Worksheet #5: Social Media Crisis Management Plan

Let’s say a crisis broke out regarding a new 18-year-old freshman on the NC A&T Football Team. We’ll name him John Doe, and he is an out-of-state student who received a full-ride scholarship. During the welcome week, John overheard a couple of his classmates mention a party happening later that night in his residence hall. John wants to go but knows that he has practice starting at 8:00A.M. the next morning as well as the team’s group and individual photoshoot. John decides to attend the party within the residence hall wearing his football apparel where he consumes alcohol & marijuana and is recorded and posted by a friend on their public social media page. John makes it home to wake up for practice the next morning, when he sees recordings of him posted on various social media pages from the following night. As he is part of the NC A&T Football Team, this would be a great disservice to the team’s image as John has been reporting consuming drugs and partaking in underage drinking while representing the team. These actions would not just hurt John’s reputation, but the teams, and the University because John was chosen by the Football Coaching Staff to attend and represent the school.

In the events of this specific situation, as the teams Public Relations Specialist it would be my job to handle this social media Crisis quickly before any mainstream media sources exploit the video. It’s important that firstly John receives repercussions for his actions as they were reckless, attending an unauthorized party on university grounds, underage drinking, and illegal drug use. It’ll be likely that he will be suspended from the team and lose his scholarship. It would be my job to make sure the video is removed from all social media platforms. I would also advise the Head Coach of the team to make a public statement addressing the issue, ensuring that the team and its players work hard and do not condone underage drinking or illegal drug use.

To do this, I’d use the NCAT Football Instagram and Twitter pages as they are regularly used to post all sports and academic updates. I’d also post follow-up content, using the current players in a social media campaign to address the issue of underage drinking and illegal drug use. The campaign would consist of the following post: 1) The starting football players take a stand against teenage drinking by posting #stopteenagedrinking. This post would consist of tags, recommending fellow players to join the cause. 2) ‘Talk It Out NC’ an underage drinking prevention group could sponsor the team’s social media during one of our Saturday night games. 3) The team’s social media page can make a post listing the dangers of marijuana and how it negatively affects the growing brain of young athletes wishing to pursue a professional career. 4) Athletes can make their own post, illustrating a “Throwback” to the American education program D.A.R.E program from the early 2000’s. 5) Finally, the NCAT Football team can challenge their fellow sports team to join them in taking a stand against teen drinking by nominating them to partake in the infamous “Ice bucket challenge”. Players can dump cold ice water on their head coach while dedicating the cause to #StopTeenageDrinking.