How to Make Your Corporate Story Heard in a Crisis

Crisis management is turning into a 24/7 job, and businesses need to prepare themselves for this reality through a clear digital strategy. This is one of the big takeaways from the recently conducted PR Week Corporate and Public Affairs Summit, which I attended.  

The Rate of Corporate Crises is Rising 

One of the standout sessions was delivered by Daniel Collins of College Green Group, “Crisis communication: preparing your infrastructure for crisis.” One of his key points was that our understanding of crisis communications has changed. Crises are bubbling up faster and more frequently for two reasons: 

• Businesses are being increasingly tested by events outside their control, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, Brexit, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and economic uncertainty. While these events aren’t directly related to specific companies, they have knock-on effects for companies, suppliers, staff, and customers -- and therefore corporate comms teams. 
• A global groundswell about social justice is casting a sometimes-harsh spotlight on how businesses operate. The global economy and people’s personal finances are under huge pressure. Therefore, companies are coming under greater scrutiny about how they behave in all aspects of their businesses (supply chains, employee conduct, company policies and practices, etc.) For instance, P&O Ferries recently received blowback for the company’s treatment of its employees. 

On top of all this, the ever-expanding number of social media platforms ranging from Reddit to TikTok amplifies crises. Sometimes social is the source of a crisis. Social media can make a crisis spread like wildfire owing to a variety of factors including: 

• Hyper-sensitivity/increasingly easy to cause offense. 
• Lack of sensitivity to opposing views. 
• A decline of fact checking. 
• The race to publish commentary on events, including crises. 

For those reasons, the potential for companies for face crisis situations on a regular basis is higher than it’s ever been. The task of communicating your side of the story in an era of social media noise has never been more challenging. 

A Clear Digital Strategy Can Help 

It is clear that businesses need a digital-first strategy for crisis management. Why digital first? Because the reality is that most people will have already consumed information from news sources and social channels before they visit a company’s own channels; 55% of Americans get their news from social media (Source: Pew Research Center). So, a company needs to cut through the digital noise by managing its own narrative amid a crisis.  

But how? Well, first and foremost, companies need to ensure that any messaging and content is clear, compassionate, and candid about what has happened, why, who has been affected and what is being done now. If a company is not authentic and transparent, its crisis management approach will fail. In the era of transparency, any attempt to downplay a crisis will be found out and exposed. So: just don’t go there. But, however authentic and transparent your message and content are, they need to find their audience amongst the social media noise. 

Adopt a Multi-Channel Strategy 

To cut through the digital chatter that can hijack the company’s narrative, it is important that businesses adopt a multi-channel strategy centered on the corporate website. During a crisis, the corporate website is really the only digital channel a business can control. It needs to be a compelling source for people to learn about a company’s actions and point of view. And if a company does not keep its website up to date, it will look non-responsive. In addition, here are some general tips that emerged from the event: 

• Ensure you have an easily updatable website with clear, tested guidelines for creating and publishing content during a crisis. In some instances, a separate crisis website may be appropriate for longer-term communications that does not sit well along some other corporate content. 
• Social channels are critical. They provide a direct and fast channel for updating your audience and providing support where necessary. However, participation in crisis-orientated conversations should be approached with caution. 
• Make sure your employees are aware of the company position. Not all staff will have access to the company intranet. It’s worth remembering that staff are also likely to turn to external digital channels for updates. So, a strategy that may include social, email and SMS should be considered. 
• Avoid contradictory messaging by ensure that all content creators and digital channel managers are updated on the current status and digital communications policies. 
• Provide updates in a timely manner. Lean on a 24/7 team that can ensure your technology infrastructure can operate as nimbly as you need to. 

Use Data to Guide your Crisis Communications Strategy 

One of the best tools companies have at their disposal consists of analytics and social media listening platforms that give them insight into public sentiment. Data is important not just for managing a crisis when it happens but also for seeing potential crises on the horizon. Focused and recurring analytics reporting will tell you which channels your audiences are most active on and what type of the activity or content is likely to gain the most attention and traction. 

Additional insight can be gain through social listening and sentiment analysis tools to understand the impact across your industry, how positively messages were received and what else you audience needs to know. 

Contact IDX

 
To learn how to manage crisis communications in context of a broader marketing and communications narrative, see our Brand & Corporate solutions, here or contact us. We can help.