Creating your Crisis Communications Plan

Last week, I wrote about the need for a crisis communications plan and later that same day, Intuit suffered a crisis of their own as many of their key websites went down. Now, obviously I can't say that I predicted this crisis for Intuit but the coincidence just goes to show you that a crisis can happen at any point in time.

So if you are now convinced that you need a crisis communications plan, the timing of this blog post is perfect for you as I'll run through how you should build this plan. Now, I'm not going to say that this post covers everything you should do but as I mentioned in my last post, I want to give you some steps so you can develop a plan quickly which is significantly better than nothing at all.

Behind every good crisis communications plan are 3 underlying concepts:

• You need to be proactive. The more you can prepare and do in advance, the better off you will be in the time of crisis. The fact you are reading this post and starting to develop a plan is a huge step in the right direction.
• You need to be transparent. If you try to hide anything, chances are you will be found out so be as up-front as possible from the outset. And the worst thing to say is "No comment".
• You need to respond quickly. Speed is crucial as the longer you wait the more others will tell the story in terms that you cannot control and will not like.

Now while many crisis are unforeseen, you should try and identify potential crisis that could affect your company and then develop a plan to address these issues. By putting your plan in context, your efforts are more focused and you are in a much better position when and if that crisis happens.

In terms of the plan itself, you should first and foremost figure out who should be part of the crisis communications team so that you can pull this key group of people together at a moments notice. You should also figure out who the spokesperson will be, usually the CEO or a senior executive, and ensure they are trained to handle the tough questions that will come to them.

With the team in place, then you can work on the following areas of the plan:

• Define the various targets for your messages in the time of crisis. For example, it's important to identity the stakeholders in your company which may include employees, customers, prospects, suppliers, investors, partners, media, analysts, and other members of your community. And, if there is anything you can do to build a better relationship with your audiences and/or tell parts of the story in advance then you should do it. 
• Develop tools to reach these targets quickly. For example, draw up a list of your targets and how to reach them so you can get the word out quickly. More importantly, prepare an area on your web site which can be launched, at a moments notice, and be the base for communicating all your information in the time of crisis so everyone has one place to go to get your side of the story.
• Create messages that are pre-approved. While each situation will be different it's always a good idea to prepare several key messages in advance and then adapt them to the situation. If you don't do this then you won't be able to respond quickly which is crucial.
• Implement an early warning system to measure and monitor what is being said about your company. All of the planning above is for naught, if you don't know what is being said about you before, during and after the crisis. There are a number of tools that can be used to automate much of this process but the key is to keep you eyes and ears open at all time, especially online.

Obviously, this is a very high-level overview of the crisis communication plan. In the coming weeks, I'll try to look into each of these aspects in more detail. In the meantime, let me know what I've missed or better yet, let me know what you've done in your time of crisis.

Comments

[Golden Horse]

I found so many interesting stuff in your blog especially its discussion. From the tons of comments on your articles, I guess I am not the only one ha

[Xomar]

if you're a company and using a site like fbcoaoek to advertise to me you're sending me the message your ad dept is ran by a 14 year old or a 40 year old that is out of touch with your clients.sorry but companies appear juvenile with a fbcoaoek page.I sat at a marketing seminar last fall and laughed at the speaker out loud when he was pushing using fbcoaoek. I said to the speaker if I wanted to sell condoms to teens I'd use fbcoaoek. not for anything else.