Should You Use a Written Statement or a Video Statement for Crisis Communications?

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By Gerard Braud, CSP, Fellow IEC

In crisis communications many people are afraid to put a media spokesperson in front of the media for an interview or news conference. Often a company in crisis will ask, “Is it okay if we just issue a written statement? Do we have to do a news conference?” At the same time, corporate lawyers often write a statement and distribute it to the media, rather than having a news conference.

So which do you think is better? Should you use a written statement or an oral statement for crisis communications? And, as an option, can you issue a video statement?

First, recognize that written statements often feel canned. They used phrases such as, “Safety is our top priority,” even though the event is clearly an indication that safety was never the top priority.

Here are a few facts about written statements:

  • Written statements often feel cold, as though you are saying the absolute minimum.
  • Written statements often make it appear you are hiding the facts and the truth in a crisis.
  • Written statements often can be misinterpreted, because they lack the intonation of a voice.

When we speak, the audience can hear empathy, caring, and concern in our voice. For that reason, the spoken word is more powerful than the written word. Add to that the visual empathy and concern seen through facial expressions, and it should be a no brainer that any statement in which we hear a voice and see a human face is vastly more effective for crisis communications than a written statement.

Social media, Facebook Live, YouTube, YouTube Live, Twitter, Periscope and many other platforms make it easier than ever to record, publish, and share a statement during a crisis.

In the 5 Steps to Effective Crisis Communications, Step 3 is the concept of having 100 or more pre-written statements ready to use at a moments notice. (If you are not familiar with the 5 Steps to Effective Crisis Communications, sign up for our free 5-video course.) The pre-written statements should all be written for oral delivery. This means each statement is ready to be recorded and published to your crisis communications website or to your favorite social media platform.

You should note, that successfully recording a video or using a live social media video platform requires practice. In Step 4 of the 5 Steps, we emphasize the importance of media training. The same skills used to conduct an effective news conference can be used to record a video.

Does a video statement absolve you of your responsibility to conduct a news conference? No, it shouldn’t. In a crisis you should conduct interviews and/or news conferences. You should be prepared to successfully answer questions from the media.

However, if your organization tends to avoid news conferences in favor of printed statements, a video statement is an effective way to show more empathy, care, and concern.

If we can help you more successfully navigate the troubled waters of crisis communications, please reach out to us.

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:

How to Use Social Media for Crisis Communications

The Biggest Lie in Crisis Communications

4 Steps Every Company Needs to Take in Order to Avoid the Default Spokesperson

When is the Flash Point of a Crisis?

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By Gerard Braud, CSP, Fellow IEC

In crisis communications, experts will tell you that speed is important. As a benchmark, in every crisis communications plan I write, the organization is expected to issue their first statement about their crisis within one hour or less of the crisis becoming known to the public. This can be considered your flash point.

In the world of fire and combustion, the flash point is that moment in which the heat rises to a level at which a flame is generated.

Apply this thinking to crisis communications. Think of there being two types of crises:
1. A Smoldering Crisis
2. A Sudden Crisis

A smoldering crisis can be compared to a bunch of oily rags in a hot garage. It takes a while for them to get hot. When they reach a certain temperature they start to smoke and smolder. As the temperature goes up further it all bursts into flames. We have a flash point.

A sudden crisis can be like a lightening bolt striking a house. The flash point is instantaneous. A sudden crisis can also be compared to striking a match. The flash point is instantaneous.

So in crisis communications, a smoldering crisis may be something such as an accusation of embezzlement or executive misbehavior. Internally a complaint may be filed or questionable practices may be uncovered and exposed. Certain internal decision makers know of this potential crisis, but the outside world does not.

In this type of smoldering crisis, the crisis communications team should receive a confidential briefing and they should immediately prepare a statement for all stakeholders. But initially, the organization is under no obligation to immediately issue a statement. The organization has time to decide their crisis management response, i.e. will the suspect employee be fired, suspended, etc.

The crisis management team also has a number of considerations.
• Whether this information can be kept private or if there is a high probability that the outside world will find out
• Sometimes, there is a legal obligation to tell the outside world
• Sometimes legal authorities are involved

In this type of smoldering crisis, the organization determines the flash point, defining it as the moment that they issue a statement to stakeholders, such as employees, the media, stockholders, customers, or any of the many variations of stakeholders.

If you fail to create your own flash point, your organization runs the risk of an outsider triggering the flash point, which immediately positions your organization in a defensive posture. Triggering the flash point yourself usually earns you more credibility with your stakeholders.

In a sudden crisis, the flash point is determined by the crisis. If your organization experiences an explosion, the flash point of the explosion is the flash point of your crisis and triggers your crisis communications clock. That clock is the mandate to issue a statement to the outside world within one hour or less of the onset of the crisis.

In the 5 Steps to Effective Communications, all 5 steps come into play regarding flash points.
1. During your Step 1 Vulnerability Assessment, you should identify the sudden crises and the smoldering crises.
2. In Step 2 as you write your Crisis Communications Plan, you must spell out your response behavior options based on whether you experience a sudden crisis or a smoldering crisis.
3. In Step 3 when you write your library of Pre-written Statements, the wording must consider the type of language used in a smoldering crisis versus the types of sentences you might use in a sudden crisis.
4. In Step 4, when you conduct Media Training, your spokespeople should be taught how to conduct a news conference and an employee meeting for both sudden and smoldering crises.
5. In Step 5, when you conduct your Crisis Drill or exercise, don’t fall into the trap of always holding an exercise that only deals with disasters and sudden crises. Mix in some smoldering issues as well.

Whether the flash point of your crisis is slow or the flash point of your crisis is sudden, effective crisis communications helps you put the bad news behind you so you can move on to recovery.

Should you need my assistance to accomplish any of the 5 Steps to Effective Crisis Communications, you can register for the 5 video course on the right hand sidebar of this blog, or reach me at 985-624-9976.

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:

How to Use Social Media for Crisis Communications

The Biggest Lie in Crisis Communications

4 Steps Every Company Needs to Take in Order to Avoid the Default Spokesperson

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Is There a Difference Between a Crisis and a Disaster?

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By Gerard Braud, CSP, Fellow IEC 

Technically, a disaster is a crisis. However, your organization can experience a crisis that is technically not a disaster.

In crisis communications and in your crisis communication plan, your organization should plan for two types of crises.

  1. A sudden crisis
  2. A smoldering crisis

What is the difference between a smoldering crisis and a sudden crisis?

A sudden crisis happens without warning. An explosion is a great example of a sudden crisis. By definition, that explosion can be a disaster.

A hurricane or a tornado can be both. They have an element of being a sudden crisis, but in reality, both are preceded by weather forecasts that warn the public of a possible strike. Absent is true predictability of exactly when and where they will strike, so that part of the crisis skews to the sudden side of the definition.

Executive misbehavior is a classic smoldering crisis.

How is a “crisis” defined?

Many public relations experts think a crisis is something that damages your organization’s reputation. This is true. But a good way to define a crisis is to think of it as any situation that escalates to the point of damaging both an organization’s reputation and its revenue.

Why is this distinction important? Executives and leaders view reputation management as a soft skill. When you begin to address a crisis as a situation that can affect revenue, you are likely to gain more respect and more attention.

When you position yourself as a strategic partner who is looking out for the organization’s bottom line, trust me… you’ll earn a seat at the table.

Many organizations wrongly focus on only crises that rise to the level of an emergency. That leaves a gaping hole in your level of preparedness and response.

In the 5 Steps to Effective Communications, Step 1 focuses on your Vulnerability Assessment. Your assessment, when done correctly, must include all sudden crises, such as emergencies, but also all smoldering crises.

Many organizations will tell you they have experienced far more damage to reputation and revenue by smoldering crises than they have to sudden crises.

Don’t create your own disaster by having a single crisis communications plan focus on disasters and emergencies. Expand your crisis communications plan and crisis communications strategies to include the smoldering events.

To learn more about how you can prepare for both a sudden and a smoldering crisis, we invite you to take a free deep dive into the 5 Steps to Effective Crisis Communications. Just click here to receive your 5 short videos that outline the 5 steps.

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:

How to Use Social Media for Crisis Communications

The Biggest Lie in Crisis Communications

4 Steps Every Company Needs to Take in Order to Avoid the Default Spokesperson


5-Day Crisis Communications Challenge Synopsis

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By Gerard Braud, CSP, Fellow IEC 

In January 2019, you were issued a dare to participate in the 5 Steps to Effective Crisis Communications Video Course. Some of you have taken the challenge and you’ve become expert communicators. Some of you kicked the can down the road. No worries can-kickers. You can become a crisis communications expert in the four remaining months of 2019.

Last week, we issued a 5-Day Crisis Communications Challenge. With only four months left in 2019, you are being challenged to focus on your crisis communications plan with crisis preparation, crisis practice, and ultimately, a focus on how you can be the expert who achieves crisis perfection. Just take one day, one step at a time, viewing these five brief videos and articles to help you get moving in the right direction.

On Monday, we discussed what a Vulnerability Assessment is, and why you need to start writing down every sort of situation that could become a crisis that would cause you to generate a possible crisis response for your organization.

Crisis Plans, Crisis Preparation, Crisis Practice & Crisis Perfections = Crisis Communications Expert

On Tuesday, we talked about how to begin managing your communications with a crisis communications plan, and the differences of those crisis plans that don’t work (think checklists), versus ones that really work.

How to Write a Crisis Communications Plan That Works?

On Wednesday, we discussed the importance of writing pre-written news releases and how to write the perfect news release to address every item listed on your Vulnerability Assessment.

How to Write News Releases for Your Crisis Communications Plan?

On Thursday, we discussed what happens when you do not send out a spokesperson to release a public statement within the first hour of a crisis, and media training tips for the spokesperson you select.

How to Media Train a Spokesperson for a Crisis?

Finally, on Friday we explained what a Crisis Communications Drill is and how to conduct a realistic, effective drill for your organization, in order to practice on a sunny day, what your organization might face on their darkest day.

How to Do a Crisis Simulation Exercise?

There they are. The steps you need to take to move in the RIGHT direction. The steps you need to be BOLD and start the conversation in your organization no one is willing to have. Watch the videos, share the videos, share the articles with your colleagues who could benefit from them.

Oh, and the dare to complete the 5-step video course still stands. I challenge you to take 10 minutes a day for five days to watch, learn, then implement the five steps. Register with this link.

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:

Please Pick Me to be Your Media Trainer

The Biggest Lie in Crisis Communications

4 Steps Every Company Needs to Take in Order to Avoid the Default Spokesperson

How to Do a Crisis Simulation Exercise?

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By Gerard Braud, CSP, Fellow IEC 

A crisis communications drill is the best way to test your crisis communications plan, your crisis communications news releases, your designated crisis spokespeople, and your crisis management team.

Click here to watch the Braudcast YouTube Video

You’ve been challenged this week to renew your focus in September on crisis communications. The challenge specifically dares you to complete all 5 steps to effective crisis communications before the end of 2019.

(Get more details when you download our free video course on the 5 Steps to Effective Crisis Communications)

After you have completed steps 1-4 of effective crisis communications, it is now time for you to test all of the elements and all of the people.

As you prepare your team for your drill, state clearly that:

Your goal is to mess up in private so that you never mess up in public.

-Gerard Braud

It is okay for you to let everyone know the day and date of the drill. However, you don’t want to announce the time of the drill if it can be avoided. An element of surprise is always useful.

In picking a start time, remember that most crises strike at the most inconvenient time. So give some thought to sending out a notification that the drill has begun about the time that your staff members are getting the kids off to school. That is a really bad time for a crisis and a really realistic time to begin a crisis drill.

While your drill can focus on an emergency situation such as a fire or explosion, keep in mind that a crisis communications drill can also focus on a cyber breech, a weather event, or accusations of executive misbehavior.

The drill scenario should be written like a murder mystery, complete with misdirection designed to trick your team members into possible false assumptions. Likewise, pepper your crisis drill injects with a variety of fake social media posts, fake videos, and fake eyewitness accounts. This will force your crisis management team and your crisis communications team to sort out the facts from fiction.

Test your crisis plan and your crisis management team for speed:

  • How long did it take to initially notify everyone of the possible crisis?
  • How long did it take for team members to gather once the drill notification was sent out?
  • How long did it take before the first news release was prepared, approved and released?
  • Was a pre-written news release used and did it undergo an excessive amount of scrutiny?
  • How quickly was a spokesperson able to appear before the mock media to conduct a news conference?
  • How well did the spokesperson perform?

Generally, when it comes to news releases and news conferences, your drill should contain at least two.

When and where possible, create decision-making conflicts so that members of your crisis team have to address moral, ethical, and procedural issues that could easily arise in the real world.

Take notes throughout your drill. Note key accomplishments. Note bottlenecks. Note conflict. Note times.

Those notes will become an important part of your post-drill evaluation.

On average, your drill should take three to four hours. Your post-drill evaluation usually takes one hour to 90 minutes.

Your drill becomes your roadmap for your future tasks:

  • Did your plan have flaws? If yes, correct the flaws.
  • Did members of your team get in each other’s way? Coach them to stay in their lane and let others do what they do best.
  • Did edits to pre-written news releases take too long?  Ask your leadership team to pre-approve the language in the pre-written news releases.
  • Did spokespeople fail or simply fail to be good enough? Quickly schedule a follow-up media training class.
  • Did people second-guess the directions outlined in the crisis communications plan? Schedule a full reading and edit of the crisis communications plan.

Finally, if your drill leaves room for improvement, then schedule another drill soon and practice until you get perfect.

Failing in a drill is acceptable. Failing in a real crisis is a real problem.

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:

Please Pick Me to be Your Media Trainer

The Biggest Lie in Crisis Communications

4 Steps Every Company Needs to Take in Order to Avoid the Default Spokesperson

How to Media Train a Spokesperson for a Crisis?

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By Gerard Braud, CSP, Fellow IEC

In the world of media training and media interviews, there are some serious flaws that you should avoid. These are especially true when you have to do a media interview during a crisis.

Here are a few:

  • Media training is not about how to be fast on your feet; it is about how to be prepared so there are no surprise questions.
  • Your goal is not to answer every question. Your goal should be to control the questions you get asked, the answers you give, and ultimately, to control the final edit of the news stories about your crisis.
  • Three key messages based on bullet points is an asinine concept and needs to be eradicated. Well-worded, internalized, verbatim sentences and quotes must be your spokesperson’s secret weapon.

Your best bet for your spokesperson? Read from a script.

(Get more details when you download our free video course on the 5 Steps to Effective Crisis Communications)

The pre-written news release we spoke of in yesterday’s blog should be your script for your news conference.

In addition to the tips we offered on how to write a great crisis news release, here is one more: Your news release, and ultimately that news release as the script you will read, should pro-actively answer every question you are going to be asked in the news conference.

“That’s impossible,” you say?

“How can that be done,” you ask?

I bet you are thinking, “No one knows every question you are going to be asked in a news conference.”

Surprise. There are only two types of questions that get asked in a news conference.

  • News conference question type #1: Factual based questions, such as who, what, when, where.
  • News conference question type #2: Speculation based questions, such as how and why.

Put the facts in your news release.  Read the facts in your news conference from your script. Next, deflect speculative questions with pre-written answers such as,

Regarding the exact cause of the explosion, at this time it would be inappropriate for us to speculate on the cause. We will have to wait for an investigation to tell us what happened, how it happened, and how we might keep it from happening again.

In media training for a crisis, your spokesperson must be trained to internalize the sentence that deflects speculations. In media training, your spokesperson must be given permission to say that line multiple times, until the reporters understand that despite rephrasing the question many times, the answer is still the same.

Also in media training for a crisis, your spokesperson needs to internalize the above sentence so that it sounds thoughtful and spontaneous. You don’t want your spokesperson delivering the line with anger or frustration.

As for reading from a script, recognize that it isn’t easy. Remember:

  • There is an art to reading slow.
  • There is an art to being able to read and look up to make eye contact with the audience.
  • There is an art to being able to look back at your script when the questions start coming, so you can repeat an answer that you’ve used before.

Lastly, media training for a crisis is something that every spokesperson should do at least once a year. Media training is not a bucket-list item that you do once in life. Media training is a skill-set that requires regular practice with a great coach who will be brutally honest with you and perpetually challenge you to be a crisis communications expert.

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:

Please Pick Me to be Your Media Trainer

The Biggest Lie in Crisis Communications

4 Steps Every Company Needs to Take in Order to Avoid the Default Spokesperson

How to Write News Releases for Your Crisis Communications Plan?

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By Gerard Braud, CSP, Fellow IEC 

Click here to watch the YouTube Video

There is an old expression that says, “Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today.”

In the world of crisis communications and crisis communications plans, that saying should sum up the concept of planning and preparing.

Why would you wait to decide what to do in a crisis, on the day of your crisis, when you can predetermine your actions through a crisis communications plan, as we discussed in yesterday’s blog.

Writing pre-written news releases falls into this same category.

Why would you waste time writing a news release in the midst of a breaking crisis, when 95% of your crisis news release can be written on a clear, sunny day?

– Gerard Braud

(Get more details when you download our free course on the 5 Steps to Effective Crisis Communications)

If you want to be a crisis expert, examine what goes right in most crises and what goes wrong in most crises.

In the age of social media, one of the things that perpetually goes wrong is that eyewitnesses tell your story long before your official, well-informed account is ever told.

A perpetual pain, problem and predicament for public relations people is that since so many people fail to plan ahead, they wait until they are in the midst of a crisis before they write the first word of their crisis news release.

Imagine you have a fire and explosion. Imagine that people may be dead or injured. Imagine that there is a fire and evacuations are necessary. And imagine that in the midst of all of this chaos and anxiety, you have to open a new Word document and start writing a news release. Yes, imagine that you are staring at a blank computer screen and writing from scratch. That, my friends, is insane.

Furthermore, you’ll spend 30 minutes to an hour drafting your release. Then your crisis management team will spend 30 minutes to an hour marking up and making edits to your first draft… so that pisses away two hours. By the time you finish your second draft and the approval of your second draft, it will likely be 3 to 4 hours before your company releases their very first statement. Keep in mind that within the first 60 seconds of that explosion, eyewitnesses started posting pictures and video on social media. Some eyewitnesses may be broadcasting your crisis live on social media. You are insane if you are going to let 3 to 4 hours pass without an official news release.

At a minimum, your organization should have a First Critical Statement issued in one hour or less of your explosion. A First Critical Statement is a basic pre-written news release that can be edited and released in 5 to 10 minutes. If you don’t have one, download one free from my website. Use the coupon code CRISIS

https://braudcommunications.com/product/first-critical-statement/

Today, on a clear, sunny day, you can likely write 30 smart, well-worded sentences that could be used as your crisis news release for that explosion.

What might that look like?

It would include:

  • Who
  • What
  • When
  • Where
  • How many are dead
  • How many are injured
  • How many are missing
  • Are evacuations underway
  • Where are people being evacuated to
  • What corrective actions or responses is your company taking
  • What should the community members do
  • Which agencies are responding
  • A clear statement that says it would be inappropriate to speculate on the cause until a full investigation is completed
  • A sincere statement of empathy without it being a statement that inadvertently accepts any responsibility that would cause your lawyers to halt all communications
  • A managed expectation of when things might return to normal
  • Communications about contingencies for the community, customers, and employees

How to write the perfect crisis news release?

  • Write it like a news story.
  • Don’t bury the lead.
  • Don’t make it self-centered and company facing.
  • Write it like a speech, because you’ll want your spokesperson to read it to the media at a news conference.
  • Write it for the spoken word and not for the written word. That means eliminate sentences with commas. Use short, staccato sentences. Never use compound sentences.
  • Leave blanks in the document for facts that can only be added on the day of the crisis.
  • Use multiple-choice lists when answers can have many variables.
  • Make sure you have subject-verb agreement baked into every sentence.

Your goal should be to have one pre-written news release for EVERY item that you list in your Vulnerability Assessment that we talked about in Monday’s blog. My goal is to always have a minimum of 100 pre-written news releases in every crisis communications plan.

If you know the pain of a lengthy news release review by executives and lawyers, you should take comfort that a pre-written news release can be pre-approved. That means the language and sentence structure has been cleared and given the green light. The only thing that needs to happen before you release your statement is that you need to double-check the facts on the day of your crisis.

A pre-written news release is your best friend during 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…”

More crisis communications articles:

Please Pick Me to be Your Media Trainer

The Biggest Lie in Crisis Communications

4 Steps Every Company Needs to Take in Order to Avoid the Default Spokesperson

Crisis Plans, Crisis Preparation, Crisis Practice & Crisis Perfections = Crisis Communications Expert

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By Gerard Braud, CSP, Fellow IEC

This is a 5-day crisis communications challenge. With only four months left in 2019, you are being challenged to focus on your crisis communications plan with crisis preparation, crisis practice, and ultimately, a focus on how you can be the expert who achieves crisis perfection.

In January 2019, you were issued a dare to participate in the five steps to effective crisis communications video course. Some of you have taken the challenge and you’ve become expert communicators. Some of you kicked the can down the road. No worries can-kickers. You can become a crisis communications expert in the four remaining months of 2019.

The dare to complete the 5-step video course still stands. I challenge you to take 10 minutes a day for five days to watch, learn, then implement the five steps. Register with this link.

In 4 months you can complete the 5 steps:

  1. A crisis vulnerability assessment
  2. Writing or updating your crisis communications plan
  3. Writing your library of pre-written crisis news releases
  4. Media training your spokespeople for crisis communications news conferences
  5. Conducting a crisis communications drill to test your plan, your spokespeople, and your team

Here is today’s tip for you to complete step 1 – your Vulnerability Assessment:

Your mind has been pre-occupied in June & July with vacation. In August your distraction is getting the kids back in school. Use September to refocus and start with either conducting a baseline Vulnerability Assessment or updating your existing Vulnerability Assessment.

In order to write a crisis communications plan and a library of pre-written news releases for when “it” hits the fan, you have to know what your “it” is.

If you’ve never done this before, open an Excel spreadsheet and start writing down every sort of situation that could become a crisis that would cause you to generate a possible crisis response.

Keep in mind that this must go beyond a list of emergency situations. While emergencies are usually something that can trigger a crisis communications plan, non-emergencies are often more likely to trigger your crisis communication plan. This includes executive misbehavior, such as sexual harassment and embezzlement.

Once you’ve written down everything you can think of, separate them by classes, such as, natural disasters, crime, environmental, labor, activists, violence, workplace injury/fatality and so on.

Now start making visits to executives, middle managers, and members of your labor force. Simply ask them what situations they see daily that could arise to the level of a crisis. Define for them that a crisis is anything that can damage the reputation and revenue of the organization.

Add their observations to your list. Sort their observation by categories.

Next, attempt to identify what the economic impact would be to the organization if each one of these things happened. Use real dollars to calculate real impact for each one of the scenarios you identify.

By the way, once a quarter you should revisit this list and this process because new events will come up that did not exist three months before.

Once your list is completed, call a meeting with executives and let them know what you have learned and share the potential financial consequences of each item on the list.

Often, this list of vulnerabilities can be reduced because leaders will speak up and offer ideas that can eliminate a potential situation or crisis. Great. Hold them accountable to eliminate or mitigate the issue. For example, if malware and fake links in emails is one of your vulnerabilities, your IT team can likely put systems in place to prevent employees from clicking on bad email links. Hence, crisis eliminated or mitigated.

For all that remain, you now need to be prepared to communicate about them in the event any of these particular issues ignites into a crisis.

Tomorrow we’ll talk about how to begin managing your communications with a crisis communications plan.

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:

Please Pick Me to be Your Media Trainer

The Biggest Lie in Crisis Communications

4 Steps Every Company Needs to Take in Order to Avoid the Default Spokesperson