Raise Awareness With Your Company’s Stakeholders
Managing bad buzz may involve several stakeholders.
Take the lead before the crisis hits: form a crisis unit within your team, and draw up an inventory of your useful external contacts.
Form a Crisis Unit
You may have heard the term crisis unit in disaster movies. This team mobilizes in the event of bad buzz.
The unit oversees all the logistics required to manage the crisis. It centralizes information, evaluates risks and how they are developing, coordinates team members, and assigns tasks.
It usually consists of people from the communications team, marketing team, a PR agency representative, members of the legal department or an external lawyer, and a management team representative.
There are several ways the crisis unit can prepare before a crisis:
Use the online reputation audit to prevent crisis risks.
Communicate with each department to identify risks: legal risks with the legal department, financial risks with the finance department, social risks with the HR department, customer risks with the sales department, etc.
Set up internal processes and prepare documents such as FAQs, online communication guidelines, etc.
Inform and train employees in crisis management.
Run a simulated crisis to practice reacting quickly while respecting the processes.
Build a Network of Allies
Externally, there are several groups of people who can support you:
Partners.
Suppliers.
Customer ambassadors.
Influencers you’ve already collaborated with.
Opinion leaders, etc.
The Deditex Case Study
To help you, look at the Deditex internal organization chart.
Once you have identified the stakeholders, compare your work with Emily’s.
Create Social Media Guidelines
For Your Employees
As mentioned, your employees have an essential role to play among the stakeholders in the crisis.
Once the crisis unit has been formed, it should train this audience first.
According to a 2018 report from We Are Social and Hootsuite, 30% of people are motivated to share their opinion online. And 41% of social media users are there to stay up-to-date with news and current events. This means that many internet users view social media as a source of information.
These statistics show the importance of creating social media guidelines and making it available to your employees.
Here are some elements that your guidelines may include:
Roles and tasks of employees on social media.
Reminders of security protocols (responsible points of contact, password management, process to follow in case of a security breach, etc.).
Rules of conduct on social media in a personal and professional capacity and privacy recommendations.
The crisis management process.
It must be regularly updated and given to each new employee. The company may choose to mention the existence of these guidelines in its internal regulations. Guidelines vary from a social media policy, as they are more of a suggestion, whereas a policy can be enforced when necessary.
Find examples of social media guidelines & policies:
For Internet Users
Consider writing good conduct guidelines for your communities.
You can embed it in your Facebook page’s “About” section or via a link in your Instagram bio. Its purpose is to provide some rules for the discussions on your pages.
Guidelines also allow you to delete hate speech, violent comments, or ban users who do not respect the rules.
Read examples of community guidelines for your social media:
Assess the Possible Risks and Scenarios
“Prevention is better than cure!”
Here are two ways to apply this popular expression to crisis management:
Identify critical situations.
Set up alerts for specific keywords or expressions.
Identify Critical Situations to Prevent Future Crises
One of the crisis unit’s first projects is a risk assessment, which involves imagining and listing all the threats that could lead to a crisis.
To do this, you must consider:
The nature of the risk (a confidential information leak, security breach, risk to health, etc.).
The likelihood that it will occur (high, low, etc.).
The harm it could cause (strong, medium, no impact).
The resulting damage.
Set up Monitoring for Specific Keywords
During your online reputation audit, you have already made a habit of keeping track of:
The name of your company.
The name of each of your brands.
The names of your marketing campaigns.
Your competitors’ brands.
Terms related to your industry.
You can also add:
The names of people who hold important positions in your company.
Sensitive keywords that could signal a crisis in your industry.
The Deditex Case Study
Once finished, compare your ideas with Emily’s.
Create an FAQ Document
Response time is crucial to monitoring whether it’s to generate engagement, improve your customer service, or prevent a crisis from going viral!
The FAQ (frequently asked questions) document is an easy tool to set up.
To list the categories in your FAQ, take inspiration from:
The sensitive subjects you have already identified.
Questions that come up most often online or through your service department.
Questions found in your competitors’ FAQs.
Google queries.
Then draft response templates with the help of the appropriate teams.
Some practical advice:
Update this FAQ regularly. As the months go by, consider deleting obsolete content.
Use an Excel spreadsheet or another format that allows you to search by keyword.
Write your response using your brand’s tone.
Forget about technical or complicated vocabulary. Be simple, clear, and precise.
Offer several levels of response that will allow you to provide additional details.
Have your communications department or legal department review and sign off on your FAQ.
The Deditex Case Study
Here is a template that Michael has started.
Let’s Recap!
Here are some procedures to help react quickly and efficiently. You will want to put them in place before a crisis:
Decide on the people who will make up your crisis unit, their responsibility, and their tasks in the event of a crisis.
Identify valuable contacts outside your company (customer ambassadors, partners, suppliers, influencers, information conduits, etc.) who could become your allies in a crisis.
Assess risks and possible crisis scenarios.
Monitor sensitive topics related to your company or sector.
Create social media guidelines for your employees and users on your social networks.
Set up an FAQ document.
In the next chapter, you will discover the best practices to follow during a crisis. Let’s get to it!
