Crisis Communication: First Things First
I hope everyone is healthy, safe, and sane. If you’ve seen our most recent Cloud 9 video, I had a little bit of late night inspiration, with regard to crisis communication during COVID-19.
I promised six pieces of quality content, so here we go… These are my recommended first three steps when navigating crisis communication.
#1 Right The Ship
Your number one priority should be ensuring the safety and well-being of your staff. This is generally just the right thing to do, and it will pay off two-fold, in the long run.
First, you will have a team that believes in you and trusts you, more than ever. Secondly, if done correctly, the public will soon find out and applaud your willingness to take care of your own people, first.
Big Y is open about safety and sanitation measures in place to ensure everyone is safe. This includes providing staff with gloves, sanitizer, stoping use of re-useable canvas bags, plexiglass shields at checkout counters, and more.
They took it a step further with their March 20th, 2020 update, where they announced to the public they were offering $2.00/hr raises to all hourly employees. Over 8,500 reactions and 3,400 shares on that post, as of 4:30pm on 4/2/2020.
#2 Look Outward
Now that your staff is on-board and believes in your vision, you need to quickly communicate to the public how you’re handling the situation. Step one, PAUSE ALL SOCIAL MEDIA COMMUNICATIONS. Yes, you read that right. The last thing you want to do is have a pre-scheduled Instagram post go out about how this is a wonderful time to start a new business or inviting people to a huge event. Pause all social media comms, evaluate the content, and adjust accordingly.
What you need to address is how your company is handling the issues at-hand. What are you doing to go above and beyond your normal protocol to ensure the health and safety of your employees and guests, customers, clients, or patrons? These are the sort of messages that need to be broadcast. More to come on that, in step three.
Before we get to step three, you’ll want to update the following information:
- Hours of operation
- Cancelation / postponement of any events
- Addition or subtraction of services
- Available product lines
- Accepted payment methods
- Closure of any locations
- Supply chain / logistics changes and updates
Consider making those changes on the following platforms:
- Social Media (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest)
- Search Engines (Google My Business, Bing Places, Yahoo Business Listing)
- Trade Websites (Houzz, Angie’s List, HomeAdvisor)
- Food and Beverage (OpenTable, TripAdvisor, Yelp)
- And of course, your own website!
#3 CAREFULLY Craft Press Releases, Media Interviews, and Internal Communications
“Everything you say can and will be held against you” (and might go viral). Take it from the folks at Hobby Lobby, you do NOT want to be the company that makes a taboo judgement call, amidst a national crisis.
Hobby Lobby owner David Green is telling store managers to stay open despite the pandemic because his wife had a vision from god.
He also warns they’ll all have to “tighten their belts” soon. His net worth is $6.4 billion — hourly employees don’t get paid sick leave. #COVIDIOT
45.3K people are talking about this
PLEASE NOTE, I’m not making a point about the religious aspect of this decision. This is more about steps one and two, above. Note that this tweet has been retweeted nearly 38,000 times, with nearly 80,000 hearts, and 7,500 replies. What. A. Shit Storm.
This is why you need an internal team dedicated to PR, or, more realistically, outsource to an expert. As a general rule, marketing and sales people, let alone the CEO, are not equipped to communicate during times of crisis. They’re either pre-programed to communicate in a certain manner, or operate too closely to the business to view it from an outside perspective.
Have you seen a brand doing an excellent job of crisis communication and PR? We want to know. Thank you for reading and stay tuned for more information.
Until next time,
Dyl
