This is a guest contribution by Stephen Padveen, a Senior Partner with t2Marketing International. . You can connect with t2Marketing International at one of their upcoming appearances. If you would like to submit a contribution please contact Bill Beatty for submission details. Thank you.

When it comes to online gaming, players can be sensitive to even the smallest of issues. What’s more, the reality of the industry is such that players can easily move from one operator to another with little inconvenience to their playing experience. So when a potential crisis begins to rear its head, your casino needs to have a proper strategy in place in order to prevent the issue from spiraling out of control and becoming a viral conversation.

The advent of social media in the world of communications has resulted in information travelling at unprecedented speeds. When a problem comes up, it can take as a little as a few minutes to make the rounds before you have a crisis on your hands that threatens the reputation and, in extreme cases, the survival of your brand. Therefore, it is crucial that your business has a comprehensive social media crisis management strategy so that crises can be identified in their infancy and dealt with before they expand.

There are a number of components that will go into a social media crisis management program but there are certain universal elements that every brand should take into consideration when developing policies and best practices.

Start by Listening

This might seem somewhat intuitive, but social listening is far more than simply watching your feeds and streams for comments. In order to effectively listen to online chatter, gaming operators should be using high-level listening tools in order to pay attention to trends, observe volume spikes, monitor sentiment changes and scrutinize comments regarding their brand as well as those of competitors and the industry in general.