The First Step In Digital Crisis Management

It's almost a joke amongst communication pros. The first step isn't the YouTube video response. It isn't evaluating whether the Twitter uproar is gaining velocity or dying out. It isn't even pulling your comms team together for a crisis meeting internally to figure out what to do.

The first step is, of course, preparing for the crisis before it ever happens.

Now, that communications 101 gem was handed down to me from the true veterans of the the big sories from the last decades (think "Tylenol 1982"). In today's Web-accelerated environment, having a plan in place that clearly identifies procedures and roles is even more critical.

We had a client crisis within the past couple of years that really called for a response video. Now the client wasn't all that social Web-savvy. They had to learn fast. Still the 3 days it took to get everyone on-board with a video response from .... oh, that was another long discussion; that was 2 days too long. Planning for crisis response reveals these hurdles and gets executives and lawyers over them such that when a crisis hits you are not spending your energy convincing folks that your customers and those who influence them are all over YouTube or Facebook or Twitter.

4 Ways to Prepare for Digital Crisis Management

1. Get a Listening post program in place imediately.
We and others have said so much about this over the past 5 years that I doubt more needs to be said. The short story is that if you are not listening to your publics across the entire Social Web - blogs, Twitter, Social networks, opinion and review sites - then you are at risk.

2. Get the C-suite smart about social media as a communications phenomena and channel.
Any significant crisis is going to bubble up to the CEO of President to make decisions. Sure, s/he will look for advice from the VP of Communications, legal teams and more but that CEO will want to make their own decision. If she doesn't understand the potential power of the social Web in the communications mix, then she may make a bad decison. With all the CEO's a-twittering it is an easy step to introduce the training necessary for the C-suite to "get it." before you bring that group to the brown bags where you discuss the significance of Facebook, do these three things:

Create a training session specifically designed for the top executives. Part hands-on, part data and significance, this session will reveal the power of the Social Web (How many tweets were there in the first 24 hours of the Dominos video and what was the average number of followers for those tweeting....). It will also give them a chance to touch the tools themselves which is often revelatory.
Set up an RSS reader stocked with content for them. Give them The Daily Influence - our custom reader in partnership with Netvibes. Or make up your own on iGoogle or whatever you prefer. Go into their computer (with their permission, of course) and set it up as the first screen they see upon launching their prefered browser. If possible, walk them through the simple process of adding a feed so they feel empowered to modify the collection. Having their own reader will help them stay on top of what is going on via social media. Usually, we combine traditional media feeds with a collection of blogs relevant to the industry, social media guru blogs and RSS of search results in Twitter, Google blogs, YouTube, etc.. for the brand(s)
Then invite them to the brown bags you have on usng Twitter for Business or the Facebook Bootcamp. They may not show up as they are busy execs but you might be surprised....

3. Build a list of likely scenarios
Chances are your coms team already does this. What if our product or service fails and injures people? What if we are 'attacked' in any way? What if an executive is caught in Vegas with a...? You get the picture.Now, you need to add social media fueled crisis. What if a video portraying some terrible act in our stores is published to YouTube? What if a growing collection of customer bloggers start talking about a customer service-nightmare together? What if detractors organize online and begin to use social media to attack (think Greenpeace and Apple)?

You can't imagine every secenario. But if you identify the most obvious ones including the platforms online where they could manifest you can start to imagine the responses necessary.

4. Create your digital crisis management procedures and integrate into your larger playbook
Two simple ideas here: plan your use of social media to respond and make sure you integrate with your other means of response (e.g. traditional media, outreach to stakeholders, internal communications). Planning can cover the steps, the roles and the tasks necessary to get the right response out there faster than you may have ever done it before. You wil find all sorts of annoying details fall out of this process like:

when should we post a response video on our site vs. YouTube or both?
how do we use Twitter to share our POv if we don't already have a Twitter handle in place?
who should be the "voice" of the crisis and are they up to being "personal" (e.g. shirt sleeves rolled-up, no obvious reading of scripts)
How will we gauge who is influential out there and how best to engage them?

The last thing you want to do is scramble on how to do all this stuff once some knucklehead posts the video of himself pulling an "American Pie" on your product (never saw the film but the concept, while disgusting, is clear).

Anyhow, that is step one from my perspective. There have been many good posts on follow-on steps including these:

Jeff Woelker: Five Tips For When It All Goes to Hell

Edison Lee: Crisis Management lessons

BusinessWeek: Dominos Discovers Social Media

Bernstein Crisis Blog