Chances are you won’t need to handle a major crisis for any of your clients, but the amount of money, time and stress your agency will save by preparing for one is immeasurable.
The other benefit of preparing early is to get into the “planning ahead” mindset and instill confidence in your new clients. Strengthen your business pitch and show them what they want to see - that you can masterfully represent them online, no matter the weather.
According to the “Containing a crisis” study by Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, 28% of crises spread globally in 24 hours. It takes most companies 21 hours to correspond with their audiences.
All while the effects of a global crisis, like a drop in share price, was recorded in 53% of the surveyed companies and didn’t bounce back in a year’s time.
Each crisis is unique (just like your clients), but there are commonalities in how a business should respond to one. Download our social media crisis management playbook to learn how to identify, prepare and handle a crisis.
One big part of crisis management is monitoring social media channels like Twitter to identify issues as early as possible. Look for an increase in negative mentions, but mind that not all crises start and end on social media. These may lay the ground to a crisis as well:
- An accident happens that gets immediate news coverage
- The CEO of the company creates a PR disaster during an interview
- Ex-employee of the company shares sensitive information on Reddit that goes viral
Since all your communications (social media replies, public statement, blog or website page) must be approved by your client, you need an efficient, close to flawless workflow and approvals system in place.
Create a plan that outlines the severity of a crisis, its owner, key stakeholders as well as the roles and responsibilities of both teams. Schedule a fire drill to test if the plan works to complete the preparation - it will take effort but it will be worth it.
What’s included in our social media crisis management playbook?
- How to use monitoring to identify a crisis early
- How to distinguish a problem from a crisis and where to look
- Why you should deal with your client’s crisis swiftly
- What you’ll need to tackle any kind of crisis
- The seven most common crises and how to handle them
- How to avoid the small day-to-day errors that will hurt your client-agency relationship
- Your two-page crisis management template with a handy checklist to guide you in the moment
