Picture Source: http://travelnewsnepal.com/opinion/crisis-communication-to-minimize-human-induced-hazards/
Crisis communication is the effort taken by a company (especially Public Relations) to communicate with the public and stakeholders when an unexpected event happen that would bring negative impacts towards the company. Crisis communication is one of the step in planning crisis management, the PR has to protect and defend its clients to maintain the company's reputation.
Importance of incorporating social media into crisis communication plan
Picture Source: http://www.prconversations.com/2013/11/making-sense-of-the-impact-of-social-media-on-crisis-communication/
Incorporating social media into crisis communication
1. Enable speedily inform and responses
During crisis, an immediate response to the public is essential. Social media is an online platform that enable information to spread speedily without times and space constraint. Thus, incorporating social media to response during crisis is important in order to alleviate further damage to the victims in the crisis.
For example, Sekolah Sri Cempaka which is a private school in Malaysia. There was a fire broke out at the school in the exclusive neighbourhood of Damansara Heights in September 2013. In facing the fire out of a sudden, the school announced the fire immediately on its school intranet, Facebook and Twitter to inform the concerned parents and students. In this case, the school speedily response and inform the parents by using the social media. It helped to keep contact with the parents and made the students and parents reassured.
Picture source: http://brandconsultantasia.com/2013/09/10/case-studies-of-how-two-malaysian-brands-used-technology-in-a-crisis/
Sekolah Sri Cempaka made announcement of the fire on Facebook.
2. Effective two-way communication
The organization or the PR of the organization can have a direct interaction with the audiences during crisis. The victims or audiences also can contact with the organization using social media. Incorporating social media in crisis communication cannot be denied that it is important to establish two-way communication as social media is a communication tool that allow social media users to communicate with others.
3. Monitoring situation
Social media can be used as a tool to monitor the situation after a crisis happened. Public relation practitioners (PRP) are always advised to use social media to see the response and reaction of audiences and victims of the crisis matter. By monitoring the responses and feedback on social media, PRP can develop better strategies and tactics or solution in the crisis management process.
For instance,Malaysia Airlines apologized and removed a tweet
“Want to go somewhere
but don't know where?” on Twitter in November after criticizing by the Twitter
users for being insensitive as MH370 was still missing.
Picture source： http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2852859/Malaysian-Airlines-removes-tweet-promoting-flight-sales-apologises-outrage-followers-link-missing-MH370.html
If Malaysia Airlines did not monitor the feedback of Twitter users, they will not realize the tweet may cause the occurrence of another issue or crisis. Fortunately, they monitor the response on Twitter and execute the solution quickly by removing the tweet and tweeted to apologize.
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The most important element in crisis management is crisis communication. Poor communication during crisis will lead larger damage to both the victims and also the organization. Thus, every organization should have well social media policy in order to carry out effective communication on social media during crisis, it is because social media is considered as a powerful platform that will influence people from all walks of lives.
Thanks for reading :)
References:
http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/crisis-communication.html
http://brandconsultantasia.com/2013/09/10/case-studies-of-how-two-malaysian-brands-used-technology-in-a-crisis/http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2852859/Malaysian-Airlines-removes-tweet-promoting-flight-sales-apologises-outrage-followers-link-missing-MH370.html
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