5 tips for protecting your organization in 2018

It’s Friday at 6 p.m. and the phone rings. “There’s been a crisis,” the CEO shouts. “What do we do? What do we say?”

It’s a public relations professional’s worst nightmare.

From United Airlines’ forcible removal of a passenger to Pepsi’s infamous Kendall Jenner commercial, there was no shortage of PR crises to learn from in 2017.

Here are five proactive steps every communicator can take to protect their organization in the year ahead:

1. Create and update the crisis communications plan.

Effective crisis communication plans outline roles, responsibilities and protocols that ensure information is shared efficiently. If your company doesn’t have a plan, create one ASAP.

If your company has a crisis plan, now is a good time to review its finer points and update it as necessary. Have roles and responsibilities or the contact information of key team members changed? Have any spokespeople left the company? Something as simple as a wrong phone number could significantly hinder the timely flow of information.

While full message development cannot be created until a crisis happens, holding statements allow a company to respond quickly.