The importance of crisis communications
A crisis from the point of view of communications is an occasion that puts a company in the center of adverse media attention and target audiences, which are interested in the company's actions.
As practice shows, communications during crises can prevent the situation from intensifying, affect its development and duration, increase or decrease the severity of the consequences, and affect the extent to which the reputation of the involved persons and companies will be affected.
The first step after the emergence of a crisis is to assess its scale, whether the threat is strategic or local. It is also worth determining whether the communication crisis is short-term or long-term (and therefore strategically significant).
The initial choice between the types of crises is the key to further communications because they involve different response strategies. If the crisis is local, most likely it will also be short-lived and may not require a response from the company. Of course, it is important to understand the reasons for its occurrence and take measures so that similar situations do not recur. A strategic crisis requires a balanced and at the same time quick reaction, and clear and consistent communication.
Identification and monitoring of key threats and the importance of rapid response
The initial choice between the types of crises is the key to further communications because they involve different response strategies. If the crisis is local, most likely it will also be short-lived and may not require a response from the company. Of course, it is important to understand the reasons for its occurrence and take measures so that similar situations do not recur. A strategic crisis requires a balanced and at the same time quick reaction, and clear and consistent communication.
If a company or person is involved in a scandal, the first day is crucial in the development of the crisis. During this period, it will be critical for you to monitor mentions in the media around the clock and receive information as quickly as possible.
First of all, the main thing is to conduct an initial collection of information, find out what happened and why, and estimate the scale of the problem. Actually, at this stage, the initial assessment of the communication crisis and the choice of response to it takes place.
Parameters to which the attention should be paid to:
"entry points" of the crisis, that is, primary sources of information spread
speed of information spread
main distribution channels – internet media, social networks, television
number of publications and their coverage in the first hours
If you have assessed a crisis as requiring a response, do not delay responding until you have all the information or a decision has been made about how to resolve the initial problem that led to the crisis. You should get in touch as soon as possible, and tell them that you are aware of the situation, the circumstances are being clarified, and will be made public soon. Most often, the mass media turn to your communication channels at the beginning of the conflict, and then the information is replicated in the mass media as presented by the main sources. Therefore, it is critical for you to immediately present your position in the media.
Setting up the initial tracking of the dynamics of the situation
To understand further the dynamics of the situation, you need to monitor the media almost around the clock (if the conflict is serious) or with a certain frequency (once every few hours). To monitor the information field, we recommend using automated systems and bots, because collecting information manually in a crisis means spending precious time not quite efficiently. Automated systems will save your time, which is better spent on assessing the situation, forming and implementing an anti-crisis strategy.
For example, with Semantrum, you can set up flexible tracking of a communication crisis in dynamics - at the same time for all mentions of your company/organization, and a specific topic of publications. To do this, determine which words journalists use when publishing news about a crisis. It is also worth defining how they write about it on social networks. Based on these words, formulate a search query with which you will find out about the publication of crisis messages in various sources (for more details about creating search requests - see the link).
After that, you can set up notifications (alerts) based on this request and receive information about the distribution of crisis communications in real-time or on a schedule convenient for you (several times a day, including or excluding weekends), by mail or in Telegram.
Monitoring of the media field to understand the overall picture of the communication crisis
After initial analysis of the information field if it's not some kind of a local crisis, it's worth conducting deeper analysis in order to detect main media threats and emotions of the target audiences. It should help to create anti-crisis position, as you'll form so called message box, i.e. main trends which are most spread and carry informational risks.
Here a stories generation function in Semantrum might be of help, allowing you to group the publications according to their similarity. It is important that there are not the full duplications with similar text in these stories, but the publications selected by the system according to the number of words alike, which are crucial to the texts.
By using this stories generation function you'll be able to see how the accents are put and which messages get the most attention from media and social networks within crisis communications.
You'll also be able to compare how various negative trends are spread (by their number and coverage) and which messages are pushed by which media. Here the export of stories to Excel, where you'll get the full information about the stories (including summarized estimated coverage of audience) is going to help.
Your position and its spreading
Once you’ve dealt with the situation, formed a considered position as an answer to the crisis and put it into your communication channels, you need to create a list of media who you need to look into the question of publishing your position with. You can get the information about the sources which wrote about the crisis without your comments, in order to send them your position first. To do that, you need to export your publications into Excel using saved query with the key words, which journalists use when publishing the news about the crisis situation.
There is also a possibility to get the analytics in the automated reports in .docx and .xlsx formats, according to the sources which provided the highest number of contacts with the audience, and also to check out the source’s monthly audience. It will help you understand which information in which exact sources in media affects audience coverage the most.
Summarizing according to the results of a crisis and anti-crisis communications
The important part of the anti-crisis communication is an analysis and comparison of how your position is represented in media and social networks and also the information about the crisis without your comments.
To do that, we recommend using mass tagging function in Semantrum. Tags are labels, which are convenient to use for the future data array analysis.
There can be 3 kinds of tags for usage while working with crisis communications: a tag with the crisis situation name (to select all the publications into one array, for further work with analytics and reports), "Our position" tag and "Opponents’ position" tag. Having set "Our position" and "Opponents’ position" tags using corresponding key words you’ll get 2 arrays of data which you can then compare by filtering publications with and without your position. You can also export publications in which selected tags are present and get the statistics for all (or selected) tags, by using "Charts" mode in Semantrum.
Apart from quotative results it is also worth paying attention to which audience coverage (number of views) the publications about the crisis situation with and without your position received.
You’ll be able to get the information regarding which estimated audience coverage the publication get directly at the publications card, or also you can use the data from exports of publications in Excel, or order the setting up the dashboard service inside your account
Please pay attention to next points while analyzing the crisis and anti-crisis communications:
check total number and the coverage of publications for the crisis topic
compare the parts of publications with and without your position by the numbers and coverage
compare the statistics by the number of publications with your position and without it by coverage by media types. Decide which media types and social networks can be the most troublesome from the point of view of audience coverage
check sources ratings by the numbers and audience coverage. Make conclusions regarding the sources which published your position and which – did not
analyze which media holdings are represented by these media
check how crisis and anti-crisis communications were spreading in the dynamics
which part of big media is there in the general array of sources which published the news about the crisis situation
which part of big media is there in the general array of sources which published the news about the crisis situation published it with your comments
which part of big media which published the news about the crisis situation did that without your comments
If you need to create a summarizing report of the anti-crisis communication results you can use the possibilities of creating the analytical report in Semantrum. You’ll need to select a tag with the name of the crisis situation in the filters and next, depending on your needs you can:
export finished automatic Excel report or export the list of documents into Excel for creating the report according to your template
export needed charts and data in different formats from "Charts" mode or from the dashboard to create your own report
export automatic Word report, in which you“ll get main statistics with text description and also the data regarding estimated audience coverage (dynamics, summarized coverage, top sources)
These reports you can then use for the presentation in your company or for any further work.
Monitoring not only in "hot" times
After the crisis is gone, it is important not to stop monitoring the information field, because it will be useful and for any current communications, understanding the target audiences’ mood and the context in media.
And if you don’t want to miss negative publications which may cause the new crisis to arise, you can detect them in advance with the help of Sematrum. To get the information about upcoming communication crisis in time, set up a notification by negative publications for you topic. We recommend setting up the notifications in real time to your email or Telegram, so you’ll receive mail with the list of negative publications straight after they appear in the system. That way you’ll be able to see potential threats and create a corresponding communication in time.
コメント