Making Good Use of Your Blog in a Crisis

Every company and organization should have a blog. Not only does it play a massive role within your content marketing strategy and generating new leads, but it plays a substantial role in helping you regain control of a crisis.

How to strategically use your blog in a crisis

Publish your FAQ
Your FAQ plays an important role within your crisis management, and your corporate blog is a great place for your FAQ to be published.

For more information on the role your FAQ plays within a crisis, what to include within it and more, click here.

Publish your official response to the crisis on your blog
Publishing your official response, as well as timely and frequent updates to your blog is an important strategy.

1. It is easy to create content and quickly publish
2. It provides your stakeholders with the option to subscribe to receive your updates via email and RSS (both should be set up)
3. It’s a great place to publish more information than you would on channels such as Facebook and Twitter, while keeping all of your updates in one, easy location for your stakeholders to find and sort through
4. You have the option to enable or disable comments, which gives you the opportunity to keep discussions right there, on your channel, rather than having them published on other channels on which you have less control

* Don’t forget to date, time-stamp and indicate who each update is from.

Link to your blog from your home page and other channels
When you do it right, tons of important information regarding the crisis will be published to your blog, and that’s the type of content you want your stakeholders to find easily. Here are some ways to make sure that your content is easily found by all those searching for it:

• Set up a temporary banner on your website’s home page
• Link to it from your other social media channels, each time a new update is published
• Include the link within your social media platform bios and “about” sections
• When you respond to online comments and inquiries, be sure to provide a direct link to where they can find more information on your blog

Benefits of leveraging your blog in a crisis

SEO
It’s no secret that blogs are a great way to dominate the organic searches, and if your organization has an active blog, odds are it already has a good position within the search engine results pages (SERP). Publishing important content to your blog in a crisis will allow for your crisis communications to be seen by a maximum amount of searching individuals.

Reach
Besides from SEO, your blog has subscribers. This means that each time you post a new update on the crisis, those subscribers will receive it directly within their inbox or reader.

More control
Inviting and encouraging conversations and discussions to take place on YOUR platform means that they’re less likely to take place or occur on another platform that you:

1. Don’t know about
2. Have no control over

However, in order to do this, you will have to be sure to enable your blog posts to receive comments.

Viral potential
If your blog is set up with sharing buttons, then your reach is amplified.

New subscribers
Newcomers may subscribe to your blog to receive updates throughout the crisis, which gives you potential for continuing to build the relationship with them once the crisis is resolved.

A corporate blog offers many advantages on a regular basis, but a corporate blog used wisely in a crisis will amplify your company’s voice, help you regain control and offer you opportunities that will help you resolve the crisis quicker and more efficiently then if your company or organization didn’t have a blog to utilize.

How about you?

Does your company or organization have a blog and is it part of your crisis communications plan?