I always get asked for my ultimate digital PR crisis communications plan which I wrote about in my book and turned into a course as more and more public sector and government agencies face online crises.
Social media, community and digital marketing managers don’t always come with a PR background so it’s important your management team meet to discuss the potential for any PR crisis on your social networks and have a plan in place. In 2023, you need to be digitally agile and active in order to be able to adequately deal with a crisis that spills over online.
15-Step Digital PR Crisis Communications Plan
1) Establish the facts first
When a crisis breaks there is a real danger that a CEO will go into crisis shock and immediately go on the defence. Your first role as a manager is to remain composed, establish the facts and ask the right questions.
What is the crisis?
You need to be able to nail down exactly what the crisis is because you are preparing a communications plan based on this. So succinctly describe the crisis in one paragraph, because that’s exactly what the media will do. This will help you focus on the core issue and thus deal with it and not sidelines matters.
Who is involved?
Being able to identify the main protagonists in the crisis is vital. Apart from you or your organization who else is impacted by this crisis? Is it another company, another person (staff member, customer, supplier, creditor, business partner), a regulatory agency or a state body? Don’t forget the media will be involved so keep them high up on your list of ‘who’s involved’?
How did it happen?
You must tie down how the crisis evolved and ultimately erupted. This is necessary in order to be able to communicate the facts. It might be the case that a series of unfortunate events led to this crisis, so ensure you track every incident, episode, action and reaction so that you are not operating in a communications silo.
