Course Description
This course will teach you how to implement a communications plan including social media response to use in different types of crisis; whether a major emergency or a business-related crisis. You will learn how to ready your communication function to respond rapidly and effectively in a crisis to manage perceptions in media and online.
Case studies, practical exercises, and scenario testing will be used to demonstrate how easy it is to get caught out and help you internalize the practical steps you can take now to ensure your crisis communications are ready to face any type of situation.
Course Objective
• How to develop a practical plan to respond effectively to any type of crisis
• Establish your organization’s readiness for crisis communication activities to mitigate reputational damage
• Understand the information needs of different groups of stakeholders (customers, employees, authorities, the wider public, the media
• Understand what information will be needed so you can plan ahead
• Learn how to make social media an integral part of any communication response
• Know what needs to be said by whom and when
Who Should Attend
Communications Managers, Public Relations Managers, Crisis/Contingency/Emergency Manager, Continuity Manager, Planning Advisor/Manager, Emergency Response Coordinator
Learning Methodology
: Highly Interactive Session, with a bilateral approach to the subject matter allowing participants to share incidences at respective work locations;
: Case Studies
: Experience Sharing
Course Outline
Crisis communication planning
• Identifying your crisis communications team and assigning responsibilities
• Preparing by identifying all potential crisis situations and how you would respond to these
• Ensuring that every staff member understands the communication plan to ensure consistency and clarity
• Ensuring a fast response; what needs to be in place to be able to achieve this?
• Understand who your stakeholders are and establish a notification system to be able to reach them during a crisis
• Integrating the use of social media into every aspect of your crisis communication plan
Critical Communication
• Encoding
• Channeling
• Choice of Words
• Decoding
Identifying your key crisis-specific messages
• Identifying your key crisis-specific messages unique to each situation
• Knowing what type of information each crisis’ stakeholders are looking for
• Who controls the message going out during a crisis?
• The benefits of ‘holding statements’
• Avoid reacting without adequate information
• Keeping it simple
Communicating with staff
• Identifying any potential gaps or bottlenecks in your current internal communication system
• How to reach your staff during a crisis; ensuring that you have all the information needed before the crisis hits
• Dealing with the ‘human factor’ in a crisis
• Ensure staff receive the messages you would like them to repeat elsewhere
Communicating with the media
• Practical advice about how to manage the media in a crisis
• Assessing what information should be provided and how to communicate this to the media
• Meeting the needs of different media groups during a crisis
• Managing unexpected inquiries and how to answer questions when you don’t have the answer
• Why it pays to engage, rather than avoid the media
• How to deal with misreporting
Communicating with consumers and other external stakeholders
• Reaching your customers directly if required
• How your current communication efforts will aid your message during a crisis
• Responding to negative stakeholder responses or confusion
• Re-establishing credibility and confidence with internal and external audiences
Using social media
• Social media overview: What are the different types, how do they work, who will you reach using these media?
• Which has social media proven to work best during different types of crisis situations?
• How social media is changing crisis and emergency responses
• How to harness the power of social media in a crisis – as an information gathering tool, to communicate internally and externally, to aid your response effort
• Managing your messages through social media during a crisis
• How to influence ‘chatter’?
Case studies
• Examining what angles traditional media channels picked up on in recent cases
• Examples of social media responses (good and bad)
• What can and has gone wrong?
Group Activity
What makes an effective response in different crisis scenarios including; natural disasters, major workplace accident, PR disaster, major product recall?