Don’t be caught off guard
You’ve signed up on Twitter and things are going well. You’re posting links to events, useful information, and company blogs, perhaps even beginning to interact with some active stakeholders when suddenly you notice your company name and #FAIL are appearing in many of the same posts.
A crisis is breaking, but you aren’t sure what to do. This is, after all, the Big T, and you’re new here. Luckily, the Internet is full of resources to help, including this list from media training expert Jane Jordan-Meier of “Five Rules for Managing Twitter When a Crisis Strikes:”
- Act Fast: Has always been thus, but now it is a MUST. Organizations MUST, MUST, MUST respond within one hour of the news breaking.
- Monitor Early and Often: Even a simple Google alert will help. And there is a vast array of social monitoring tools out there.
- Have a Triangular Approach Ready: If the situation escalates out of Twitter, use three different methods of communicating to your key stakeholders in a crisis – Twitter, your website or blog and at least one key media outlet.
- Remember We’re Human: We as humans are still incredibly irrational, and constantly make decisions based on our intuition, or whatever we feel like at that moment. We will construct our stories according to our reality.
- Don’t Just Listen – Hear: Twitter and social media in general are very empowering and powerful motivators when others want to silence us. Iran and Egypt are just two that come to mind. In a crisis, we want someone to hear us, someone to care.
On one end, technology has driven crisis communication with the ever-increasing need for speed. On the other, the sheer volume of daily impersonal communication makes that human touch ever more powerful.
Find your way to use tech to deliver this touch via Twitter, and you’ve found the winning combination that will not only see you through crises, but attract and keep active followers.
The BCM Blogging Team
https://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com/