9 social media crisis questions Dole failed to answer

Apparently, it was a fairly small matter involving about 750 cases of a particular Dole bagged salad product that could pose a salmonella threat.

At the office I went online to see what Dole was doing. Surely, I thought, it would handle this with confidence.

After all, it is the world’s largest producer and marketer of fruit and fresh vegetables, does business in more than 90 countries, and employs some 36,000 full-time, regular employees worldwide—not to mention 23,000 full-time seasonal or temporary employees (according to its LinkedIn page).

Boy, was I wrong.

After spending some time dissecting just how poorly Dole was handling this, I came away with lessons to share.

(By the way, this post is not meant to be overtly negative toward Dole. I’m a customer of the company; I like its products and will continue to support it. However, this particular “crisis” demonstrates that even a monolithic enterprise like Dole can fall short in addressing a crisis effectively using social media.)