#020 How Can I Put Together A Crisis Communication Plan Fast?

COVID-19 has completely disrupted consumer habits. Most businesses are wishing they would have had a crisis communication plan in place to keep their consumers in the loop with all changes. During a crisis is not be an ideal time to whip up a crisis communication plan, but it's necessary. As the situation evolves, it's time to prioritize putting a plan together of who needs to be involved in continuing your crisis communication, what assets you have, and what messages you're going to prioritize.

Beth and Kelsey share some quick tips in this short Generation Social Media Podcast episode.

Biggest Takeaways From This Episode

Take a second to use the insights you have and put a plan of action together. Be authentic. Be proactive. Focus on customer service!

Create a short cheat sheet:

Who needs to be involved in the plan?
What assets do you have and who has access?
Who needs to be all hands on deck?
Write samples of copy, even fill in the blanks, to establish your voice so you can just fill in with accurate information.
Have someone look over it outside of the organization.

Download Digital Asset Management Template

Take the opportunity to be genuine and empathetic in your communications and share your audience's concerns. Beware of any consumer sensitivities and fears at this time — using the appropriate tone is key.

When communicating during a crisis on digital:

Avoid all caps.
Avoid red and alarming bright colors.
Don't use a lot of exclamation points.
Be cautious using emojis. Pick one.
Don't use a playful font to share a serious message. Now is not the time to try a new font.
Use Lemonly's graphics for communication. Or create simple graphics using Canva.
Simplify your communication.
Write like a human.

Use these Facebook Tools

Pin posts to the top with your new hours
Respond to all messages on your page. Facebook direct messages, posts by others, comments, tags and mentions, ads, all your social platforms.
Turn on your automatic reply.

Download COVID-19 Relevance Checklist

Be Proactive. Maintain frequent communication with customers — especially in cases of supply-chain or delivery disruption. Set realistic expectations and be upfront about the reasons why.

Transcript

This text below is a straight-up audio transcript of the episode. In our humble opinion, we think the audio podcast sounds much better in its original form. We have not edited the transcription below so there are indeed some grammar errors (some quite funny, in-fact).

Hi, it is Beth Trejo here at Chatterkick. I am the CEO and founder. Chatterkick Is a social media agency. And we have Kelsey Martin who is our COO. And she has done a lot for the organization everything from writing and designing. And so we are going to talk a little bit today about crisis communication, what that looks like on social media and just some quick tips on how you can be prepared for your organization. So let's start out by step one, what do businesses need to think about for their crisis communication. I mean, I really think getting a plan together as soon as possible in the downtime or right now honestly is the best time to put a plan together of who needs to be involved in crisis communication. What channels do you have access to? Who needs to be all hands on deck?

Because what we're finding right now and just all the time on social is nobody's thinking about their crisis communication plan until they actually need their crisis communication plan. And then it's too late and it's just a mad scramble. And then you also, you kind of become paralyzed with like I have no idea what to do at this point. Yeah. And I think really it's the, what do I say and how do I say it that like take a second and write it down, have someone else look over it and do that when you have a deep breath and it's not in the middle of a panic mode or at 10 o'clock at night when the stuff always happens. And I think that what a lot of businesses need to think about now is not hubs. They're going to be open if they're going to be closed, but if there's a positive case of the virus in your organization or you do need to shut down or disinfect or whatever the case may be, being able to write two or three of those examples out ahead of time could really help.

Just give you a piece of calm when that happens at your organization. Yeah, I like having like samples of, not that I don't, I don't think it's a great use of time for an organization to write out all the scenarios. Then all of the sentences, I feel like you get really distracted in thinking about this worst case scenario and this worst case scenario. But I do think thinking of three different scenarios and having at least like the consistent verbiage that you want involved is super important. And then putting a plan together of, okay, is the message going to be just copy and it's coming from our CEO, is our CEO doing a video? Like what, what that method of the communication is getting that planned out so that when the time comes you're really looking to just execute. Yeah. And make sure that the right people have the right permissions to do that.

So if it is on a weekend and your marketing person is not reachable or not available, what do you... Who's going to post it? Do you know how to post on these platforms? Do you know the right way to hold your phone? Whatever the barriers may be, just kind of walk through that scenario. Planning. I think plans overwhelmed people at times. So I, I don't think it needs to be overly done. Just one page of the basics. Like who has say, what are we going to say? Really? Yeah. And where are we going to put this message? I think it's just, it's challenging. It's, it becomes so sensitive to when you're putting the plan together. So like you said earlier, having someone look over it, I almost would have someone look over it outside of the organization. You know, a lot of the messages that we've seen come from both like small and really large companies.

They they get into posting their values and their virtues and they, they're making these big value statements and commitments, which I love because it's so powerful and passionate in the moment. And then when this thing has gotten a little bit further and a little bit further and they can no longer uphold those values or make those statements of, you know, we're keeping all of our team, we're doing all of these things. I think really thinking and making plans for both, like short term and long term so that you're not making statements that are, that are going to make you look bad in the end if you go back on them or if if things change that you're not writing things in cement and that you're really making an announcement and an update with the information that you have the time and not like black and white statements that might look bad if the situation changes.

Yeah. I think like if you were to put the basics of written and visual communication together let's get a list together really quick because I can think of five mistakes that I've seen businesses make. Some of the businesses I love dearly, but it just wasn't executed right. So no, all caps. Yeah. That watch your exclamation points. It's not the time to use exclamation points and or emojis quite frankly. I've seen the hearts and stuff, I guess. Yeah, you could probably break that rule. All caps shouldn't be broken. It's just too much. I mean, as long as it's within your brand voice, I feel not the, the, I mean more on the emojis emojis thing. If that's something that you use to connect your audience regularly, like one emoji will be fine in this time as long as it's like a harder connection but not anything that's too crazy obviously.

Right. watch for the colors and I know that that's very crazy, but emails with red everywhere it feels alarming. Even just like not now is not a time to try a new font, don't put a new font in your emails and I'm saying that in a very nice way. Like really sophisticated emails are coming through in a very playful font and it just feels so off and out of touch that like it's a little thing but it's being made by lots of different businesses right now. So don't use crazy fonts. I'm kind of on the fence right now with everybody using like the Covid graphic, that like virus image. Yeah. All right. I get that. It's now like a quick indicator that this has to do with this announcement But it's almost like it's used so much that people are kind of numb to those visuals anymore.

I do know like companies like Lemonly have created really cool graphics that they're releasing for free. You can look at it on their website or on their social channels of like really great imagery on, on using their stuff instead because it's played to an optimized for digital and social and it isn't something that you're throwing together, but also leaning on tools like Canva and this time and like don't spend a ton of time making something in word with like comic Sans and crazy things like simple, like communication is always the best key. Right. And make sure that you're still writing like a human. Right. This is not the time for attorney language, no offense attorneys we love, but we need to use voices and tone like you would if someone called you, like empathy, transparency. Those are two big emotions that you need to really evoke with your brand right now so people can create that connection with you so you can calm fears and or get real information out to the people that need to get your information.

I think it's the basics, what sometimes it's really important to state those so people have some checklists. Yeah. I think speaking of basics, there's like, there's a ton of tools available on social, but just focusing specifically on Facebook, I think they're tools obviously that are free, that are so critical during times of change, whether it's has to do with covid 19 or has to do with a PR crisis. Pinned posts are so important. If you change your hours, it takes a while for Facebook to notice. If you submit them to your about page, put in a post and pin it to the top of your page. So it's the very first thing, or using your cover photo spot to make those big announcement changes. I think one of the first weeks I went I was going to go to the grocery store and I was like, Oh no one will be going right now cause it's down pouring.

And then I got there, I looked at their Facebook page, I didn't see anything cause I was just going really quickly. And then I got there and it was closed and I was like, man, I wish it was like the first post would have been so nice to like but that time down. And then the other one is make sure that you are checking your messages and responding to all messages and questions. Like use those automated responses. But that two way communication is so critical right now when things are changing quickly. Right. And don't forget messages do not just mean Facebook direct messages. People forget that it's all of the places. It's your post by others. It's your comments even on posts that are two years old, some way you need to make sure it's on your ads. If you're running ads on Facebook, your Instagram direct messages, your Instagram comments, LinkedIn, it's all of the places that you need to be checking or have someone in charge of checking. Right. Cool. All right, well I think that that gave people a good list of the things they need to watch out for or to plan for during a crisis. We could get a lot deeper into this, but we wanted to make a quick, short episode for you, so hope you enjoyed and we'll catch you next time. Thanks Kelsey. See ya.

Social MediaChatterkickApril 21, 2020social media tip, crisis communication, covid19