 Growing up I spent my summers working at a little amusement park that was located near my hometown and One of the things that we would spend a lot of time talking about in addition to just some basic training on how to operate the ride And how to deal with people, but we spent a lot of time talking about what to do when things go wrong We spent hours and hours working with employees on okay, this happens in this emergency situation What's the quickest way to shut the ride down and get people safe to you know to make sure everybody is safe We spent a lot of time talking about worst-case scenarios right and I think that's true in pretty much every organization It's not a matter of if a crisis is going to happen It's a matter of when and how do you deal with it right so crisis You know planning and preparation and and just be you know engagement during a time of crisis It's just a part of any organizational life cycle and certainly nowhere is that more true than for the public relations folks and Media relations people in that in that organization so in this video I want to talk just a little bit about crisis planning in public relations How do we go about it? What are some tips for making sure we can do that effectively especially in the modern age? Given the different communication tools that we have So first of all you ought to have this crisis plan checklist there You ought to have a plan in place can't stress how important it is for there to be an enormous amount of preparation To kind of anticipate what's coming to have an idea of what may happen and Plan for that then have a plan in place for you know What ifs what if this happens? What if that happens? They don't want it You know what if the moon crashes into earth? That's a little bit outside the realm of what we can plan for and should spend our time on but We ought to take an honest look at the industry that we're in and the area that we're in and try and anticipate What are some things that could happen and what can we do to be prepared when for when they do happen? So the first things first in any kind of crisis your leadership needs to be visible Leadership from you as the public relations person, but also leadership from the organization Who's the head of that organization the face of that organization? The the the person that people most associate with that organization They need to be front and center the leadership needs to be visible not hidden away somewhere not protected They need to be front and center Working with the media working with the public's working with whatever forces artwork to handle that situation If that leadership role is critical and they must be visible during these times of crisis As I was kind of touching on before you need to have these you need to do a vulnerability analysis You need to have an idea of what may be coming If you're in an area that deals with a lot of volatile chemicals, what happens if those chemicals spill What's our plan for that and what's our plan not only for dealing with those chemicals But what's our plan for informing the public and managing the narrative on that end of things? So whatever industry you're in for us at the amusement park It was what happens of a ride breaks down or if something goes wrong What's our vulnerable vulnerability there and how do we keep people safe? How do we protect people and also protect the the longevity and the the The reputation of the park as someplace safe and some say someplace reliable for people to come to so what are the vulnerabilities that exist in your organization We ought to be able to identify those and then again begin to put a plan in place We can to have those procedures in place for what happens when this happens what happens when this other thing happens And when after we do these vulnerability analysis, we need to have put these procedures in place for When they do happen if they haven't forbid would happen, right? And we do need to plan for those worst-case scenarios not to be all doom and gloom But but bad things happen right bad things happen in the world So we need to plan for what's the worst possible thing that could happen And let's have a plan in place that we can deal with that effectively not only again in that moment in terms of Keeping people safe keeping operations moving forward But also protecting the reputation of our organization and the kind of the credibility of our of our leadership in our organization So we need to plan for these worst-case scenarios We didn't have a plan in place after we've done these vulnerability analyses the one unique aspect of sort of Modern times is this idea of social media So how does social media impact things in a crisis? I want to take a look at it kind of a pros and cons list here of social media in a crisis just real quickly First of all the positives with social media are that it's a direct connection between you and the public So it gives you immediate and direct access to the public's and the media that you have so That you want to communicate that message to directly or not dependent on a third party or anything So you can be direct in communicating with me. It is as I mentioned also immediate You don't have to there's no lag between the time that you can get information out You can immediately be connecting with with people and you can expect it to spread rapidly You can expect that expect that message to spread Rapidly be shared amongst people in a viral sense right hopefully not literally but in a viral sense over social media It can be spread rapidly and so though those are some of the positive things We can direct we can connect you directly with our publics We can do so immediately and we can expect that message to be spread fairly quickly On the downside the negatives are that sometimes in social media things can get lost in the noise, right? There's a lot happening on social media And so sometimes our message could just be one of billions at any given time And so hopefully won't get lost in the noise, but that is a danger That's a downside of social media is that there's just so much of it It's hard for people to really keep track sometimes Also the sense of permanence there's an idea that what we put out there is out there forever for better or for worse What you put on social media is going to be out there forever Just assume somebody's going to take a screenshot of it and even if you delete that message It's still going to be out there at some point So and there's a permanence there So we ought to be very very careful about what we put out there because it there is that sense of permanence and then of course You're gonna have trolls on social media right no matter what's happening no matter Well, how good your reaction is or how good your intentions are or whatever? How good your message is you're gonna have people that are just gonna troll it, right? They're just gonna be negative all over kind of try and bring you down call your names all that kind of stuff So you just if you're gonna be engaged in social media You just have to anticipate that expect it and and kind of roll with it Okay, so in addition to those kind of positives and negatives about social media We can keep these principles in mind when we're using social media in a crisis situation There's some things we need to bear in mind first of all We should use social media to provide real-time updates We ought to take advantage of that immediacy and and really provide real-time updates give people a reason to tune into our Social media to really be focused on that and use it in a positive way to give the most up-to-date accurate information that we can using those outlets We ought to put the word out quickly and widely I would put the word out quickly and widely and so We can use it to to spread our message as we talked about it in in an immediate sense But also in a rapid sense and so we ought to take advantage of that too that it's going to hopefully spread Virally and get out quickly so we can we can share information quickly We have to use one voice when we're thinking about social media in a crisis We can't have different departments posting and and sharing different information and taking different approaches We have to as an organization speak with one voice. So there ought to be one specific focused You know outlet for these things especially in a crisis It's probably true in general, but particularly in a crisis. We have to have one voice as an organization We also do want to consider those media needs We ought to post information in a way that you know We have this media center or whatever the the media can get to information quickly and can be housed there To think about their deadlines We ought to think about the fact that they might want it You know that give them a tip our heads up that you know We're getting ready to post some information and so they can have those people ready and and not be caught off-guards We ought to keep the if we want the the partnership of the media. We need to keep their needs in mind as well And it's sort of along the same lines. We ought to keep our employees in the loop They should not be learning about this information on social media themselves We ought to be focused on sharing that information with our employees as we have it so that they are also in the loop They can also be really good purveyors of information as well as as just keeping them informed They can be really helpful in in getting that information out there as well And then finally we need to be accessible in these types of situations It's really critical that that the public relations people in general and also the leadership of the organization be accessible be open be transparent Be available for discussions and to hear concerns and all kinds of things like that So you can see there's a there's a real process to crisis planning crisis management that when using public relations We've just barely touched on some of the highlights here But you don't we have to have this cycle in mind We need to be prepared and in advance before anything ever happens Then we have the actual response then we have the recovery and then we do what we can to keep those things from happening again through Mitigation and prevention, but then when it does when things happen, we need one to be prepared for that again It's this constant cycle and it ought to be on our mind in terms of public relations at all times How are we going to handle this? How are we going to anticipate these things and what are we going to do when they do happen? If you have questions about crisis planning and in public relations or anything else related to the field Please feel free to email me. I'd love to hear from you there in the meantime I hope this has been helpful and give you a sense of what are some of the highlights and guidelines that we need to keep in mind for crisis management and crisis planning in the field of public relations