Prepare for the Worst

Image Credit: South Bend Tribune

A crisis plan is something that should be prepared, but not frequently used. Every company should have a crisis plan, because you must always prepare for the worst. There are forces that cannot be controlled sometimes there will be times that you are not prepared for certain rare cases. We are going to help people plan out a crisis plan to minimize future damage to a company and to help retain and lost reputation. The ways to formulate a good crisis plan to formulate a good PR team. Have a team that can not only act immediately to a crisis but that is also experienced. Have reputable people working for you and make sure they know what they are saying. Another way to formulate a good crisis plan is to have a good spokesperson. Each crisis communications team should have people who have been pre-screened, and trained, to be the lead and/or backup spokespersons for different channels of communications. All organizational spokespersons during a crisis situation must have right skills to speak to the public, the appropriate training, and also be flexible. Being flexible means that not only can they speak to the public, but be able to communicate over regular media and social media. Understanding your audience is also very key. A company should now that have to speak differently depending on the situation. Also certain audiences might need to be spoken to in a different manner than others, again depending on the situation. Lastly a company should always do a post-crisis analysis. Basically just away from what happened and see if they learned anything. A formal analysis of what was done right, what was done wrong, what could be done better next time and how to improve various elements of a crisis plan. Overall just be prepared and not have a “It can’t happen to us” attitude.