Saturday, February 8, 2014

Creating A Crisis Communications Plan

By Jerri Perry


There are times wherein a corporation would undergo a certain situation wherein their whole name could be spoiled. Scandals, rumors, and other types of bad situations involving the corporation could really destroy the sales of the corporation which is why when these things happen, they have to react quickly. The best thing for management to do in this situation would be to come up with a crisis communications plan.

Now the very first thing to do when making these types of plans would be to determine the medium that the management would want to use in order to blast the message. Now he may choose from a wide array of channels such as the internet, the press, the media, or even just viral rumors. As long as the message gets to the target audience then it is a success.

The very first part of the plan will be a short overview or probably an executive summary of how the situation exactly happened. It has to be a report that is somewhat detailed and should tell of the string of events before the situation. It should also include a report on the things that actually lead to the bad situation.

Included in these types of plans should be the people that were involved in the aiding of the whole issue. Basically, the communications team would have to be mentioned as well as the public relations team because they would be the most help during this time. Also, media contacts as well as other third party contacts will also be added there.

So the next part is a complete assessment of the details of the situation and some solutions that were proposed in the process. Of course this part will now showcase the people who were included and what their specific roles were in the solution of this problem. One may actually use the action matrix to help when making the plan.

Of course the next thing to do is create the message that will be shot to the target audience. The first thing to do would be to include a lot of facts that are relevant to the situation as well as some key words that the corporation would want to point out. Now a lot of corporations would actually make use of the five step model for message preparation to help them.

Now the last part would be to now come up with the details on how exactly the management would want to present the message. Now when a corporation would want to target a specific audience, then they should show a list of people that are in that audience. From there, the media contacts, press contacts, and of course some third party contacts would be listed in this part and how they are going to be used to blast the message.

So if a corporation has to make a crisis communications plan, then try to follow this template. One thing to always remember is that a crisis has to be addressed as quickly as possible. It actually should be in a week otherwise the bad image stays.




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