A clear sunny day is the best time to deal with your crisis. Your darkest day is the worst time to deal with a crisis. Let me explain…
A Crisis Communications Drill can simulate realistic emotions and pressures in a controlled environment, where you can mess up in private, rather than messing up during a real crisis.
Your goal in every Crisis Communications Drill should be to test multiple aspects of the organization. These are the seven most important things I test in the drills for my clients:
1) Is there a properly written Crisis Communications Plan that is so thorough that it can be read during the drill, word-for-word, in real time? Does it ultimately result in flawless performance by the Crisis Communications Team?
2) Did that Crisis Communications Plan allow the organization to begin issuing news releases, postings to the web and e-mails to employees within one hour or less of the onset of the crisis?
3) Did executives within the organization slow down the communications process by excessively word-smithing news releases?
4) Did the Crisis Communications Plan have pre-written news releases that were pre-approved on a clear sunny day by the executive team, so they could be released quickly without re-writes?
5) Are their multiple spokespeople who are qualified to stand before my mock media and survive their questioning?
6) Did misguided egotists step out of their assigned rolls and try to take over other people’s jobs? Did they withhold information that kept others from properly doing their jobs, thereby compromising the organization and in its crisis response?
7) Did the drill create enough realistic drama and anxiety, to add a level of fear into all participating teams? Did it help them realize drills and media training must be treated like an athlete treats their sport? Did it help them understand that regular practice on a clear sunny day makes you your best on your worst day.
Free to those who use my Crisis Communications Plan with the Living License.
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When filing an iReport with CNN, you can either place yourself on camera as a narrator of events, or send video of an event that is still happening. That extra video is known in the television business as B-Roll. When I file iReports, I send both.
Ultimately, my goal is for CNN producers to call me to ask me to be interviewed live on CNN or HLN during one of their news programs. During the interview, they will begin with me on camera talking to the anchors, then they will cut away and show the video that I’ve sent.
When you are shooting B-Roll, also called “cover video,” you want to do several things that are important. First, don’t talk. Allow the video to capture the natural sounds of what is going on. After you’ve done that, add a brief narration. This will tell the video editors back at CNN what they are seeing. This is how you provide context and accuracy for your B-Roll.
Secondly, when shooting B-Roll, don’t provide an excessive amount of movement. Start by showing something important and remain motionless for at least ten seconds. With the camera or smart device still recording, pan or turn the camera slowly for about five seconds, then stop and hold the scene for another 10 seconds. This gives the video editors several options. As you look at my tutorial video, you’ll see that sometimes I also walk while taking the B-Roll.
If you, like many others, think this information would be valuable as a workshop at a conference or corporate meeting, please call me at 985-624-9976. You can also download a PDF that outlines the program,Social Media iReports.pdf, so you can share it with your meeting planner or training manager.
https://braudcommunications.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Logo-white-01-300x138.png00gbraudhttps://braudcommunications.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Logo-white-01-300x138.pnggbraud2013-06-18 03:00:042021-05-21 01:07:39Tutorial #19: How to Shoot and Why to Send B-Roll to CNN
Few organizations in the world face the communications challenges of America’s Rural Electric Cooperatives.
On any given day customers could be protesting over electric rates. Workers could be under attack for disconnecting service. Board members could be scrutinized for per diems, travel or expenses. Add to that the growing influence of negative social media comments and big city media covering more co-op controversies, and you have a storm brewing. That storm demands effective communications from all executives, board members, and co-op public relations teams.
Here are three steps every cooperative should take:
There is no excuse, in this modern age of media, for any executive, board member or public relations person to mess up when talking to the media. But it still happens.
Many rural people tend to be friendly, honest and sometimes too chatty. Unfortunately many executives, board members and public relations people mistake the gift of gab for the ability to be an effective communicator with the media. Many board members mistakenly believe the respect they get from their status in their communities will transfer to respect from the media. That isn’t true. The fact is many of the habits you have in everyday conversation have to be avoided when talking with a reporter.
Don’t worry, there is hope. The secret is to set aside one day every year to sit down in front of a television camera with a media training coach to practice realistic interview scenarios.
Since most reporters really do not fully understand the history and inner workings of cooperatives, your media training must adopt the newest innovations in training. Never settle for training that provides only bullet points as talking points. This outdated method leads to bad ad-libs and ugly quotes.
Modern training requires a library of pre-written quotes, learned and internalized by each executive, board member and spokesperson. When written properly, internalized, and practiced, these verbatim sentences provide context, information and strong quotes. These are all elements reporters need in their story. Also, when written in a conversational sentence structure, these sentences are easy to work into everyday conversations by leaders and employees alike.
Consider that many executives who are interviewed complain that they are taken out of context and misquoted. A well-worded, pre-planned opening sentence delivered by the spokesperson can serve as a pre-amble statement that provides context to your cooperative’s goals and purpose. This forever eliminates the issue of being taken out of context.
With annual media training you will be a good spokesperson for good news, as well as when you have to speak to the media during a crisis.
The worst time to deal with a crisis is during the crisis. The best time is on a clear sunny day.
During good times, your cooperative must conduct a vulnerability assessment to identify all potential crises.
You must write a crisis communications plan that chronologically tells you every step you must take to effectively communicate during the crisis.
You must write a preliminary fill-in-the-blank statement to use in the first hour of your crisis when facts are still being determined.
You must create a more detailed news release style statement for each potential crisis that you identified in your vulnerability assessment.
If you identify 100 potential crises, then you need to write 100 potential news releases, using evergreen facts, fill in the blanks and multiple-choice options. This is best done through a facilitated writing retreat with your communications team.
A classic mistake cooperatives make is to prepare communications only for natural disasters, power outages and worker injury. A modern crisis communications plan must also cover smoldering crises such as executive misbehavior, discrimination, financial mismanagement, per diems, and even crises involving social media.
When pre-written on a clear sunny day, these documents are ready for quick release to the media, employees, customers, the Internet and other key audiences. This process is not easy and is time consuming, but it pays huge dividends during your crisis. Many organizations experience a crisis, then in the midst of it, look at a blank word document and try to spontaneously draft a statement. The statement then goes through unprecedented scrutiny and rewrites, resulting in massive delays. In the modern age of fast communications, this is lunacy. You should never put off until tomorrow what you can write today.
Writing your Crisis Communications Plan is the perfect way to get all employees, executives, and board members on the same page. On a clear sunny day you can all agree on the policies and procedures that need to be followed for effective crisis communications. Make sure your plan goes beyond standard operating procedures. Also, make sure it doesn’t rely on only the expertise of your public relations team. The plan must be so thorough that nothing in the process is forgotten, yet easy enough to understand and follow that it can be executed by anyone who can read.
Too many cooperatives make the mistake of thinking their executives can wing it in a crisis. They think a gift of gab equates to being a great spokesperson. They also think that knowledge of the business equips them to manage a crisis and the communications for that crisis.
The secret to getting it right on your darkest day is to set aside time on a clear sunny day to hold a crisis drill. During your drill your emergency managers can run a table-top exercise. Your communications team and executives act out a real-time exercise, complete with news conferences, using role players to portray the media.
When done correctly, a drill exposes bad decision-making, bad behavior and outright incompetence among responders, spokespeople and those in leadership roles. Conversely, annual drills teach your team members how to effectively work together during a crisis. Team members are taught to achieve effective communications while also working to end the crisis.
As more cities sprawl into rural areas, they bring more homes and electric customers into your cooperative territory. The sprawl also brings more media attention and more scrutiny of your operations.
The best way to prepare for the increased attention you will get, is to plan on a clear sunny day and never to wait for the dark clouds to roll in.
About the author: Gerard Braud, CSP, Fellow IEC has helped organizations on 5 continents communicate more effectively with the media, employees and customers in good times and bad. He facilitates writing retreats and workshops to help cooperatives write and complete their crisis communications plans in just 2 days. He also trains cooperative board members and leaders on how to become effective spokespeople.
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{Editor’s note: In 2013, CNN selected me as one of their top iReporters, out of more than 11,000 iReporters. This is part of a series of articles about how you can be a good iReporter and how to make CNN iReports a vital part of your crisis communication and media relations strategy.}
You need to know how to record yourself with your iPhone, iPad or other smart device. Take your device out on a clear sunny day and practice shooting videos. Practice uploading it to YouTube and other social media sites. You will quickly discover it is not as easy as you would think. Often your first problem is that your video is too long to upload. You’ll find that sometimes your bandwidth limits the size of the files you can upload. Other times your internet service provider has limits on file sizes. Discover what the stumbling blocks are on a clear day, because you can quickly lose 30 minutes to an hour of time trying to sort through your technical difficulties. If you need to get a video report filed quickly, you are out of luck when the technical problems start. Speed is a critical part of crisis communications, so don’t let your lack of practice impede your speed.
While teenagers use phones easily and quickly, it never ceases to amaze me how many adults do not know how to do relatively simple things, such as how to reverse the direction of the video camera. You want to have a device that allows you to have a camera facing you while you can see yourself on your own screen.
You also need to spend a significant amount of time learning to use Skype. If you are asked to do a live news report from your iPhone or other smart device, the media will want to call you or will want you to call them on Skype. Little mistakes here also slow you down significantly. When the media is on a tight deadline and they’ve blocked out a window of time for you, you can’t miss your time slot. Hence, set up Skype on your device on a clear sunny day, then practice receiving video calls and making video calls.
Visit Skype.com to get the app for your device or download it from your app store. Much like your social media apps, you’ll need a login and password. There is also a slight learning curve, like there is with any new app. The only way to get use to your Skype app is to use your Skype app. Get a colleague to set up their device also, so you can practice. Learn to use the buttons correctly so you will know the difference between a traditional phone call and a video call.
Additionally, Skype will give you the option in the audio preferences settings to use the microphone and speakers on your device, or to plug in headsets or ear buds. If you use headsets, you need to know what buttons to push so that Skype feeds the sound into your headphones, rather than your speakers, as well as how to make sure what you say is being picked up by the dedicated microphone, rather than the devices microphone. Your device may automatically convert to headphones and a dedicated microphone on its own when you plug them into your audio plug, but you won’t know until you test it out.
Try it both ways and see which one you like the best. If you are in a noisy location when you record your video and when you are broadcasting live, headphones and a microphone are a must.
Practice using the technology. Once you have the technology perfected, we will start focusing on tips to make you great on camera.
Here are the links to other articles on this topic:
https://braudcommunications.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Logo-white-01-300x138.png00gbraudhttps://braudcommunications.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Logo-white-01-300x138.pnggbraud2013-04-22 09:18:342021-05-21 01:20:09Learn to Use the Technology You Need for Crisis Communications Using Your Smart Phone
{Editor’s note: In 2013, CNN selected me as one of their top iReporters, out of more than 11,000 iReporters. This is part of a series of articles about how you can be a good iReporter and how to make CNN iReports a vital part of your crisis communication and media relations strategy.}
As I write this article, the media are reporting on the crisis in Waco, Texas at the West Texas Fertilizer Plant, which blew up.
In a news conference I’m watching on television, the Sheriff is admonishing the media that he has received their request to take video at the scene, but that he cannot yet accommodate them. This is exactly the kind of case that lends itself to the training and lessons I’ve been discussing in this series of articles about CNN iReports. Companies, Public Information Officers (PIO), public relations practitioners, Emergency Managers, and government officials have the ability to use iReports to get critical information and pictures to the media.
As we watch this news cycle, the video we see the most, was captured by a citizen sitting in his truck with is daughter. He was video taping the initial fire, and then accidentally captures the horrific explosion. There are many other online images, as well as video on iReports and YouTube.
This one, specific video that captures the explosion will continue to run until someone provides new, updated video.
In most cases like this, Emergency Responders are so overwhelmed with the damage, dead and injured, that no one in the community is designated as the person who will provide new information and images to the media. The media crave images. The media crave new information. The media on the scene are bombarded by producers and editors back in their offices who are screaming, “Get me something new!” This is true in small towns and large communities alike. I’ve watched this happen repeatedly when I was a television reporter.
Every community, every company, every responding agency, needs to have either a trained public relations person on staff or a public relations and crisis communications expert that can be brought in quickly to manage the media and get the media new information. A modern media relations expert needs to know how to use an iPhone, iPad or other smart device to shoot short 30-second videos that can be uploaded as a CNN iReport, uploaded to YouTube, and uploaded to local media sites, so the media can download and use that video.
Using your smart device you can shoot and upload images of the damage in areas currently not accessible to the media, but open to investigators and responders. You don’t have to take the media in physically, when you can take the media in virtually.
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{Editor’s note: In 2013, CNN selected me as one of their top iReporters, out of more than 11,000 iReporters. This is part of a series of articles about how you can be a good iReporter and how to make CNN iReports a vital part of your crisis communication and media relations strategy.}
Not every crisis warrants shooting a video and posting it to the web, and especially not to CNN iReports. However, if your crisis event is big enough that the media will show up to cover the event, then your crisis is big enough for you to shoot a short video and upload it to iReports.
The account is easy to set up. Visit cnn.com/iReport and follow the instructions. You’ll need a traditional e-mail address and password, just as you have for any of your social media accounts. You’ll be asked to post a photo of yourself and create a bio. It is important that you list your phone number and any way that CNN might contact you about one of your videos.
Some corporate leaders or government officials might object to this strategy of having an iReport account. Here is the reality about your possible crisis — if a crisis occurs, there is a strong chance that someone with a smart phone will photograph and/or videotape your event. They may share it on social media and send it to either your local media or CNN iReport. This means that during your crisis, you can either have your story told by an eyewitness, who may speculate and spread rumors, or you can post a report with better pictures, better video, and credible facts. Given the choice, you should choose the option that gives you the greatest control over the flow of accurate information.
All day and night, CNN has a team of producers monitoring all of the videos that get posted to their website. A selected group of videos get “vetted” by the CNN producers, which is essentially a stamp of authentication or endorsement that a given video is worthy of stronger consideration by web viewers.
The iReport vetting team then notifies the producers of the CNN news programs when they see a video that might be worthy of being put on the air. Sometimes the live programs will run just video or still pictures from the event. Other times they will run all or a portion of the narration that might be on the video. On numerous occasions, CNN has run my video with my short narration. Then they take it a step further and contact me by e-mail or phone call to ask me to do a live report.
In each instance, I was acting as a citizen observing an event, but I could have just as easily done the same thing if I had been serving as a corporate spokesperson or if I was a Public Information Officer (PIO) for a government agency or for state, county or city government. This would also be very useful for Emergency Managers.
If your local media offer options for uploading pictures and videos, you should create an account using their website as well. All of this should be done on a clear sunny day, because you don’t want to try to rush through this on your darkest day when you are in the middle of a crisis.
In our next article, we’ll look at the technology you need to effectively be an iReporter.
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(Writer’s note: Please take 15 seconds of your time to vote for me to win a CNN I-report award for my in-depth storytelling and reporting on Hurricane Isaac. With your vote, I can win the Community Choice Award. Your first vote is greatly appreciated, but to make an even bigger impact you can vote everyday until May 6th. Click here to Vote. )
If you experience a crisis that results in the mainstream media wanting to cover your story, your highest priority crisis communications outlet should be talking to the media. In the vast majority of cases, you should want to have a live human being talking before the media, and not relying on a simple printed statement, e-mail or even social media post.
It works like this: If your crisis is big enough to command media attention one of two things will happen; the media will spontaneously show up at your door or you need to call a news conference and address the media about your crisis.
In a sudden crisis, such as a fire and explosion, or a school shooting, panic and chaos are likely to follow. The fastest way to settle panic and chaos is to calm emotions with a spokesperson that has command of his or her emotions, command of his or her words, and can demonstrate some degree of competence and control.
Many organizations think a written statement is sufficient. It is better than nothing, but those are cold words. A spoken statement is better than a written statement of cold words is. Audio of the written words creates warm words. Audio allows you to convey emotion. Best of all is a person with warm words appearing in person or captured on tender video. The look on a person’s face conveys more emotions than his or her words alone.
In the case studies I have mentioned in previous articles, including at Virginia Tech, at the University of South Florida, at Dominos Pizza, a human being before the media or on video could have made a huge difference in the first hour of the crisis.
The size of your communications department comes into play, as you determine whether you have enough people to record a podcast or web video. If you select podcasting and web video, keep in mind that sites like YouTube limit the length of what you post.
Add to your to-do list time to reflect upon what your technical capabilities are for using social media in the form of podcasting and web video.
Next on my priority list after the spoken word, is posting your information to your website… the website that you control. Next, a series of mass e-mails must be sent to various groups of stakeholders. These stakeholders will include the media, employees, and then groups specific to your organization, such as customers, parents, students, patient families, government officials, etc. If e-mail is down, you will have to contact some of those people by phone as a Plan B. If phones are down, you will have to have a Plan C.
Add to your to-do list the need to make sure you have those lists made on a clear sunny day. Have the e-mail addresses in group folders for fast e-mail notifications. Also, have a full written, printed version in your plan.
It should be noted that I have a strong belief that all audiences are equal and that you need to reach all audiences simultaneously, or as close to simultaneously as possible. When I first started writing crisis communications plans in 1996, my top priority audience was the media because, at the time, the media were the messengers to the masses. Back then, if a company needed to talk with their employees, the easiest way to do so was to put them in front of a television. Technology has changed that drastically.
There are so many ways to talk directly to your employees and key stakeholders. This means that in many respects you can circumvent the media and how the media might interpret the information before sharing it with your audience. Technology at your disposal includes e-mail and websites, plus reverse 911 phone call capabilities, plus text messaging and more.
One problem that many organizations face is that their IT, or Information Technology departments, severely limit who has the ability to update the corporate website. This can be a fatal flaw if you do not have the ability to update your website.
I recently heard a speaker with a public relations firm present a case study lauding how she and her client so masterfully used Facebook and Twitter to reach out to their community during a crisis. When I asked how they used their own website, their answer was, “well, we didn’t have the ability to use our website, so we had to use Facebook and Twitter.” Whoa?! Really? What that tells me is that both the PR person and the communicator at the company did not have a crisis communications plan in place. Instead, they selected to wing it. It says to me that these are people who failed to plan. When you fail to plan, plan to fail.
Add to your to-do list the need for a meeting with your IT department to make sure you have access to a portion of your website so that you can control the content of information regarding your crisis.
In a previous article I discussed how a WordPress blog template is your best tool for fast web updates.
Controlling the flow of information on your website and getting it posted quickly requires a number of things. Previously I mentioned that every one of my plans has dozens of pre-written crisis communications templates. Each one of those templates can be:
a) given to your spokesperson to read to media on site
b) given to a spokesperson from human resources to read to employees if an employee meeting is called
c) can be posted in its entirety to your website
d) can be e-mailed to your key audiences, while still including a link in the e-mail that brings everyone back to your website
To speed the process of posting to your website, you can create what is often called dark pages. These are web pages that are written and coded and sit unpublished. When you need them, you simply hit publish and the information is up for the world to see. This is also covered in more detail in my previous article about using WordPress.
Many major organizations do a poor job of being ready to use their websites. I find airlines to be among the worst. On September 11, 2001, neither American nor United Airlines were ready to use their website for crisis communications. In January 2009, during the miracle on the Hudson landing by US Airways, the company was still more focused on selling tickets on their website than informing the world about their crisis. The US Airways website, to their credit, had a hyperlink on their home page, which I recommend. The link took you to a page in the corporate newsroom with more information, which I also recommend. However, on subsequent visits to the home page, the hyperlink would disappear. If you tried to navigate with the back button to the home page, the home page defaulted to a ticket reservations page. Overall, it was a frustrating experience trying to get first hand information about the unfolding event. If you frustrate your visitors, they will get their information from other sources, which may be less reliable, yet more accessible than your site.
Add to your to-do list the need to convert your pre-written templates into dark pages that are ready to be used quickly.
As mentioned in previous articles, a blog is easy to use and gets high rankings in search engines. It allows you to store many unpublished pages, which are just one click away from being published. Also, search engines place a high value on your blog because a blog is treated as though it is the most current news on the web. Furthermore, the title you place on your blog is quickly picked up by search engines. Hence, if my crisis is food tampering at Dominos, my blog headine would be Dominos Pizza – Food Tampering – Employee Hoax. Simply think of the words that your audience would put in a search engine and use those words in your headline. Don’t sanitize the words in the headlines because the search engines need to see the words that the web searching audience would use.
Additionally, a blog gives you the ability to open the conversation through the comment section of the blog, if you’d like. There are other benefits that you can achieve by using a blog on a regular basis. Industry bloggers and trade publications will follow your blog and use it daily, as well as on the day of the crisis. Add to your to-do list to have an official blog. Many corporations still are of the opinion that a blog is a bad thing because they don’t want to hear the nasty things customers say about them.
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On any given day customers could be protesting over electric rates. Workers could be under attack for disconnecting service. Board members could be scrutinized for per diems, travel or expenses. Add to that the growing influence of negative social media comments and big city media covering more co-op controversies, and you have a storm brewing. That storm demands effective communications from all executives, board members, and co-op public relations teams.
Here are three steps every cooperative should take:
There is no excuse, in this modern age of media, for any executive, board member or public relations person to mess up when talking to the media. But it still happens.
Many rural people tend to be friendly, honest and sometimes too chatty. Unfortunately many executives, board members and public relations people mistake the gift of gab for the ability to be an effective communicator with the media. Many board members mistakenly believe the respect they get from their status in their communities will transfer to respect from the media. That isn’t true. The fact is many of the habits you have in everyday conversation have to be avoided when talking with a reporter.
Don’t worry, there is hope. The secret is to set aside one day every year to sit down in front of a television camera with a media training coach to practice realistic interview scenarios.
Since most reporters really do not fully understand the history and inner workings of cooperatives, your media training must adopt the newest innovations in training. Never settle for training that provides only bullet points as talking points. This outdated method leads to bad ad-libs and ugly quotes.
Modern training requires a library of pre-written quotes, learned and internalized by each executive, board member and spokesperson. When written properly, internalized, and practiced, these verbatim sentences provide context, information and strong quotes. These are all elements reporters need in their story. Also, when written in a conversational sentence structure, these sentences are easy to work into everyday conversations by leaders and employees alike.
Consider that many executives who are interviewed complain that they are taken out of context and misquoted. A well-worded, pre-planned opening sentence delivered by the spokesperson can serve as a pre-amble statement that provides context to your cooperative’s goals and purpose. This forever eliminates the issue of being taken out of context.
With annual media training you will be a good spokesperson for good news, as well as when you have to speak to the media during a crisis.
The worst time to deal with a crisis is during the crisis. The best time is on a clear sunny day.
During good times, your cooperative must conduct a vulnerability assessment to identify all potential crises.
You must write a crisis communications plan that chronologically tells you every step you must take to effectively communicate during the crisis.
You must write a preliminary fill-in-the-blank statement to use in the first hour of your crisis when facts are still being determined.
You must create a more detailed news release style statement for each potential crisis that you identified in your vulnerability assessment.
If you identify 100 potential crises, then you need to write 100 potential news releases, using evergreen facts, fill in the blanks and multiple-choice options. This is best done through a facilitated writing retreat with your communications team.
A classic mistake cooperatives make is to prepare communications only for natural disasters, power outages and worker injuries. A modern crisis communications plan must also cover smoldering crises such as executive misbehavior, discrimination, financial mismanagement, per diems, and even crises involving social media.
When pre-written on a clear sunny day, these documents are ready for quick release to the media, employees, customers, the Internet and other key audiences. This process is not easy and is time consuming, but it pays huge dividends during your crisis. Many organizations experience a crisis, then in the midst of it, look at a blank word document and try to spontaneously draft a statement. The statement then goes through unprecedented scrutiny and rewrites, resulting in massive delays. In the modern age of fast communications, this is lunacy. You should never put off until tomorrow what you can write today.
Writing your Crisis Communications Plan is the perfect way to get all employees, executives, and board members on the same page. On a clear sunny day you can all agree on the policies and procedures that need to be followed for effective crisis communications. Make sure your plan goes beyond standard operating procedures. Also, make sure it doesn’t rely on only the expertise of your public relations team. The plan must be so thorough that nothing in the process is forgotten, yet easy enough to understand and follow that it can be executed by anyone who can read.
Too many cooperatives make the mistake of thinking their executives can wing it in a crisis. They think a gift of gab equates to being a great spokesperson. They also think that knowledge of the business equips them to manage a crisis and the communications for that crisis.
The secret to getting it right on your darkest day is to set aside time on a clear sunny day to hold a crisis drill. During your drill your emergency managers can run a table-top exercise. Your communications team and executives act out a real-time exercise, complete with news conferences, using role players to portray the media.
When done correctly, a drill exposes bad decision-making, bad behavior and outright incompetence among responders, spokespeople and those in leadership roles. Conversely, annual drills teach your team members how to effectively work together during a crisis. Team members are taught to achieve effective communications while also working to end the crisis.
As your facilitator prepares your drill scenario, make sure you include realistic elements of social media, since social media can spread good and bad news faster and further than the reach of traditional media.
Conclusion
As more cities sprawl into rural areas, they bring more homes and electric customers into your cooperative territory. The sprawl also brings more media attention and more scrutiny of your operations.
The best way to prepare for the increased attention you will get, is to plan on a clear sunny day and never to wait for the dark clouds to roll in.
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About the author: Gerard Braud, CSP, Fellow IEC has helped organizations on 5 continents communicate more effectively with the media, employees and customers in good times and bad. He facilitates writing retreats and workshops to help cooperatives write and complete their crisis communications plans in just 2 days. He also trains cooperative board members and leaders on how to become effective spokespeople.
https://braudcommunications.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Logo-white-01-300x138.png00gbraudhttps://braudcommunications.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Logo-white-01-300x138.pnggbraud2013-04-01 01:00:032021-05-21 01:40:25Dark Day Crisis Planning Must Begin on a Sunny Day
(Writer’s note: Every day in March we’ll have a fresh, free, new article on this topic. If you’d like to dig deeper, you may wish to purchase a recording of the teleseminar called Social Media & Crisis Communications. Here is your purchase link.)
As you look at crises, recognize that some crises are sudden, while others are smoldering crises. A smoldering crisis has the potential to get worse with time. You also have the ability to defuse a smoldering crisis and make it go away before it ignites.
From the perspective of the media, you can make the crisis look like a non-story. The way to make your story a non-story is to show competence, communicate in a timely manner and communicate quickly. Let’s look at two case studies.
The first case study was during the 2008 presidential elections. CNN had pegged a county in Colorado as the biggest battleground, barometer county in the country. This county would be the next Dade County, their election process would be the next hanging chad, and the spokesperson would be the next Catherine Harris.
Critics claimed was that the county was ill equipped to handle pre-election day early voting. There could be problems with the voting machines and how the votes are counted.
From a crisis management standpoint, we worked with election officials to make more voting machines available. From a crisis communications standpoint, we were up at the crack of dawn as new voting machines were put in place. Sure, we could have issued a statement… and we did. We made the decision to use YouTube to show the voting machines being set up. Seeing is believing. The voters appreciated it and the media appreciated it. Since the media didn’t want to send camera crews out at their cost at the crack of dawn, we made it easy for them to visually cover the story by using your video on YouTube.
In the process, we showed that the county was competent and going the extra mile. In the end, the media gave up their harsh predictions and took their negative news coverage elsewhere. Social media played a strong role in making a negative story go away.
Add to your to-do list to take the time to be ready to use YouTube by making a YouTube Channel now. Make sure you have an iPhone, iPad or other similar smart device that allows you to quickly shoot and post videos. You may need to learn some basic video editing skills as well.
Along the lines of making a story go away with social media via YouTube, allow me to present my case for the Tiger Woods story. When Tiger Woods had his late night accident at the end of 2009, in his own driveway, it raised a lot of questions. I’ve long said that if you don’t tell your story, the media will think you are hiding something and they will go digging. I also constantly emphasize that you need to be ready to make a statement within one hour of the point at which a crisis goes public. Is it likely Woods, after an accident, would issue a statement quickly? Not likely. An athlete of his stature has “people” and a public relations team. I would expect the team to at least have a statement ready for the first news cycle. Instead, days went by before Woods issued a statement, leading to swirling rumors.
According to the Braud belief system, the power of social media, and especially YouTube, could have done wonders for Woods. When a celebrity goes into hiding, they have something to hide. When they hide, the media go looking for a story. I think a short YouTube video that said, “Hi, this is Tiger Woods. Last night, after a late night playing cards with the guys at my country club, I was involved in an embarrassing car wreck, in of all places, my own neighborhood. I hit a fire hydrant, then pulled forward abruptly and hit a tree. To say the least, this is embarrassing. I appreciate your concern and appreciate your understanding if I let this short video suffice as my statement for now.”
Without seeing and hearing from Tiger, rumors of a marital spat and girlfriend turned into a sex scandal with more than a dozen girlfriends. There is a good chance the bigger story would never have been explored if Woods had come forward and let us see him early.
In the process of presenting my case for a YouTube video for Woods, some have indicated that Woods may have actually been injured, perhaps by his wife hitting him with a golf club. I don’t know the facts about any possible visual cuts to Tiger’s face, but even if I have to shoot the video with a bandage on my face, I would do it and explain the bandage in the video.
The Tiger Woods case study has evolved over the years, but regardless of the facts today, we can consistently observe that saying nothing made the news coverage worse.
Let’s also take a minute to talk about how social media works better for celebrities, than it does for many companies. Celebrities have fanatical fans. Celebrity fans want to follow celebrity tweets, Facebook fan pages and YouTube channels. A manufacturing company or other business may be able to attract some fans, but you don’t have the same advantage as celebrities for reaching out via social media in either good times or bad. Let’s face it, do you think I really want to sign up for the fan page for a chemical plant? For more thoughts on people wanting to follow you, please visit my article about being a social media hypocrite.
In our next article, we’ll look at one big oil company and how they attempted to use social media during their crisis.
https://braudcommunications.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Logo-white-01-300x138.png00gbraudhttps://braudcommunications.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Logo-white-01-300x138.pnggbraud2013-03-28 12:52:482021-05-21 01:40:57Crisis Communication Priorities for a Smoldering Crisis
(Writer’s note: Every day in March we’ll have a fresh, free, new article on this topic. If you’d like to dig deeper, you may wish to purchase a recording of the teleseminar called Social Media & Crisis Communications. Here is your purchase link.)
It is critical to pick the right tools for crisis communication and your crisis communications plan.
The right fit for crisis communications includes your official website, and a mix of crisis communications channels, placed in a priority and used according to that priority. That priority needs to be established during the planning stages of writing your crisis communications plan. That priority needs to be established on a clear sunny day, when emotions are low, anxiety is low and everyone has clarity of thought and purpose. That priority needs to be tested during crisis communications drills, so that everyone in the organization will trust the crisis communications plan and not second guess the plan on the day of your crisis.
Generally my priorities are:
1) Talk to the media on site (If there are media onsite)
2) Post information to your official website
3) Send an e-mail to all employees with a link to the website and a complete text of what is said on the website
4) Send an e-mail to other important stakeholders
5) Post short messages to your official Facebook & Twitter pages with a link to your primary website
6) Post a YouTube video with your official statement
During the planning stages, let me establish the fact that size matters. By size, I mean the size of your communications team. The organizations that use my crisis communications plans vary in size. The Internal Revenue Service has a huge staff of communicators across the U.S. There are global organizations that have employees all over the world, but some have only one or two people on their global communications staff. There are national retailers with a staff of two. There are manufacturing companies that have no communications staff at all. Therefore, when I say size matters, which tools you use and in which priority you use them is directly dependent upon how many people can help you during a crisis.
If a company has only one communicator on staff, it is difficult to do the basics of a news conference, web statement post and e-mail, and still have time to deal with social media. If a company has no trained communicator, they may have difficulty getting a statement on the web and updating social media at all.
Since so many companies have no trained communicators on staff or because they have only one or two communicators, every crisis communications plan I write is created with a failsafe mechanism. This mechanism takes into account that the person executing the plan may have zero training. I have colleagues in the communications world who disagree and believe that plans should be written for communicators only. That is a flaw, first because is failure to recognize some companies have no designated communicators. Secondly, it is a failure to realize that, in some crises, the communicator may be out of pocket and unable to execute the plan.
Your plan must be so thorough that it dictates that you sequentially do everything that a seasoned, senior communicator would do in a crisis. At the same time, it must be so clearly written that anyone who can read and follow directions can execute it. This is a much more difficult plan to write because it must be thorough, yet simple, while at the time not being simplistic.
When I first set out to write such a plan, the first draft took 150 hours and the second draft took another 100 hours. At 250 hours of writing, I tore it down with the goal to make it easier to execute yet impossible to screw up. That plan now has 1,500 hours of development in it and guess what? It is a living plan, which means it continues to evolve and grow.
I consider plans that state only standard operating procedures to be too simplistic and dangerous. This is because there are no mandates to take action in the plan and there are no timelines that must be met in the plan. You can find them online just by searching for crisis communications plans. Many universities use these flawed plans. On the day of the Virginia Tech shooting on April 16, 2007, the university had just such a plan.
The Virginia Tech plan had not been updated in five years, which means it wasn’t a living plan. It contained no names or contact information for anyone. It had no pre-written statements. The directions were so simple that the entire plan looks like it could have been written by a freshman PR student on their first day in class. The plan simply listed standard operating procedures.
Meanwhile, the thorough yet simple approach I advocate embeds the standard operating procedure with a list of chronological steps to take. It has specific instructions to communicate at specific time intervals. It includes a statement within one hour or less of the onset of the crisis, and again at the beginning of the second hour of the crisis, if it is an ongoing crisis.
Take a moment to add to your to-do list time to review your plan and ask yourself if your plan is a simplistic list of standard operating procedures that can only be executed by a trained communicator. If it is, add to your to-do list the need for a major re-write.
If you have questions, I welcome your phone call. I’m at 985-624-9976. My two-day workshop to write and complete your crisis communications plan is the fastest way to get what you need.
https://braudcommunications.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Logo-white-01-300x138.png00gbraudhttps://braudcommunications.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Logo-white-01-300x138.pnggbraud2013-03-27 01:00:402021-05-21 01:46:02What Are the Secrets to a Crisis Communications Plan?
A clear sunny day is the best time to deal with your crisis. Your darkest day is the worst time to deal with a crisis. Let me explain…
You will learn:
