Ahhh! Stop The Social Media Attacks, I Wasn’t Aware…

When a severe crisis strikes, often it’s a wise idea to put all social media promotions and marketing campaigns on hold.

If your company or organization is of the grander scale (and even if it isn’t), often internal communications gets overlooked or neglected in the midst of an overwhelming and severe crisis. That’s why an internal crisis communications policy and platform is so critically important to have in place prior to experiencing a crisis. And the above sentence is a perfect example of how come.

Let me paint you a less-than-pretty picture!

Imagine this: Your brand has several franchises or sub-brands. One of them, let’s call it “franchise/brand A”, faces a category 1 crisis. This can be a scandal, an injury, a death, or any crisis of this type of grandeur and severity. During this crisis, franchise/brand A’s operational and communications crisis teams are working on overdrive attempting to resolve the crisis and regain control of the brand. During all of this commotion, franchise/brand A forgets to alert franchise/brand B to the crisis. So, having no clue as to what is taking place over at franchise/brand A, franchise/brand B continues with their previously planned marketing and promotional campaigns over on their Facebook page. Suddenly, the public deems this as completely and utterly insensitive and all of a sudden franchise/brand B finds themselves in the midst of a total Facebook attack, for which they have no idea as to what provoked such negative feedback and behaviour on their wall…. Ahhhh!!!! Talk about unnecessary stress for everybody!

Do you get the picture?

And this is only one severe scenario of why efficient and timely internal communication is so critically important during a crisis.

In order to make sure that your company or organization is equipped with the internal communications tools needed to ensure efficient and timely updates and communications throughout a crisis, make sure that your team is equipped with a minimum of the following:

An Internal Crisis Communications Policy

• What types of internal communications is expected throughout a crisis, how often and by whom?
• A contact flow chart for all members of your crisis communications and social media monitoring teams

An Internal Communications Platform
My personal recommendation for an efficient and effective internal communications platform is a cross-brand, custom developed Intranet. For more information on what to include within your internal communications platform, I recommend you read the following post: 6 Features to Include Within Your Internal Communications Platform.

If you’d like to learn more about internal crisis communications plans, please feel free to contact me. It’s a truly important strategy to have in place, and I’d be more than happy to guide you in the right direction.

More resources for your crisis planning:

We talked about this subject (and many others) in this week’s episode of The Crisis Show. Be sure to check it out, because there are some valuable crisis management tips and insights that you won’t want to miss!