Crisis Communications 101

Effective communication

during a crisis can make

the different between

quickly resolving the

situation and it becoming

a nightmare.

These 12 major principles

will help you take charge

of the next crisis.

1. Designate a single point of contact for the press, but have a backup.

Set up both an email

address and a phone

number, both of which

should be manned just

about 24/7.

Be sure to have at least

one backup point of

contact.

2. The CEO/President isn't usually the right person to be the spokesperson.

Reserve them for press

contact when a critical

message needs to be

conveyed, a more

authoritative presence is

needed, or there is

controversy.

The most serious of

situations still call for the

CEO to speak from the

start.

3. Appoint a crisis leader with a backup.

Your crisis leader needs to

be versatile.

The crisis leader needs to

be appointed ahead of

time, not in the heat of

the crisis.

4. Have a crisis communication plan.

Cover all the bases,

including media, social

media, employees and

stakeholders.

Jonathan Bernstein’s “Five

Tenets of Crisis

Communications”:

prompt, compassionate,

honest, informative and

interactive.

5. Practice your crisis communication plan.

Go over each person’s

crisis role and work

through various crisis

simulations.

Using an online virtual

command center (incident

management software),

you can create pre-defined

scenarios that can be used

during practice runs.

6. Have tools in place to monitor the news media and social media.

TweetDeck and HootSuite

are great tools—free and

paid versions.

Enterprise tools include

Radian6 and Sysomos.

7. Have a central place where employees can go for the latest information.

This could be

on your

intranet or a

hotline.

A confused and

possibly

frightened

workforce isn’t

capable of

putting in the

effort needed to

rise above crisis.

8. Be forthcoming. Don’t lie or spin the truth.

If there is blame, admit it

and share what you will do

to fix the problem and

how you will make sure it

doesn’t happen again.

Follow through and

actually take the actions

you promised.

9. Have emergency boilerplate language for the early moments of the crisis.

Today’s public calls for

near-immediate reporting

on just about anything.

Prepare holding statements

for the media, such as: “We

are investing all available

resources in uncovering

what happened and will

share more information with

you as it becomes available.”

10. Have counter-measures ready if you need to respond to wide-spread rumors.

It’s very likely that

damaging rumors will

start on social media.

Start before a crisis ever

hits by getting involved in

social media and building

an audience.

Ask followers to help

spread the truth and refer

people to your

organization’s webpage.

11. Social media needs its own crisis communication plan.

You can’t apply the same

rules to social media crisis

communications as you

can traditional media

outlets and expect it to

work.

Don’t forget to include in

your crisis simulations

hurdles like enraged fans

or pages flooded with

comments.

12. Prepare for the unexpected.

Craft specific plans for

foreseeable types of

crises, as well as generic

plans for broad categories

of unpredictable crises.

Good emergency

notification and incident

management software

allows you to create pre-

defined templates for any

type of scenario.

When an event occurs,

select a template and your

teams have the people,

plans and tasks for that

type of event from the

start.

You can also use the

software to test your

plans under real-

world conditions.

Situation Center Notification Center

Streamlined,

easy-to-use incident

management software.

Smarter emergency

notification software

that’s built for mission-

critical enterprise use.

Beyond notification.

Rich, interactive mobile

messaging that includes forms,

photos and GPS location services.

EarShot

Messaging center

Event log

Task management

Emergency notification

Documents library

Forms, and much more

www.missionmode.com

Crisis Communications 101

Crisis Communications 101