How to Manage Your Brand During a Crisis

When a crisis hits a company, the damage can be devastating and immediate.

Even if you’ve carefully planned for one, it’s difficult to know exactly how your brand will react until a crisis happens.

How do you gain control? How can you be prepared to protect your brand?

Having a thorough crisis management plan in place beforehand is always recommended, but sometimes those plans don’t fulfill your needs when an incident occurs.

Although social media can be an indispensable way to answer questions and send out statements on behalf of your organization, you need a multi-channel approach to effectively and transparently communicate with your customers and other stakeholders.

When dealing with a crisis, resist the temptation to blame negative media coverage on the media itself. In the vast majority of cases, negative coverage is the result of:

• Poor operational decisions,
• An information vacuum, or
• Weak media relations skills.

Here are a few tips on how to shepherd your company through a crisis and still come out on top.

Identify and train a spokesperson: If you want your brand’s image to remain intact, taking control of your company’s message during a crisis is a must. A capable and well-prepared spokesperson is crucial to making sure that happens.

A spokesperson’s role is to transparently represent the company and inform the public about the facts of the situation. However, one size does not fit all when it comes to training someone to be your company’s spokesperson.

Although your spokesperson doesn’t necessarily need to be your company’s CEO or president, he or she must be someone with decision-making authority. Your spokesperson should also have the personality to credibly and sincerely tell the facts.

Befriend social media: We live in a social world where news can spread within a matter of seconds. Your reputation can be damaged if a social media action plan is not in place.

The first step should be to monitor conversations carefully before making any statements or responses. Listen to what others say about your brand and address any misinformation potentially being shared.

This doesn’t necessarily mean responding directly to individuals. Sometimes it’s better to just state the facts or your position. Just remember transparency will demonstrate credibility and dedication to your customers.

Each crisis situation is unique, so each will need to be evaluated for the best social media approach.

Send out a news release: Another critical step in managing a crisis can be to craft and distribute a press release with the company’s official position or statement.

Your company should have numerous crisis templates in your arsenal to expedite the writing of your release; however, the final version you distribute to media and online audiences should be a customized response that addresses the crisis at hand.

The release should highlight a crisis’ current status, your next steps, and how your audience can reach your company with questions.

Although you don’t have to have all of the facts figured out, letting your audience know you are working on finding the correct information is central to building trust.

Making ethical decisions in the boardroom is one of the most effective crisis prevention strategies.

You need to tell your story before others do it for you.

 Discuss:

• The different components of an effective crisis communications plan
• How to minimize the change of a crisis
• Proving the value of your crisis communications plan

   Contact me at reuelsmith.a@gmail.com.