Crisis Communication: Can We Do it Well?

For our midterm, our professor for our public relations techniques class had us organize social media posts, emails, and a press release for our fake organizations’ crisis communications plan.

I can confidently say it’s the most stressed I’ve been this semester.

Although I’ve been immersed in several types of communication throughout my college years, I’ve never felt as secure about my PR-strategy knowledge compared to others who’ve had PR as their focus. In many ways, I’ve felt like a baby PR student. However, I’m definitely discrediting myself, as I’ve low-key been dealing with crisis communication my whole life, even if it’s outside of the workplace.

Trouble with landlords? I’ll draft up some emails, texts, and help you draft a specific script for when you talk to them in person. Do not drift from the script. Be genuine and transparent, but firm.

Mom is angry at you for forgetting to do all the chores she specifically asked you to do before she came home from work? Here’s a list of nearby flower shops, sweet notes, an apology script, and some recipes for her favorite meals (just in case).

Relationship problems? I got you with strategic romantic pursuits, cute insta posts, and a written questionnaire to help you dissect the root of your issues.

India-based reputation firm Astrum did a great job of presenting Crisis Communications 101 in visual form: — India-based reputation firm **Astrum** did a great job of presenting Crisis Communications 101 in visual form:

In all seriousness, I feel crisis communication in general is diving into mending broken relationships, whether personally or professionally, and rebuilding your image, and regaining trust.

In the workplace, crisis communication is stressful, especially when your organization is on the line of fire, your publics are questioning your integrity, people are raging about you guys on social media and you don’t have much turn-around time.

So how is crisis communication done well?

According to an article by Chris Britton at RockDove Solutions, a crisis management platform, an ideal approach to crisis communication may be slightly different for each company. However, three of the best practices to establish an effective approach include:

1) Communication should be done in real time: Keep the most up-to-date information about your crisis accessible to stakeholders and employees.

2) Messages should remain relevant to each public: Don’t send messages meant for your donors to your employees. Not everyone needs to read all the messages sent to each group affiliated with your company. If a PR employee gets an email that’s specifically meant for IT, it not only clogs their inbox, but it can be confusing for them to tell which emails apply to whom.

3) Make sure your information is accessible everywhere: Sending just emails, for example, won’t be able to provide crisis communication to employees who may be away from their desks, or when there’s a power failure. It’s more effective to communicate using mobile technology, which goes where the user goes.

During my tenure as the editor of our university newspaper, the Southern Accent, a racist snapchat was posted during a Black Christian Union (Saturday) night, an annual celebration of African and Caribbean culture. It quickly went viral on Twitter and Facebook and completely spiraled out of control. The incident warranted a themed issue at last minute, and we were able to restructure all of our content to fit the story and the pain it caused students on our campus. If I’d communicated with my team solely through email, they would have mostly remained uninformed about the steps we’d planned to take to cover the issue until they checked their emails on Sunday evening or even Monday. Texting them was an effective way to reach all of them quickly.