The most important things to do when preparing for a crisis are to have BOTH a crisis plan and an ongoing communications measurement plan. That way, when a crisis strikes, you can remain calm and focus on making it go away. Why the communications measurement? Here are 9 excellent reasons why it’s your best friend:
Reason 1: You’ll know if your brand is being compromised—maybe even before the local media contacts you.
A good monitoring system that searches both social and traditional media for mentions (as well as bastardization) of your brand will alert you to any unusual mentions. Newer systems, like Ditto Labs, will actually monitor visual data streams for your brand’s logo. For example, they will tell you if your brand image is being modified or misused.
So, if you have a measurement system in place, you’ll be able to:
- Know when your brand is being misused,
- Monitor that misuse to determine which journalists and/or media outlets are involved, and
- Understand how effective your efforts are to remove the misuse.
Reason 2: You’ll know if it’s a mountain or a molehill.
Given the speed of social media, organizations are naturally paranoid about any criticism. How do you know whether those five negative tweets are an imminent disaster or a normal blip? If you have a measurement system in place, then you’ll have a benchmark against which to compare the volume, and even the sentiment.
Reason 3: You’ll keep your head while all those around you are losing theirs.
Lots of decisions get made in a hurry during a time of crisis. Most of them are based on the gut feelings of whoever is in the room. In the heat of the moment it’s easy to get into a battle of guts, usually won by the most powerful—but maybe not the best-informed—person in the room. Too often they don’t have the data from prior crises to know what tactics are going to work best. With a long-term measurement system in place you’ll have command of that data. You’ll be able to look back over prior year’s results and know exactly which tactics are most effective in getting messages across, moving coverage from negative to neutral (or neutral to positive).
Reason 4: You’ll understand who the media goes to for information.
A good measurement system will track media sources and identify who is undermining your messaging and who, if anyone, is amplifying it. Measurement can help you quickly identify not just the reporters with an attitude, but the people they’re talking to as well. Media sources and influencers are easily tracked in a long-term measurement program, including competitors, customers, NGOs, and local government officials. With this data you can quickly assess who the media is calling and/or interviewing for information about the crisis.
Reason 5: You’ll know how your messages are resonating in the media.
As much as you may be convinced that your messages are getting out there, the media doesn’t necessarily always see things the same way you do. With an ongoing measurement system in place you can quickly see if your actions are portrayed as you intended in the media and if the resulting coverage reflects the positioning you desire.
Reason 6: You’ll know the right thing to do.
One of the most difficult challenges facing communicators today is to understand the impact of the plethora of new media possibilities. In a physical or weather crisis, news sources are interrupted. Message boards and social networks may be the best way to get information. Hyper-local information is critical for a local plant. In these situations, you, as a professional communicator, will be asked to make recommendations on which media are most effective. With a measurement and monitoring system in place, you’ll be able to pick the most effective media and make a data-based argument as to why they are important.
Reason 7: You’ll be the person who can keep things in perspective.
Under pressure, tempers flare, emotions can get out of control, and fingers are pointed in all directions. All too frequently communications gets blamed for bad press, when, in fact, the press is just doing its job and exercising its first amendment rights. A media content analysis will frequently reveal that the tone of your media coverage is within normal ranges. Or, if you have competitive data, you can compare your results to industry averages to better understand how you’re being treated. Furthermore, in many crisis situations the impact of one or two bad stories can be overblown. A quick survey of your audience can reveal just how badly (if at all) the coverage is impacting your image.
Reason 8: You’ll know when you can relax.
The other important data to analyze is how soon the crisis coverage dissipates. Most crisis coverage occurs on the first day and then trends downwards over time. If a crisis starts to go wrong, you’ll frequently be able to spot it by noting the volume of coverage over time: if it starts to regularly exceed Day One of the crisis, you’re in trouble. We learned decades ago that a sure sign of a crisis going out of control looked like this from a clip count perspective:
And a well-managed one looked like this, with covering dropping off on Day One:
With measurement you can be the best-informed person in the room. You’ll confidently enter the war room, armed with facts and figures about what worked in the past, what is working now, and what should be changed going forward.
Reason 9: You’ll make better arguments for a bigger budget.
After any crisis, management is going to want to know how effectively the money was spent. A measurement system will provide answers to questions like: How much did it cost to get our messages out? Did the messages have an impact on our stakeholders? How efficient were our efforts? ∞
