Braud Communications

3 Crisis Communications Master Class Recordings to Listen to Before the New Year

December 2, 2021/0 Comments/in SituationHub /by gbraud

The year is almost over, and you may be asking yourself, what have I learned? What would I do differently? Have I prepared my organization for effective crisis communications?

Sure, it’s the busiest time of year. Thankfully, as you are wrapping presents, making Christmas cookies, and trimming the tree, you can pop in your Airpods and learn on the go. Although we hosted many crisis communications Master Classes this year, here are just three you can mark off your bucket list and not feel overwhelmed by the task or what you learned. Consider it our gift to you.

Crisis Communications Master Class: Change the Way You Write

The world has changed and so must you.

The world doesn’t have time to read what you wrote. Yet, you need the world to comprehend your message. So, what’s the secret?

Use this link to access the replay.

You’ll learn 10 reasons why you should change how you write a crisis communications statement.

Crisis Communications Master Class – The Crisis Communications Golden Hour

Minutes and seconds count in a crisis. Preparation is the key to fast crisis response. We dig deeper into the need for speed in your crisis communications and explore the tools you need to effectively communicate.

Use this link to access the content.

We discuss:

How to organize communications so that crucial information gets out fast
Why some messages work better than others
How to choose the right words
Skills to be an effective spokesperson
What you need to know about special populations or other unique factors in your audience

Facebook Crisis Communication Lessons

The Facebook crisis communications lessons are many. The explosive interview on 60 Minutes and the testimony before Congress from whistleblower Frances Haugen confirms and reinforces the crisis communication lessons we discussed in the SituationHub Master Class that originally aired live on March 11, 2021. The Master Class is called The Social Media Conundrum. You’ll want to watch that program, in which we zeroed in on why Facebook’s algorithms are built against you in a crisis.

Crisis communications and media training expert Gerard Braud, CSP, Fellow IEC is based in New Orleans. Organizations on five continents have relied on him to write their crisis communications plans and to train their spokespeople. He is the author of “Don’t Talk to the Media Until…”

Photo by Lore Schodts on Unsplash

Crisis Communications Master Class: Change the Way You Write

November 17, 2021/0 Comments/in SituationHub /by gbraud

The world has changed and so must you.

The world doesn’t have time to read what you wrote. Yet, you need the world to comprehend your message. So, what’s the secret?

If you missed last week’s crisis communications master class use this link to access the replay.

You’ll learn 10 reasons why you should change how you write a crisis communications statement.

In the class, we challenged conventional writing and crisis management wisdom, we ruffled feathers, we insulted your English teacher, challenged your Public Relations professor, brushed off your legal team, and empowered you to change the way you write crisis communications statements.

We focused on ways to:

Increase comprehension by your stakeholders
Ensure greater accuracy by the media
Speed up the statement approval process
…and much more

As a bonus, schedule a confidential discovery call to privately discuss the crisis communications challenges that you want to conquer in 2021 by using this link https://calendly.com/braud/15min

Be well; be safe; be prepared,

The SituationHub Team

Crisis communications and media training expert Gerard Braud, CSP, Fellow IEC is based in New Orleans. Organizations on five continents have relied on him to write their crisis communications plans and to train their spokespeople. He is the author of “Don’t Talk to the Media Until…”

More crisis communications articles:

15 Questions to Ask Before You Use Facebook for Crisis Communications

Can You Handle a Crisis When it Hits by Winging It?

Crisis Management Lessons from Hurricane Katrina vs. COVID19

Photo by RetroSupply on Unsplash

Crisis Communications News Release Contest

November 9, 2021/0 Comments/in Public Relations /by gbraud

This is our crisis communications news release contest.

Rules: The clock is ticking. You need to get a statement posted to your website, emailed to the media, and emailed to your employees. Below is the statement that you have been given.

Do you post it and send it out as is?
Do you make edits?
If you make edits, write the time you begin editing and the time you complete the edits.
Email your revised script to Admin@SituationHub.com
You must explain your edits. A short video explaining your edits would be great.
If you make no edits, explain why.

Time edit begins ________

Fire at Houston

At ABC Chemical, one of our goals is to always keep our employees, our community, our customers, and the media apprised of activities at our facility.
We can confirm that at this time we are responding to a fire.
The event began at approximately 12:30 PM.
The address of this event is 123 Main Street, Houston, Texas.
The location of this event is commonly known as our Houston facility.
The event is ongoing.
We can confirm there are no known fatalities.
We can confirm there are no known injuries.
At this time everyone is accounted for.
We have requested assistance from the Houston Fire Department and EMS.
Members of our team are in the process of gathering additional facts about this event.
We encourage everyone to avoid speculating about the facts of this incident. Likewise, we caution the public that what you see on social media may not be accurate. We encourage you to rely only on information from official sources, such as agencies responding to this event.
We ask the media and all interested parties to expect additional updates from us.
We will post any updates to our website at CompanyName.com.
In the meantime, please bear with us.

Time edit ends ________

Total time spent editing _______

Download a PDF version of this crisis statement here:Download

Photo by Evy Prentice on Unsplash

Change the Way You Write Crisis Statements

November 8, 2021/0 Comments/in SituationHub /by gbraud

It is time to change the way you write crisis statements and crisis communication news releases.

The world has changed and so must you.

The world doesn’t have time to read what you wrote. Yet, you need the world to comprehend your message. So, what’s the secret?

It begins with using short declarative sentences.

In crisis communications speed is critical.

If something is factually correct and fast it is better than overly word-smithed and slow.

If you tell the audience who, what, when, where, why, and how quickly, they will forgive the absence of writing in prose.

If you write the way people talk, your stakeholders will comprehend your message more quickly.

If you write your crisis statement like a TV news script, you greatly increase the likelihood that the media will copy and paste the bulk of your script into their script with minimal edits.

As a word nerd, I’m probably going to piss off a whole bunch of people with this blog. (Can we say “piss off”?) Ok… we don’t want to offend anyone, so let’s say we’re going to ruffle some feathers.

As word nerds, we were all taught proper writing styles by our English professors, our Public Relations professors, and even our Journalism instructors. If we wrote the way they wanted, we got an A. They were conditioning us.

But guess what? You are a grown-up. Your English teacher taught you something that worked great 20 years ago. Your Public Relations teacher is teaching you old-school techniques.

We’re going to give you permission to be a grown-up and carve your own path. We’re going to tell you to break the rules!

We’re going to dig deeper into this on our next Crisis Communications Master Class on Thursday, November 11, 2021 at 1 p.m. CST. Use this link to register for the class.

You’ll learn 10 reasons why you should change how you write a crisis communications statement.

You will learn how to:

Increase comprehension by your stakeholders
Ensure greater accuracy by the media
Speed up the statement approval process
…and much more

Sign up for the live class or sign up for the replay. Your free admission is courtesy of SituationHub.com

Crisis News Release Reality: This Scares Me

October 28, 2021/0 Comments/in SituationHub /by gbraud

With Halloween on the horizon, I thought I’d confess something that frightens me. The question is, am I more frightened than you?

It scares me to think how many companies are ill-prepared to communicate quickly with the media and their employees when they have a crisis. Boom – fire, explosion, workplace shooting, chemical release, natural disaster…

Does it scare you? It should. But most companies kick this can down the road. Being prepared is not a high priority. They think they will just magically figure it out as all hell is breaking loose. Yea… that never works. It’s frightening åhow many executives think this way.

It frightens me so much that I spent four years building an app called SituationHub.com.

In one to three minutes it can automatically write a crisis news release. Most ill-prepared companies take three to four hours to get a first statement out.

We have two months left in 2021. How about you set a goal for us to talk about how SituationHub can take away the fear for all those crises that can keep you up at night.

In the age of social media, you have only minutes to get communications out to the world. Can you get a message out in minutes? If you wait more than a few minutes, the media and social media can destroy you, your revenue, your reputation, and brand.

That should frighten you. But does it scare you enough to take action?

Use this link to schedule a time for us to talk.

Crisis communications and media training expert Gerard Braud, CSP, Fellow IEC is based in New Orleans. Organizations on five continents have relied on him to write their crisis communications plans and to train their spokespeople. He is the author of “Don’t Talk to the Media Until…”

More crisis communications articles:

15 Questions to Ask Before You Use Facebook for Crisis Communications

Can You Handle a Crisis When it Hits by Winging It?

Crisis Management Lessons from Hurricane Katrina vs. COVID19

Photo by David Menidrey on Unsplash

Crisis Communications Master Class: The Golden Hour

October 19, 2021/0 Comments/in SituationHub /by gbraud

Last week’s crisis communications master class focused on the golden hour, a very critical time for those facing a crisis. If your company is facing a crisis, you must issue a statement to employees, the media, customers, and other stakeholders within one hour or less of the situation becoming known to the public. If you fail to communicate during the crisis communications golden hour, the narrative will get captured by others who may not know all of the facts.

What they post to social media will likely damage your revenue, reputation, and brand. The effects of that damage can be long-lasting. In this master class, we talk with Doug Levy, author of The Communications Golden Hour. Your host is SituationHub Founder and crisis communications expert Gerard Braud. The SituationHub crisis communications software platform can not only help you communicate effectively during the crisis communications golden hour, but SituationHub can actually write your first communications statement in 1-3 minutes. It turns the golden hour into the golden minutes.

Replay – Free Master Class – The Crisis Communications Golden Hour

Minutes and seconds count in a crisis. If you missed Thursday’s free Master class, the replay is now online.

Use this link to access the content.

Preparation is the key to fast crisis response. We dig deeper into the need for speed in your crisis communications and explore the tools you need to effectively communicate.

We discuss:

How to organize communications so that crucial information gets out fast
Why some messages work better than others
How to choose the right words
Skills to be an effective spokesperson
What you need to know about special populations or other unique factors in your audience

Your free registration for this Master Class is a gift from SituationHub.com. If your company has the potential to experience a crisis (and you know it does),

SituationHub is the fastest way to:

Gather the facts
Confirm the facts
Notify your crisis team
Write a statement for the media, your employees, and stakeholders.
…and do it all in a remarkable 3-10 minutes.

Be well; Be safe,

The SituationHub Team

SituationHub.com makes crisis communications move at the speed of social media. Use this link to schedule a free, private call https://calendly.com/braud/15min

To schedule a free, confidential demo for the crisis communications software SituationHub, visit: https://www.situationhub.com/#demo

CONNECT: https://twitter.com/situationhub

VISIT OUR SITE: https://www.situationhub.com/

Crisis communication resources to help you protect your revenue, reputation, and brand.

Welcome to Our Crisis Communication Blog

3 Crisis Communications Master Class Recordings to Listen to Before the New Year

Crisis Communications Master Class: Change the Way You Write

Crisis Communications Master Class – The Crisis Communications Golden Hour

We discuss:

Facebook Crisis Communication Lessons

Crisis Communications Master Class: Change the Way You Write

Crisis Communications News Release Contest

Change the Way You Write Crisis Statements

You will learn how to:

Crisis News Release Reality: This Scares Me

Crisis Communications Master Class: The Golden Hour

Replay – Free Master Class – The Crisis Communications Golden Hour

We discuss:

SituationHub is the fastest way to:

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