Do you know what your employees say in their off-time about the company? Do they know what they can and can’t say? If you answered no to either of those questions, and you’ve got more than 10 people in your organization, you need to stop reading this and call 469-277-8150 or fill out the form on WrightIMC.com right now. You need to get a crisis communication, social media policy and ongoing monitoring program in place, stat.
Not convinced? I didn’t think so. Few people are, and I’ll tell you why later – you can tell me what you think in the comments.
For the last five years, I have been speaking, writing, tweeting, blogging – I would have used smoke signals if necessary – on the importance of pro-active crisis management. I’ve been talking to whoever would listen about fortifying their search engine results pages with quality content before something negative hits. I give an hour-long speech twice a year at Webmaster World’s Pubcon about creating crisis communication plans and the importance of internal communications – among other things. In a few weeks, I’ll be teaching a course for MarketingProfs University on pro-active reputation management.
I’ve literally communicated with thousands of business professionals on the importance of preparing your business, and even your personal brand, for a crisis. Guess how many pro-active crisis communication management programs WrightIMC has sold during the life of the company?
We haven’t sold any.
I realize that proactive crisis planning isn’t sexy like brand advertising. It doesn’t provide a quick ROI like search engine marketing. In fact, there is no way at all to determine a true ROI for a proactive plan. True ROI could only be known if a crisis happens without a proactive plan, and then the exact same crisis happened again after the plan was in place. The math involved in calculating that ROI gives me a headache. We could do it, but it would require tapping into string theory and quantum physics. So, basically: no calculable ROI = no proactive crisis management strategy. I understand.
But what if there was one thing you could do that would ensure that, during a crisis, your team knew the rules of engagement. Knew what they could and could not say publicly. What if you could keep your employees from actually starting a crisis that requires intervention? And what if that one item was relatively inexpensive?
When clients come to us with a crisis, the first step is to set up monitoring. We’ve got to know what the external conversation is about the crisis. Many times, if monitoring had been in place, a problem could have been found and solved before it became a crisis. I’m not even talking about a comprehensive social listening strategy. I’m talking about monitoring your brand, key personnel, product names, etc. We can set this program up in less than 24 hours and maintain it as long as you like. You don’t even have to do the monitoring yourself. We’ll let you know if something is up. And, we’ll help you fix it.
Couple this listening strategy with the creation of an internal social media policy and you can knock out about half of the potential crises you will see.
A social media policy tells your internal constituents (read employees and vendors) what is expected of them in the realm of social media. Most of your employees are already talking about their job on social media networks. And, you can’t stop them. Being heavy-handed is counterproductive.
We have the expertise (along with our attorney, who is involved in every social media policy) to create a policy that fits within your organization. We’ll also tell you what you can and can’t do. We’ve created social media policies for universities, large corporations, and small businesses. We can create one for you too.
Interested in getting started? Come on – take the first step toward managing your reputation proactively. You may not see an immediate ROI, but I know you’ll sleep better at night.
Contact us today at 469-277-8150 or simply fill out the form on our site. We’ll send you a quote within 24 hours of talking with you.
