Know Your Crisis Potential

When a crisis happens, you shouldn’t be left wondering how to respond and communicate with your audience. The best crisis communication is well developed and accounts for your company’s crisis potential.

Each business is unique. Its stakeholders, audiences and business type all play a part in how you communicate every day and how you would respond if a crisis occurred. With this in mind, each crisis management plan needs to meet your company’s specific needs. Whether large or small, a good place to start in preparing for a crisis is by knowing your crisis potential.

How To Prepare For Your Crisis Potential

1. Identify Risks and Vulnerabilities
Every company has risk factors and vulnerabilities. Whether you are a small local business or a Fortune 500 company, your company has the potential to experience a crisis. Though the severity and the effects of the crisis will vary, you still need to identify risk factors in order to prepare your company for a potential crisis.

2. Assess Your Communication Strategy
For many companies, smaller problems or difficulties develop into a crisis because of poor communication. Being proactive and providing real-time communication with your stakeholders and audiences will help create two-way communication and keep you in control of the conversation.

3. Understand Your Internal Communications
An important part of successful communication is the synergy between communicators. If your communication team does not completely understand your company’s communication goals or the part they play in reaching those goals, functioning cohesively during a crisis can be difficult and stressful.

Challenges like the real-time news cycle, the unpredictability of a digital world and the smaller risks of daily business each play a role in how you will need to respond in a crisis situation. By outlining your crisis potential you will develop a better understanding of the challenges and risks you may face in the future.

Featured image courtesy of https://www.baerpm.com/.