Tech Savvy Skills You Need to Acquire Before a Social Media Crisis (Checklist)

There are so many technical aspects of your crisis plan that need to be executed quickly and efficiently in a crisis. If you’re equipped with a webmaster, IT professional or in-house web developer that’s great! However, one thing we know for sure about social media crises is that they tend to happen at the worst possible moments. So what happens if your web savvy employee isn’t there that day? What happens if you absolutely need to stream your Twitter feed to your corporate website or add a new Facebook tab to your fan page, and no one is around to help you?

There’s so much stress involved in a social media crisis, that you don’t need to add more to the list by being caught unprepared and unequipped.

The following is a checklist with basic but likely tech savvy and developing skills that more than one person on your team should be equipped with.

Who should be capable of accomplishing all of these web tasks in a crisis?

• Your webmaster, in-house developer and/or your IT professional
• Your designated crisis communicator (spokesperson)
• You! If you’re reading this post and aren’t one of the above individuals, then make sure you’re equipped with the following skill set as well.

Technical skill set you should equip yourself with BEFORE a social media crisis strikes

• Streaming your Twitter tweets, mentions, hashtags and others to your corporate website (Click here for Twitter help on how to do this)
• Creating, adding and linking banner ads to and from your corporate website
• Updating or replacing your Twitter background
• Uploading videos and video responses to YouTube
• Uploading videos to your website and blog
• Updating your corporate website and blog
• Activating and editing your dark website
• Adding a custom tab to your Facebook fan page (Click here for help on how to do this)
• Creating and editing links (both text links and image links)
• Accessing and updating your internal communication platform in real-time

In order to really complete this list, make sure that the same individuals also have 24/7 access to the following service providers (including account ID’s and passwords):

• Your hosting company
• Your domain name account
• An on-call web developer (or two)
• An on-call graphic designer

Whether you’re tech savvy or not, the last thing you want to be is left helpless and incompetent in a social media crisis. Equip yourself and your team with the basic development skills that are very likely to be needed and strategically beneficial to you in a social media crisis. Then rest assured that if and when the worst happens you’ll be fully capable of handling it!

What have I missed?

What tech savvy skill would you add to this list? Share your thoughts with me below!