By Gil Rudawsky, Rockford Gray Partner
We call the first hour of a crisis the “golden hour” because it is the window in a crisis when how you respond – or fail to respond – often determines how others will perceive your management of the crisis.
An integral part of a crisis communication response plan includes how to respond during this Golden Hour by providing clear, honest and timely messages to various audiences affected by the incident, the news media and those engaged on digital or social media platforms.
The two biggest mistakes we see organizations make in a crisis are:
- Failure to communicate with key audiences
- Failure to engage with the media
As part of your organization’s timeline for managing crisis and emergency communication, don’t put the media on the back burner. Address media inquiries in the first 60-minutes, as part of your crisis response. Also, keep other key audiences, including those on social media, informed. This can help protect your reputation and help get your organization back on track sooner.
By communicating the facts early and avoiding speculation, you will help to set the narrative of your incident or issue. Reporters will often use your version of events as the foundation for their story, comparing other people’s experiences with the facts you’ve provided.
These initial facts are powerful in person and online. They inform the news media and act as a buffer against rumors. Keeping online audiences informed with thoughtful and important emergency communications can lessen long-term negative reputation issues.
We recommend that every crisis communication plan, whether it is 4 pages or 400 pages, include digital crisis management strategies, including response templates.
Ask yourself:
- What platforms are you on?
- What is your response strategy?
- What communication templates do you have prepared for likely crises?
Digital media protocols include rules for deleting or hiding comments, and an established message approval process. Social media moves fast, particularly during a crisis.
As with any crisis, including a social media crisis, maintain integrity. Ask yourself, “What is the right thing to do?” “What would a reasonable person expect of us in this situation?”
With integrity as your foundation, build your plan. We suggest including the following protocols:
Create a Crisis Communication Plan
- Risk assessment: Identify and prepare for potential issues or events
- Determine how you will continuously communicate with the customer-service and legal teams
- Identify key audiences: board members, employees, vendors, customers, partners, regulators, media, and social media audiences
- Establish stakeholder communication priorities
- Setup your process to get the facts and prepare statements
- Create checklists for crisis team members
- Draft templates for media statements, employee communications, and notifications
- Identify and prepare your spokesperson with appropriate media training and coaching
Monitoring Strategy
- Have an established traditional and social media monitoring strategy
- Respond and correct the record
Strategic Response
- Engage with the media and your key audiences
- Acknowledge and thoughtfully address the victim dimension of the crisis
- Accurately communicate to all audiences
- Cooperate with investigators and/or law enforcement
- Communicate how you will do better in the future
Remember, in a crisis, the best responses demonstrate that your organization cares for those affected by the incident and is sincerely working to resolve the issue with all constituents, across all platforms.
Rockford Gray will be happy to help you create or review your crisis communication plan. Let us know how we can help.
About the author: Gil Rudawsky specializes in issues and reputation management, and crisis communication. He began his career as a reporter in Aspen, Colo., and journalism took him across the country and then back to his native Denver, Colorado, where he worked for the Rocky Mountain News. His journalistic skills – source development, research, credibility, storytelling, and curiosity – remain the foundation of his work with clients. He has experience working on a range of issues across sectors, including federal investigations, corporate and workplace issues, DEI and public advocacy campaigns. He provides expert-level strategic counsel, including on-the-ground support. He is a graduate of the University of Southern California, with a degree in philosophy.