How To Deal With The Press / Media in a Social Media Crisis (Part 1)

Last week I asked you, my fabulous readers, to send me any question that you may have regarding social media crisis management and/or online reputation management, promising that I would provide you with answers and insight by form of a blog post. Well, questions you did have and what great ones indeed! So over the course of the next few weeks, or for as long as I have questions to answer, I will be dedicating my Monday posts to doing just that!

So to kick it off, today’s question comes from Evan. Evan asks:

“I’d be interested in hearing how you would deal with the press/media in a social media crisis. In particular, how do you deal with the press when they start tweeting and Facebooking as well as blogging their story about a brand in crisis that they are busy covering.”

The press have and will always be around in a crisis. The difference that social media brings to the table is that anybody and everybody with a blog or a big following can be considered “the press”. We’re all publishers and content curators today. We all have questions and write about the issues that intrigue and matter to us.

So, in order to fully answer Evan’s question, there are two areas that I’m going to address:

Part 1- The press/media and your employees

Part 2- Communicating with the press/media in a crisis, via social media

Because of the importance of each of these two topics, I’ve decided to divide each answer into its own blog post. The answer to Part 1 can be found below, and the answer to Part 2 will be answered in next Monday’s post. Sorry to keep you waiting, but both topics are very important and I want to be sure to do each one justice.

So, to begin…

Part 1- The press/media and your employees

If you’ve developed a crisis communications plan before, and trained your staff on the proper ways to execute it, than you know that it’s important to educate each member of your team on how to properly deal with the press and media when they come knocking. A well trained employee will know not to answer any questions posed by the press or the media regarding a crisis unless they have been titled as a spokesperson for that crisis. As for those who have not been titled as such, they should know where and to whom to refer the inquirer(s) for answers to their questions. But even the most trained employees can get confused or mislead when it comes to social media. We’re so used to receiving @mentions on Twitter today that a simple question may seem harmless – until it gets published and extra damage control is needed by the brand. This is a common and innocent error in judgement that can cause your brand some major repercussions. Especially when said “interview” begins to go viral.

For this reason, it’s very important that each and every member of your team be trained on how to handle the press and the media in all sense of the words.

As my co-host on The Crisis Show, Jonathan Bernstein, says:

“Every employee is a public relations representative and crisis manager for your organization, whether you want them to be or not.”

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is a fact that you cannot ignore!

That said, it’s very important that every single member of your staff clearly understands the following, before a crisis strikes your brand:

• What they are and are NOT allowed to say to the press, during a crisis. This goes for traditional and social media.
• Under what circumstances they are allowed to respond to inquiries and what types of questions they are permitted to answer – even when the inquiries come from a member of their own social graph or inner circle (friends, family, etc).
• Where they should refer incoming inquiries that they are not permitted to respond to. Should they be referred to an official member of the crisis communications team, to a dedicated web page (which you will have provided them a link to), etc…
• What are the consequences for breaching these terms, both for the corporation and for the individual culprit.

Remember that all and any one of your employees may easily be approached by the press and/or the media in a crisis, and unless you want to have to do some additional damage control, it’s up to you to make sure that every single one of them understands what their particular role is within a crisis, as well as what is expected of them.

Click here to read the second part of the answer to Evan’s question: Communicating with the press/media in a crisis, via social media.