Navigating a crisis in a social media landscape [Slides/Flowchart]

At the Social Media World Forum earlier this week, Lucy Allen and I ran a workshop about crisis communications. It's called 'Red Alert - Navigating a crisis in a social media landscape'. As the title suggests it looks at how social media has changed very nature of the crises which impact a company, and what this means from an issues management perspective.

Red Alert - Navigating a Crisis in a Social Media landscape

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Essentially we believe:

• There are two types of crisis - event-based crises (like a chemical factory explosion) and information-based crises (like a negative blog post, inaccurate statistic, or damaging opinion). Most companies are likely to face the second, informational type of crisis, whereas traditional issues management is aimed at countering the classic something-bad-has-happened crisis. So there's a gap which this approach aims to fill.

• Preparation is important - which means mapping out the likely crises across the axes of likelihood and impact, getting your messaging straight etc. But it also means opening up the channels of communication (blog, Twitter) which you'll rely on when a crisis breaks now (not during).

• Whether to respond or not is key - but how do you decide? We offer a workflow (see below) to help you. It's based on the excellent framework from the USAF Public Affairs Agency Blog Response Guidelines but moves it forward to cope with other channels and situations based on our experience.

• How you should respond - OK so we're going to respond, but how and what should you actually say? We offer some factors to consider, as well as some Dos and Donts.

I hope you find this a useful and practical framework for your crisis communications. We'd love to hear your feedback, or any lessons you've learned in the trenches so we can continue to build on this. Please feel free to share the response workflow or this slide deck. We have poster-sized copies of the workflow if that's useful, just let us know and we'll pass one along. LEWIS - Blog Response Workflow Nov 2009

Comments

[Ben Carlson]

Morgan, thank you for this framework. I missed your presentation, and without the benefit of your accompanying commentary I'm unsure what you mean by "offset" and "who - you? community?" on slide 13. I'd be grateful for a brief explanation.

Also, it seems to me that with a few minor tweaks you could organize your blog response workflow into "positive" and "negative" situations and dispense with the "extended" category (not the elements therein, but the category heading). I believe this would result in a clearer diagram. If you're interested I'll be glad to email you a markup to show you what I mean.

[Morgan McLintic]

Ben - thanks for your kind feedback. By offset we mean - what else could you do to move the conversation in a different direction? Perhaps you have some other announcements which cld give people something else to talk about other than this problematic topic.

Who should respond suggests that it doesn't always need to be you. In fact if you have a vocal, engaged community it's often more credible if they are able to counter inaccuracies for you. Less defensive. So think about how to find those people in advance, and bring them into your communications outreach.

I'd certainly love to see any enhancements on the workflow. The delineation here is that you might treat a chronic issue of negative comments which are gathering momentum slightly differently than a one-off. The idea is that on its own, the article isn't an issue but as it picks up attention, it becomes one. Or perhaps you have one reporter/blogger who persistently takes a negative stance and want to address it.

We're thinking about running the workshop as a webinar, so hopefully we can add a bit more color to this. Meantime, please do send your revisions morgan AT lewispr DOT com - thank you so much.

Morgan