Social Media Ethics Guide for Madison Square Garden

Cancel culture is real!

Ask any brand or social media manager, and I guarantee they will tell you that their worst nightmare is to be canceled.

Social media is an excellent way for brands to connect with their target audience and build a relationship.

But, one wrong move, and you are CANCELED.

Yep, the simplest thing can cause your brand to be canceled and, even worse, create a social media crisis.

Don’t worry, though. There are ways to avoid being canceled and causing a social media crisis situation.

It’s simple. Just follow your brand’s ethics guide to prevent these types of mistakes.

Don’t have a social media ethics guide for your brand yet? No fret.

It’s relatively easy to create, but don’t hesitate. They are essential to avoid social media crises, no matter the size of your business.

Need a reference?

Here’s a social media ethics guide for Madison Square Garden:

Preamble

Madison Square Garden Entertainment Corporation is an entertainment company with a collection of multiple iconic venues: New York’s Madison Square Garden, Hulu Theater at Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall and Beacon Theatre, and The Chicago Theatre.

MSG Entertainment produces, presents, and hosts a variety of unforgettable live entertainment and sports events in its venues. The live events consist of a broad array of compelling concerts, comedy shows, family shows, special events. The sporting events include professional boxing, professional bull riding, college basketball, esports, and mixed martial arts.

Intended Use Of Social Media: Madison Square Garden will use social media as an opportunity to engage, connect, market, and provide customer service to its target audience.

The following code is intended to promote the MSG Entertainment brand’s highest quality and ensure confidence in our consumers on social media.

Code of Ethics

Social media managers and those who manage the social media channels are accountable for upholding the following standards in their daily work:

1. Know and understand the MSG audience by creating content that is relative to their wants and needs.
2. Be accurate and inclusive in content.
3. Be sure to utilize MSG’s brand voice, tone, and personality in all of the copy and captions.
4. Refrain from being biased in copy by staying away from controversial topics, negative political opinions, religious issues, cultural bias conversations, and ethnic discussions.
5. Be complete and provide connection when posting photos, graphics, or videos of consumers. This includes avoiding stereotyping individuals and groups.
6. Be transparent with content by clearly sharing MSG’s relationship with artists, brands, and events.
7. Be honest with the audience by sharing MSG’s interests and staying true to our brand.
8. When using user-generated content, be sure to notify the users and get their approval before posting their content on MSG’s social media platforms.
9. Never jeopardize privacy via social media. Be sure to redirect all personal issues to private messaging or email.
10. Never share any consumer data such as name, email address, phone number, ticket information, and date of birth.
11. Be respectful to the consumer’s decision to share their private personal information or not through social media messaging. Advise these consumers to contact MSG directly via email or phone to share confidential information.
12. Never mislead or manipulate content to increase revenue or generate leads.

Social Media Crisis Management

• All consumers’ concerns shall be answered in a timely manner within 24–48 hours.
• Be sure to respond to crisis-related comments publicly, recognize the problem, and redirect them to a private setting by mentioning we sent a direct message to them in the response.
• Direct message them as soon as possible, assessing the issue and presenting a solution.
• Refer to the MSG internal alert and response flowchart before responding to a crisis to ensure it is being appropriately addressed by the appropriate responder. This will help to avoid any misunderstandings and ensure that a proper solution has been provided.

(CoSchedule, 2021)

Response Protocol: Negative Language Guidance

Comments MSG does not interact with:

• Anything with a negative tone, but especially:
• Discriminatory comments
• Threats
• Trolls
• Objectification of fans/artists/UGC

Things MSG does not say:

• Biased phrases
• Comparisons of artists or genres
• Anything that diminishes a particular group of fans
• Words that objectify artists or players
• Suggesting that you have to be in a particular economic class to attend events.

Ways To Avoid Social Media Crisis Situations

• Participate in social listening by using tools to monitor what consumers and MSG’s target audience is saying about the brand. It allows us to track our sentiment in real-time, so we know right away if there is a notable change. We can then analyze the information to understand its consumers better, identify the source of the change, and come up with strategies to avoid it in the future.

(Business Wire, 2021)

• Be able to decipher between minor and crises situations. For example, a mean or negative post about MSG is not a crisis. A crisis should be identified as a crucial change from the standard and something that could potentially affect the company.

(Shift Communications, 2021)

With this in mind, I hope you are doing all you can to avoid being canceled by sticking to your brand’s ethical guide. If not, you better get to it.

Happy Avoiding!