What is the best way to train your team for a crisis?

External threats may have already been identified during a SWOT analysis in strategic planning for the organization. In a crisis response PR exercise, have your marketing team workshop some public responses to fallout from the most likely risks.

Workshopping different scenarios is always a great idea and identifying the key players who should be involved in the crisis response will help eliminate a lot of stress. Social crisis planning should be a multidisciplinary collaboration. Legal, Comms, Marketing (Social,PMM,etc.), and product teams should all be involved if you working B2B SaaS. This will vary by industry. Social crisis planning should be an annual task at least. Social platforms evolve and new platforms emerge so it's best to reevaluate the plan every year.

This step is really important as it will help you be agile when a crisis arises. In my experience, it helps to specify a channel to communicate in. For example, if the crisis is severe, its helpful to use a dynamic platform like WhatsApp to get timely responses. So having a dedicated WhatsApp group on standby increases reactivity time.

No fancy jargon in the response. Your response should be simple and clear. Keep it short, sweet, and to the point. Yes, you want to sound empathetic but don't overdo it. Otherwise, you risk sounding insincere. Anticipate the follow-up questions you may receive because there will be no avoiding the questions once you release your response. Every part of your response should be intentional and meant to evoke some form of emotion.

Timely, transparent messages matter. My company found itself in a crisis in 2022 that could have been handled more proactively if we had approved messages. Instead, we waited 1 week to respond because the stakeholders couldn't align on a response. The lack of communication with our audience caused the crisis to gain even momentum across platforms which killed our brand sentiment on social. It took the brand handle 1 year to recover.

Tabletop exercises are extremely valuable for training. When I worked as a social media manager for a large university, once a year we brought the whole crisis communication committee and university leadership together for a simulated crisis response. We were all presented with a simulated crisis and formed our response together in an effort for training for the real thing. When actual crises happened, it helped so much as everyone knew their roles, where comfortable working as a team, and had a clear protocol in place. Training is everything.

Socialize the plan with the entire organization! I've seen teams who don't do this have to backpedal because an employee responded to a much of crisis tweets incorrectly. I love the enthusiasm of employees who want to jump in and help, but half the time the responses cause more damage. For folks that want to help, train them and put them on a tiger team that can be activated promptly during crisis situations.

Catch a crisis before it turns into one! Software for social listening, automation, and analytics include: 1. Zapier 2. Buffer 3. Iconosquare 4. Later 5. Mention 6. Sprout 7. Hootsuite 8. Sprinklr

Competitive listening is important for refining your crisis plan and response. Sprout Social and Sprinklr both have nice capabilities when it comes to competitive listening. Monitor what other brands are saying. What channels do they use for sharing crisis responses? How fast do they respond? I have a Trello board with examples of crisis examples from other brands and competitors. I personally love the light-hearted responses from Canva.

Just as in life, in business, never ignore a problem! Have tactful, public-facing responses planned for your social media manager. Apologetic, thankful, and empathetic undertones in a short, concise response to their comment. Have the SMM or Communications Lead send them a DM offering a solution and a way for them to follow up with your team. Your brand reputation is everything.

As head of social, I've always partnered with my CS team to have canned responses and an ever-growing XLS of situations and answers for how to deal with them. Generally, in times of crisis, there should be a plan that has sign-off from appropriate higher-ups.

Employee advocacy and creators can also be helpful during crisis situations. Use these voices to activate campaigns post the crises to build sentiment and trust in your products again.