Why Social Media Belongs in Your Crisis Plan
Part of the public relations profession and our expertise at HMA Public Relations is in helping organizations prepare for and communicate through a crisis.
The crises that the world faces today are often examined on the HMA Public Relations blog. Our team offers lessons in what to say, how to respond and where communication could improve moving forward depending on the issue at hand.
Building and implementing a crisis management response that is ready for today must also account for your social media presence and its role as a direct line to your customers and intended audiences. It all starts with a plan and a team coming together.
Step one of a crisis management plan is to actually create one. The plan should support preparedness and serve as a guide for what’s next through the lens of your organization and its principles. It should include key messaging that guides your organization, an action plan with concrete steps and what communication looks like both externally and internally during a crisis. Your crisis plan is the foundation of your management strategy, and your social media presence is an important part of that. These efforts should support safety and clarity when put into action, regardless of the channel on which they are deployed.
As such, social media teams should definitely be involved in crisis planning and understand how it will affect their role in representing the organization online. Communication on social media during a crisis should clarify the situation for followers as easily as possible. Rather than a long-form press release, it will likely be shorter and cover the necessary basics of the issue. Longer responses are a better fit for your website. Social preparedness means having drafted posts and captions aligned with each channel and ready to publish.
Social media is a direct communication source that should be used to your advantage during a crisis. If you schedule social media posts ahead of time, be sure to put them on the back burner until after your crisis plan has been fully enacted. A lack of awareness or care from an organization during a crisis should not be the main message followers take away from your posts.
Publicly acknowledge the crisis to inform your audiences and prevent rumors from spreading in the comments section or elsewhere online. If you are faced with negativity or false information, reply professionally, not impulsively. You don’t want to create any more harm if you can help it.
Your employees probably follow your organization on social media, but they shouldn’t learn about your action plan when they refresh their feeds. Just as a public relations agency would train a client for a media interview, your team should be aware of how your organization is responding on social media and trained on the best practices for handling the issue.
When a crisis emerges, social media is a crucial part of the response. Responding to a crisis is not simply about proving you care with a social media post. It should authentically address the issue and provide a clear path forward, including what happens next to prevent it from happening again. Crises will never stop, but having a plan in place will help your organization respond quickly with clarity when one arises.
Is your organization prepared to communicate through a crisis?
Contact HMA Public Relations to learn more about how we can help you build an effective plan for the unexpected.
