I had originally shared these ten steps on crisis management and how to put together a plan over on Kami Huyse's blog, Communication Overtones, but after last night's PR 2.0 chat where we discussed crisis management and social media, I realized that so many companies still struggle with crisis management.


Often they think they need a HUGE three-ring binder that includes a page on every single possible crisis that might occur. And that–my marketing, PR and communications friends–is completely unrealistic and ineffective! Not to mention that it could take forever to get an actionable plan together.
When it comes down to it, managing a crisis isn't about a plan...but knowing how to properly handle ANY crisis that might occur with authority, sincerity, confidence, compassion, etc. It comes down to skill/experience versus having a playbook. And whether you're a company engaged in only traditional PR or public relations 2.0, these steps will help you to get started in the right direction.
Here are the ten basic steps that I have used successfully for years:
Basic Planning:
1. Invite all departments that could be affected by a potential crisis to a meeting (marketing/PR, legal, manufacturing, IT, executives, etc.).
2. Document each department's crisis concerns then rank them from low to high in crisis level and low to high in level of potential.
3. Make a color-coded table of the crisis situations (Red = high level crisis, high potential, Orange, high level crisis, medium potential, etc. Colors can vary.).
4. Select the crisis team (typically one key person from each department).
5. Select who will be the spokesperson/people during a crisis (a media trained spokesperson is ideal).
Basic Strategy:
6. Invite the crisis team to a meeting to review the table, agree on each situation and its level and potential.
7. Develop a potential response for each situation (obviously until the situation occurs, you can't have an exact & accurate response, but it helps to be prepared).
8. Develop a business card size call tree for the crisis team. Make sure that there is one person who is the ONLY key contact for media (when it comes to blogger relations, you may have more than one person). It's that person's job to contact the rest of the tree and inform them of the crisis situation.
Basic Practice:
9. Select a partner to work with the key contact to randomly test their crisis situation skills (ex: "Hi, this is Sue from the Daily Herald, word on the street is that your company will be having massive layoffs this week any comments?"). Or practice writing comments for potentially negative blog comments & posts.
10. Take notes on how the practice calls/comments were handled. Evaluate, repeat, practice even more.
[From the original post] ...10 easy steps to crisis management, it's impossible right? One might think so, but I've found that when potential crisis situations are actually ranked (from the potentially realistic to the potentially outlandish), discussed and strategized for it actually helps to curb corporate risk aversion. It also helps when there's a crisis team in place that is all on the same page, practiced and confident. That said, these 10 steps assume that you are dealing with a team that understands public relations and is media trained. When it comes to actually speaking to your publics during a crisis, the key basics of being honest, forthright, etc. still hold.
Your thoughts? Can you plan for a crisis in 10 easy steps and still be effective?
If you want more background, examples and details, you can read the original post over at Kami's blog.
NOTE: The PR 2.0 chat is held every Wednesday night at 8pm EST on Twitter. The hashtag is #pr20chat. All are welcome to participate! (There's a different PR 2.0 topic each week.)