CRISIS COMMUNICATIONS PREP: 5 MUST-HAVES TO PREPARE FOR ANY SITUATION

An unexpected crisis or reoccurring issue can cause serious damage to your organization’s financial, operational and reputational standing. The best method of crisis management is to prevent it. The second best is to plan for it. If your plan is developing as your crisis unfolds, you’re already behind.

Here are five crisis communications tips to prepare for unforeseen events.:

Select Spokespeople in Advance. A spokesperson should be someone with knowledge about the situation and with authority to act as the face and voice of your company. An ideal spokesperson is friendly, experienced, credible, authoritative and direct. Depending on the situation, location and audience, you’ll likely need to assign different spokespeople such as your CEO, VP, project manager or your PR team.

Complete Media Training. All potential spokespeople should go through extensive media training for potential crisis scenarios. Leverage your PR agency to run mock media interviews so you become comfortable with answering tough questions.

Create a Contact List for All Employees. To ensure that your entire staff is properly prepared for a crisis scenario, create a phone tree advising who they should contact if and when a crisis arises. In some cases, executives will not be the first people to hear about the situation but will likely have to handle the aftermath, so it’s vital that all employees understand who to involve in various situations.

Develop Responses Early. Drafting response templates ahead of time is a great way to proactively plan for crisis situations. Think about what events previously impacted your company or occurred within your industry. Could the situation happen again? If so, determine what scenarios to prep for and which audiences need correspondence such as media, employees, clients, customers or investors.

Some questions to ask yourself: Will the media likely request interviews about this subject? Do we need to have a social media post or replies ready for comments? Are our investors or clients going to request more information? Whatever the audience or platform, creating responses ahead of time will make for a more seamless and speedy response time when a crisis hits.

Engage the Experts. Last but not least, hire a PR firm that specializes in crisis communications. Do not try to DIY a crisis plan for your business — it might land you in hot water legally and negatively impact your reputation. PR experts work with your legal counsel to draft replies, statements, emails and materials that carefully explain the situation to your key audiences without breeching confidentiality or impacting your reputation. Crisis communications teams can also provide strategic proactive and reactive best practices to guide your employees on how to handle various situations.

 Want to learn more about crisis communications? We can help! Connect with us at info@bcenepr.com