our clients lately.

Beth Trejo (00:57):

Yeah, I think the merger and acquisition landscape is just definitely sped up in the last couple of years, and most people don't think of social media as a tool in the toolbox. They're thinking, Okay, I gotta get a press release out. What, what's day one gonna look like? How am I gonna communicate internally and externally? But what they really miss is the fact that these social media channels are, they're on, they're hot, they're live, and oftentimes you may not communicate with your marketing department until the deal's almost ready, It's done. And so there may not be enough time or even the right access for, um, making up lost time. So let's just start out by, um, just talking a little bit about what you are seeing with clients, or even just with your experiences in terms of how social media fits into the larger landscape of internal and external communication. What

Liv Myers (01:48):

I've seen in the past is that social, like you said, it's kind of that last piece that falls into the puzzle. And generally what people are doing is they're putting out the, the social tile, uh, or the announcement at the same time that the press release goes out, or sometimes in lieu of the press release entirely. And they do use their social channels specifically to make that announcement. Um, you know, with that being said, I think that there's an opportunity for savvy marketers to flex those pr uh, muscles a little bit and let, um, the news organizations actually scoop that a little bit. Yeah. And then you can work in tandem with them and, you know, whenever that news release goes out, you could share it onto your social channels, or like I said, you could really lead the charge and, and own that message, uh, yourself.

Liv Myers (02:35):

But there is an opportunity to get a little free press and, uh, free advertising if you will, out there. Um, and just increased exposure with those new news outlets that you have. Um, so, you know, I, I think that really you should be working in tandem, uh, with the, the news outlets to determine, you know, specific day and time that those announcements are going to go out. But, um, absolutely do not do that until you tell your internal team. Right. I think that that is a huge, um, mis misstep that some companies take, is that they'll send an email out at 8:00 AM saying, Hey, we're going to have this huge, uh, merger and acquisition, and then at noon the press release goes out. And, you know, your team doesn't have that time to digest that, to ask the important questions that they need to ask. And so really bringing in your internal team a little bit before that announcement goes out is super crucial.

Beth Trejo (03:33):

Yeah. I think people don't realize that these social media channels are being, especially when there's a big like shift, whether that's you're getting acquired, you're merging, um, you know, there's some element of change that happens, your employees are gonna be looking at those channels probably even more so than your customers and your prospects. And so it's one of those kind of things that we wanna bring into CEOs landscapes, especially as they're thinking about this because they need to make sure that the way that they want that communicated feels good both internally as well as externally. Um, what do you think some of the biggest, like missteps that these companies are making?

Liv Myers (04:12):

You know, one of the, the big things whenever it comes to merger and acquisition announcements and, and talking internally to teams, like I said, not giving your teams the time to, to process that information, to ask those questions, um, not involving the internal marketing team on those decisions. I think that, um, you know, to, to your point, they, they know your brand and they should be crafting that message with the brand in mind, um, internally and externally. Um, I think where the internal marketing team comes into to play too is that first they are employees and they are probably gonna ask you some questions that you have not thought about and you have not addressed. And I don't think that whenever you make that announcement, you need to have everything figured out for your business, right? Yeah. At that time. But you need to address what you don't know and you need to say, We don't know that yet mm-hmm. <affirmative> and we're going to continue operations unless otherwise, um, you know, told, told not to in our regular fashion. Um, and so I think that it just comes back to not including some of those other employee voices. Now with that being said, you need to control who has this information first. So it should really be people that you trust, um, to, to bring into the, into the fold. And it should probably be later on down whenever you know that things are gonna be signed, Right.

Beth Trejo (05:33):

<laugh>, you're close to signing that deal. It's, there's a lot that can happen in that last leg. So,

Liv Myers (05:37):

Yeah, absolutely. So, and then, you know, on top of that, once the release goes out, I, you know, I see a lot of companies, Okay,

Beth Trejo (05:45):

We're done. We're done. Yeah,

Liv Myers (05:46):

We've announced it and we can move on. And that's it. And uh, no, that's really when like, you're kind of in the middle of it, honestly, I don't wanna say the work begins there, but you're actually in, in the middle of it and now you've expressed it to the world and now the world's gonna have questions, right? Uh, clients, you know, partners maybe that you're working with as well. And so you should have, um, you should be addressing that on social media because if they aren't emailing you, if they aren't picking up the phone to call you, they're going to the social channels, right? To talk to you about that. And so it really falls into social listening and listening to that chatter and having a moderation and response plan as well.

Beth Trejo (06:23):

Yeah, I think that's so critical because that's the thing with social, right? It's a two-way street and there's going to be questions that come up. And if it's your biggest customer that happen to get on LinkedIn and now they're asking a question on that post, like, what does your marketing team have to say about that? And those are hard questions that they may not feel suitable answering unless you have a great process and operations system put in place to say, Okay, this is how we're gonna say it. We're not gonna just throw some copy and pasted response up there. That doesn't work. Lawyers speak, no offense to any attorneys out there. It just doesn't work on social, It doesn't feel real, it doesn't feel genuine, and then it backlashes, right?

Liv Myers (07:01):

Yeah. Yeah. I think, um, you know, there are some canned responses that people have out there and they feel really inauthentic and people will call you out. Yes. For them. Um, I, I think on LinkedIn specifically, you can get away with it a little bit more cuz it is a little bit more professional setting. But, um, yeah, really having that communication, I would say for business leaders, you should be available to your marketing team, especially in those first few weeks if they are calling you to ask you a question, How do I need to reply to this? Like, you should have, you should be prepared to answer that and not just be like, Oh, I'll deal with that later. I mean, it's, it's super important to control that message, especially in those first few weeks.

Beth Trejo (07:45):

Yeah. And I also think like it's really important for leadership to understand the pulse of how maybe dramatic this sort of like merger acquisition scenario is, is there gonna be layoff? Like if you know that there's some really hard conversations that you're gonna have to make, um, you may wanna approach things a little bit more strategic in those instances as opposed to maybe something that feels very synergized with two companies, everybody's gonna work out well. Like your overall, like the experience is gonna be positive. I think you kind of have to get an idea of what that's gonna appear like online.

Liv Myers (08:21):

Absolutely. I think that people will read through, uh, you know, any BS that you're putting out there and that's, that's gonna be the first question that every employee has and that you should be thinking about to address, is they want to know how does this impact me, right? How does this impact my job? Um, you know, will I be laid off? Will I be under a new manager now? You know, will I be in a completely different job? Um, those are all questions that you should at least have something of an answer to. And it's not, well, we're gonna figure that out later. It's, you know, we're, we're looking at how to best combine our talents and there might be some, some shifts in the organization, right? And we might not know those fully for a few months, but, um, you know, we are expecting X amount of layoffs or we are expecting, you know, to keep our entire team. I think that those are important things to, to get out there fairly early on in that conversation.

Beth Trejo (09:19):

Yeah, and I think the companies that I've seen do this really well. One, I really feel like the leadership team is intentional and cares about this stuff, and they have a plan, and the plans don't always go exactly as one would think, but um, the fact that they have a plan and that that communication strategy is really well thought out and there's being small tweaks of verbiage and words, it does matter and it matters to your employees and it matters to your customers. Um, but I wanted to go back really quick to one thing you mentioned because I think a lot of CEOs are thinking, Well, how can I control the messages that my employees are writing, right? Because that's the wildfire that you can't control. There's really no like, use to actually stop that. But you mentioned social listening. How can brands and businesses, if they're going through one of these transitions, really leverage social listening so that they at least they have a pulse on what's going on? I,

Liv Myers (10:12):

You know, at the bare minimum, you should be checking everything that your organization is being tagged on. Um, you should be setting up Google alerts, uh, hopefully you already have these things. <laugh> it should be easy, but if you don't, um, like you, it should be part of your checklist. You know, do we have Google alerts for any time that our brand is mentioned? Do we have, uh, a pulse on LinkedIn, on Facebook, on Twitter, everywhere that these outlets, TikTok even that people are going to go to? Right? Um, and, and then what is your plan? You know, is it to respond to them directly on their post? Because you know, what you hope to see are the people that are like, I'm super excited for this major, right? Um, can't wait to expand our horizons and opportunities and, you know, provide better work for our clients.

Liv Myers (11:00):

But what you might have are people that are, Oh my gosh, I can't believe this, right? And they're gonna fire us all and just panic. And um, one, it's, it's taking a step back and having that empathy. And again, like, do you address it? You should address it on the post itself, even if it's just saying, Hey Joe, um, you know, we hear your concerns. Let's talk about this in the office tomorrow. Right? Um, you should at the bare minimum be making that statement and then that's a separate conversation with Joe in the office tomorrow, but you don't need to air all of your dirty laundry for the world to see. Um, and then it's even on, you know, on the social, if they are commenting on your social post itself, um, of your announcement or anything else that you have. Uh, after that, um, you know, we kind of, whenever we are moderating for our clients, it's our people being trolley, and if they, they are being trolley, then like you can hide or delete that comment and you don't be afraid to do that and then address it with the person later, right?

Liv Myers (11:59):

It's not just, uh, this existed in the digital space and it's fine. It's, it's very much combining the physical and the, the human connection in the digital world, if you will. <laugh>.

Beth Trejo (12:10):

Yes, exactly. Sounds familiar. Yes.

Liv Myers (12:12):

<laugh>,

Beth Trejo (12:14):

Um, what, what about tagging? Because I think sometimes people read a bad comment online about maybe a merger and acquisition that is taking place, but that one comment takes all their emotional space, so they say everybody's commenting about this. Um, is there a way that you can like tag this information so you can see holistically the positive versus negative and the neutral sentiments? Yeah,

Liv Myers (12:34):

Absolutely. We can definitely do that. Um, at least with the tools that we have on Sprout and, and we can provide trends. Um, you know, we've done this for clients in the past that have said, you know, we are going through an m and a and I wanna know the general sentiment out there and, um, we can tag incoming messages, we can tag even messages that are just maybe not employees, right? But other people in the industry talking about it. And, um, get a, a positive and sentiment trend report to show you. And even over time we can show you, you know, maybe it was really positive to begin with, but then maybe as more details are emerging, people are getting frustrated with this. And what I love about it is that it gives you real time data, right? To do actionable items to address these things. And if you start to see an increase in the these negative comments, what are they saying? Why are they saying it? Why now, why not before, right? And what should we be putting out there? How should we be addressing this at that, at that time? So I would say, you know, you're, you're gonna wanna monitor this. It's like I said, it's not just shove it out, okay, we've announced it. It's, it's a whole monitoring of it to make sure that you are controlling the narrative to some degree,

Beth Trejo (13:47):

Right? And I think this is just a perfect example of why CEOs and leadership teams do need to understand the tools that they have available. And that's why this stuff matters is because you can look from a top down level to say, what are our trends? How are people responding? How are they, um, how is that changing over time? Just like you mentioned. So I think this is amazing insight for so many of our business leaders. Um, hopefully that our listeners get some, um, information today too. So thank you very much Liv for coming on, um, Generation Social Media today and we look forward to our next episode.

Liv Myers (14:22):

Thanks so much for having me.

Outro (14:24):

That's it for this episode of Generation Social Media podcast. If you had an aha moment or just a haha moment, I would be so grateful if you leave a review with the moment you loved most. If you have a question you'd like us to answer on the next episode, fill out the form on generationsocialmediapodcast.com.

inspiration, BusinessChatterkickOctober 12, 2022internal team, DEI, Podcast