👀Brandwatch: Sainsbury’s explains Black History Month to racists on Twitter

⏳ 5 minute read.

I love you Sainsbury’s for shutting down the racists and having a clear strategy for dealing with the negative engagement. The Social Media Managers had a tough job over the weekend but luckily, they were armed with proactive responses. It was refreshing to see an organisation stand by its message and ‘clap back’ to racists.

Below is the tweet which caused the uproar:

Here are just some of the ignorant comments the
Social Media Managers were up against:

Sainsbury’s engagement strategy involved:

• Tackling negative engagement head instead of the usual approach of ignoring trolls. This further strengthened their anti-racism stance.
• Using a calm and composed neutral tone of voice.
• Educating unhappy users through easy-to-understand tweets.

Sainsbury’s clearly had a strategy for negative engagement and armed their social media team with well thought out responses. I was thoroughly impressed with this proactive approach.

Here are some of the well articulated responses:

It clearly worked as Chris and Fraser, the designated Social Media Managers, gained a new found respect over the weekend.
Here’s some love from the supporters.

Self-policing

When a thread takes a controversial turn, I have always found users will self-police and shut down the negativity. This is why community engagement is imperative for any social media strategy to be successful.

Here are some of the top followers fighting the good fight:

You get the idea.

Meanwhile, over on Facebook:

Chris 👏shut👏 it👏 down.