Key Elements of a Crisis Management Plan

Houston, we have a problem!

The last four words in this famous phrase can be traumatizing for anyone, especially for those who are unprepared.

One motto that I live by is “If you stay ready, you don’t have to get ready.” This saying applies to anything in life, including social media.

Before we get into that, I am sure you are wondering how do you prepare yourself.

Well, it’s simple! The key is to develop a plan that would list out possible issues and solutions to them.

This leads me to today’s topic of discussion, the importance of a crisis management plan.

Whether you are a fortune 500 company or a small business, crisis management plans are imperative for every business.

They make sure that your company is ready to handle problems that come your way and avoid a severe crisis that could affect your brand. Plus, it allows your brand to speak directly to customers when they notice mistakes and problems on social media.

Imagine you are on vacation sipping on a pina colada by the pool, and suddenly, your phone starts to go off with a flood of notifications from your Instagram page.

Then, you notice it’s all angry comments from your audience on a new post that one of your assistant social media managers shared. The post’s caption has a political message that is a touchy subject no matter the stance.

Well, this crisis can either go two ways.

Without a crisis management plan: It can go overwhelming horrible because no one in your company would know how to handle the crisis, including you.

Instead of responding to the issue with strategic and well-thought-out responses, your team and you would be scrambling to figure out what to say.

As we all know, things spread like wildfire on social media, especially if they are negative, which means the longer you don’t answer, the worse it gets.

Plus, if you respond in a nonchalant tone or with a generic response, this will result in your audience being even more upset with the brand.

With a crisis management plan: It can go well for your brand because your team will know exactly how to handle the crisis without having to contact you.

Not to mention, with a crisis management plan, there would be steps and rules in place for your team to follow when it comes to posting, so these types of political posts would be prevented ahead of time.

Basically, if you are in the social media industry, you are a direct line to your audience, so having a crisis management plan is crucial.

With that said, here are three key elements of a crisis management plan.

Create a detailed plan

It is imperative to create a detailed plan with guidelines on how to communicate regarding the crisis and handle them. The plan should include:

• The plan’s mission and purpose — describing why it is needed.
• Definition of a crisis — determining what a crisis is and what is not and the different levels.
• Activation criteria — identifying when the plan should be activated and by who.
• Establish the brand voice and tone — setting the voice and tone of the responses with examples and detailed description, so no matter who is handling the crisis, the brand messages will align.
• Procedures — explaining the steps in detail that need to be applied both internally and externally, including the tools required and who is responsible for each step.

Outline the chain of command

It is also essential to form a crisis communication team and outline the chain of command.

Each role would be well defined with responsibilities including gathering information, working with the media, creating and distributing key messages, and monitoring the crisis.

Plus, it should include the contact information for each member and a chart of who should be contacted when.

Create a list of realistic scenarios

It is vital to create a spreadsheet of realistic scenarios that would negatively affect your brand and then identify the level of threat and how they can be handled.

This will provide anyone in the company with references on how to respond to different crises effectively.

With this in mind, here are two brands that handled a social media crisis.

Sephora

The Crisis: A Sephora employee racially profiled an African American woman in their Calabasas store.

The employee actually called security on the customer to prevent her from shoplifting.

What the employee didn’t know was that the woman was a hit singer named SZA with a massive following online.

SZA took to social media to express her displeasure, and Sephora was immediately under fire.

The Response: Sephora decided to respond directly to SZA’s original tweet and apologize for the situation.

They also thanked her for bringing it to their attention.

In addition, they followed up about a month after the crisis with a Facebook announcement that all of their stores and office would close for an hour of diversity training.

Results: Sephora’s response was successful because they quickly responded directly to the customer admitting fault and thanking them for bringing the issue to light.

It was also smart of them to be proactive in preventing any similar future crises by requiring all of their employees to participate in diversity training.

The only thing I would have done differently was clarified the reasoning and purpose behind the diversity training.

H&M

The Crisis: The clothing retailer H&M released a new line of hoodies on their website with an African American child modeling one with the words “Coolest Monkey in the Jungle.”

As a result, people voiced their disappointment in the brand, and even celebrities vowed to no longer work with them.

The Response: H&M responded with two apologies from their customer service Twitter account. The first apology was only issued to reporters upon request. The second apology was a tweet. Both apologies were deemed insensitive and unacceptable by the public.

After further backlash, they released a third apology, which was more genuine, that was published on their website and oddly only available on through their Twitter’s bio.

In this apology, they addressed their actions to remove the hoodies from the website recycle them.

The Results: H&M’s response was lackluster and unsuccessful, in my opinion.

Their first set of apologies were generic and unsympathetic.

Even though they responded on social media, it seemed as if they didn’t have a real crisis management plan because they had to release three different apologies.

If they were prepared, they would have only published the third apology from the beginning.

The thing that I would have done differently was addressed the issue directly by genuinely apologizing and listing out the actions as soon as it occurred.

With that said, if you have a crisis management plan, there is no need to fear the saying, “Houston, we have a problem!” So do yourself and your company a favor and create an effective crisis management plan.

Happy managing!