Crisis communication resources to help you protect your revenue, reputation, and brand.
Effective crisis communications when “it” hits the fan.
Welcome to Our Crisis Communication Blog
Our blog is filled with deep resources to help with your crisis communication needs. Whether you are writing a crisis communication plan, seeking the best media training tips, or digging for case studies on crisis situations, you’ll find it here. Our goal is to give you all of the public relations resources you need to protect your revenue, reputation, and brand.
For those of you who love DIY and taking on a challenge, we’ve worked really hard to give you a good road map to follow. However, sometimes the fastest option is to bring in a pro. If that’s the case, we’re fully vaccinated and we’re ready to meet your needs, anywhere and anytime.
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?
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…”
https://braudcommunications.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/crisis-news-release.jpg12801920gbraudhttps://braudcommunications.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Logo-white-01-300x138.pnggbraud2021-10-28 08:20:572021-10-28 08:20:58Crisis News Release Reality: This Scares Me
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.
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
https://braudcommunications.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Crisis-communications-master-class-1.jpg7201280gbraudhttps://braudcommunications.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Logo-white-01-300x138.pnggbraud2021-10-19 12:42:532021-10-19 12:56:27Crisis Communications Master Class: The Golden Hour
The Facebookcrisis 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.
Essentially, Haugen confirmed how the algorithms focus on your bad news and get your crisis event in front of more eyeballs on Facebook, while your good news perishes. It’s why we strongly urge our clients NOT to use Facebook as part of their crisis communications strategy. A key takeaway line from social media marketing expert Jay Baer was his observation that you should never build your house on rented property, i.e. Facebook is rented property. You are better to build your house on your website.
We’ve often defined a crisis as any event that can damage an organization’s reputation, revenue, and brand. This week, Facebook is the poster child of crisis communication lessons.
A whistleblower calls out Facebook’s algorithms on 60 Minutes
Facebook’s stock value immediately takes a nosedive
Social media lights up with #DeleteFacebook
The whistleblower calls out Facebook’s algorithms before Congress
Facebook crashes
Facebook is slow to issue a crisis communications statement about its own crisis
Facebook’s response and behavior are very similar to how big tobacco and big chemical behaved in the 1970s. The chemical industry has made huge strides in their efforts to reduce chemical emissions, as well as in their crisis response. Big tobacco has seen their clientele disappear as it attempts to morph into a vaping business.
The Facebook crisis communications lessons will continue. Winston Churchill once said,
To that extent, we believe that every crisis is a living classroom and worthy of your attention so you can learn from the success or failure of others in crisis. The lessons learned should serve as an incentive for you to engage in the 5 Steps to Effective Crisis Communications, so you can have the tools to communicate effectively should you face a crisis.
The Facebook crisis is a treasure trove of how not to handle a crisis. We suspect things will get much worse in the days and weeks ahead.
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…”
Pumpkin spice crisis communications is the latest craze among companies, CEOs, and public relations professionals. These are people who realize that Fall is here. We’re in the final quarter of the year, and they have failed to meet their goal of completing a crisis communications plan, their crisis communications news releases, their crisis drills, and the other components of their crisis communications strategies.
To welcome Fall and to embrace whatever panic you may have, we’re ready to help you sprint through the 5 Steps of Effective Crisis Communications. Just smell the aroma of rich crisis communications plan nutmeg, cinnamon news releases, ginger media training, and accents of cloves in your crisis communications drill!
Your challenge is to take a huge task – Crisis Communications – and make that task easy and fast. Fortunately, we pioneered this concept for you back in 2005. We figured out a way to let you customize a crisis communications plan in… you ready for this? Drum roll… five hours.
Yep, you can have a finished plan in five hours as we sprint through the process. (Of course, the secret pumpkin spice ingredient is that we’ve put more than 25 years of experience and more than 6,000 hours into development, just so you can create crisis communications magic in five hours.)
Sure, you can cook up your own crisis communications plan if you have 2,000 to 4,000 hours sitting on your spice rack… and who doesn’t? But if you don’t have the extra time, our Crisis Communications Sprint system is like pulling a box of carrot cake mix off the shelf in the morning and having a perfect crisis communications plan finished before dinner.
Your crisis communications plan is Step 2 of the 5 Steps. On the front end, you need to conduct a Vulnerability Assessment to evaluate all the “stuff” that might “hit the fan.” That’s Step 1.
The secret sauce to your crisis communications plan should be having a deep library of pre-written news releases. That’s Step 3. We have 100 pre-written news releases with your name on it. However, for some of you, your best bet is to subscribe to the SituationHub crisis communications news release app. SituationHub can actually write an advanced crisis communications news release in 3-5 minutes.
Some of you realize your greatest need to train your spokespeople. We call that Step 4, but often it is a perfect standalone training class. A single misplaced word can damage a company’s revenue, reputation, and brand in ways that are as foul as putting dill in your pumpkin spice mix.
The icing on the cake is Step 5, when you conduct a Crisis Communications Drill. That’s when you get to test your crisis communications plan, your crisis communications news release, you get to test your spokespeople, and you get to test the ability of your entire team to work together. A crisis communications drill can be agonizing and exhilarating all at the same time. Most importantly, it lets you make mistakes in private so you can correct them in private, without ever making those mistakes in public.
So, what is your next step? How about a free discovery call to discuss your specific needs?
Pull up a chair, order a Pumpkin Spice Latte, and how about you and I chat about your Pumpkin Spice Crisis Communications needs?
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…”
Today’s crisis communications tip is to Mind the Gap. There is a gap of time between the flashpoint of your crisis and the time in which your first crisis news release statement is released to the world. You need to communicate the truth. If you fail to do so, you create a Truth Gap.
If you’ve been to the London subway, you’ve seen signs that say, “Mind the Gap.” There is a gap between the subway station platform and the subway train door. If you don’t “mind the gap” you will step into a gap that will injure or kill you. In crisis communications, if you don’t mind the gap, you will injure or kill your revenue, reputation, and brand.
My challenge to you is to close the gap in your crisis communications process in order to release a statement to the media, your employees, and your other key stakeholders much faster than ever before.
In a previous blog, we talked about how the SituationHub.com crisis communications software application can transform the Crisis Communications Golden Hour into Golden Minutes.
Social media has made the gap in crisis communications worse because Twitter and Facebook Live are telling the story in the first minute, while most companies take three or more hours before they release a statement to the media, their employees, and other key stakeholders.
Use the SituationHub.com app to write news releases in 3-5 minutes or have a library of pre-written news release statements as Microsoft Word documents.
Regarding #1, most crisis communications plans only outline a list of tasks to be done. Very few light a fire under anyone’s butt. Your plan needs to light that fire. Speed is king.
One secret to speed is for your plan to outline how you can release small bits of information a little at a time.
You don’t need to know everything before you say anything.
As long as you are accurate and you do not speculate, a little information is better than no information and it is better than waiting until you know everything. Simply close the statement by saying,
Members of our team are gathering additional information and we will share that information with you as soon as possible.
Regarding #2, most crisis communications plans have holding statements. I like a feature in the SituationHub app called “The First Critical Statement.” Depending upon the situation, the app will ask you 10 to 20 questions, then based on your answers it will automatically write your holding statement. It covers the basics that all reporters want to know, such as who, what, when, and where. To the delight of your lawyers, why and how are addressed in sentences that deflect speculation. And to add a cherry on top of your news release statement, lawyers and executives can pre-approve the language the day you subscribe to the app, rather than on the day of your crisis when seconds count.
At the time we are writing this, SituationHub offers 50 to 75 detailed news releases for a variety of companies, including electric companies, chemical companies, credit unions and banks, schools and universities, and general businesses. We’re told that the app will be adding government and healthcare options next.
Regarding #3, a crisis communications drill lets you make mistakes in private, so you don’t make mistakes in public. This allows you to test your plan to make sure it works as designed. You also get to test the ability of your people to follow directions and evaluate who goes “off script.” You get to test your ability to mind the gap and close the gap with pre-written news release statements. You also get to test your spokespeople in mock news conferences.
Oh, and regarding spokespeople and news conferences, the SituationHub crisis communications software also generates a written script for spokespeople to read at a news conference. The script pre-answers questions before they are asked by reporters, thereby reducing the number of questions asked during the news conference.
In conclusion, the gap is closing on you because of social media. Take steps today to mind the gap by putting tools in place on a clear sunny day, in order to be your best on your darkest day.
Here are some resources to help you on your crisis communications journey:
There are several good videos on the SituationHub page that show the app in action
https://braudcommunications.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Crisis-communications-tip-pdf.jpg10881408gbraudhttps://braudcommunications.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Logo-white-01-300x138.pnggbraud2021-09-28 14:11:062021-10-01 15:12:34Crisis Communications Tip: Mind the Gap
The crisis communications golden hour is all about the emphasis for companies in crisis to take bold, decisive steps in the first hour, in order to manage both the crisis and the public’s perception of the crisis.
But the crisis communications golden hour really needs to be reduced to the crisis communications golden minutes.
Have you heard about SituationHub.com? It is a new crisis communications software application that allows a company to quickly gather information about a crisis and generate a news release or crisis statement in 3 to 5 minutes.
SituationHub is a game-changer because it is the first time crisis communications can move at the speed of social media.
The flaw with the crisis communications golden hour concept is that Twitter and Facebook Live happen during the first minute of a crisis. SituationHub closes the gap because it automates the crisis communications process, and it automates the writing of a news release or crisis statement.
SituationHub has forced me to re-write my crisis communications plan template. For more than 25 years my crisis communications plans have evolved, but when one of my clients uses SituationHub, the first five chapters of my crisis communications plan becomes five sentences:
Publish your statement for the media, employees, customers, and stakeholders
The One Hour Rule
Historically, we know that the longer it takes a company to issue a statement about a situation or crisis, the more damage that company is likely to experience to its revenue, reputation, and brand.
Historically, my crisis communications plans dictated that the user must issue a statement to the media, employees, and all stakeholders within one hour or less of the onset of the crisis going public.
That’s worked for me, but in the back of my mind I’ve been thinking, “That’s still 59 minutes after the first Tweet or Facebook post.”
The Three Hour Reality
I’ve studied crisis situations in my days as a television reporter and my second career in crisis communications. In most cases, more than three hours pass between the flashpoint of the situation and the release of the first statement. That is unacceptable!
Why is this?
Most companies fail to write a proper crisis communications plan on a clear sunny day.
Most companies fail to have a library of pre-written news releases for their crisis events. Hence, valuable time is lost writing a first draft statement, then having that statement marked up and edited by executives, then waiting for the second draft, then waiting for more edits, then releasing a final draft.
Hopefully, more organizations will discover SituationHub and turn the crisis communications golden hour into the crisis communications golden minutes.
Here are some resources to help you on your crisis communications journey:
You can sign up for my free 5 Steps to Effective Crisis Communications Video Course
