Crisis Management

Tool Kit

Taylor Sackett
Fall 2017
Table of Contents
2. Defining a crisis
a. How to prepare for a crisis
b. How to search for a crisis
c. Twitter
d. Facebook
e. Communication
3. Your brain on stress
a. Negative body language
b. Positive body language
4. Vincent Covello
5. Coombs theories
6. Benoit’s theories
7. Crisis Relationship Repair Framework

Disclaimer: This is not the official protocol for handling a social media crisis. This is simply a
document of suggestions and helpful tips, tricks and tools to keep in the back of your mind.

1
Defining Crisis
What is the meaning of a crisis in this context?: In its simplest form, a crisis is defined as “a time of
intense difficulty, trouble, or danger”. Although that does relate to crisis in social media, we focus
more on the vulnerability companies face with the public and the attacks that arise. Crises impact
a company's reputation and credibility. These crises typically go viral and are usually
unforeseeable to a company.

How to prepare for a crisis: It is difficult to know exactly how to prepare for a crisis because there
are many factors that play a role in it. The magnitude of the crisis, the severity, the outcome and
so on will all vary depending on the certain crisis. The best a company can do is have a plan set--
who wille speak? Will it be the CEO or will it be a PIO? Typically, the public responds best to
CEO’s releasing a statement over PIO’s; however, some people view PIO’s more reliable and
trustworthy than big business CEO’s. Another way to prepare for a crisis is to always be on the
lookout for potential issues rising on social media--look for negative posts or reviews about your

2
company and see how you can resolve those issues. This would be considered taking necessary
steps to prevent a preventable risk. Additionally, a key aspect of being prepared is having a team
that is properly trained waiting and being on the lookout. This will ensure a fast response to a
potential crisis.

Organization Crises: There are two types of crises that can occur and each affect the company
differently. (Coombs theory)
1. Reputational: Threat to the image or reputation of the company or person.
2. Operational: Threat to day-to-day functions of a company.

How to search for a crisis: Social media can be a friend and foe. Your team should constantly be
checking social media platforms for an upcoming crises. Common platforms to search can
include: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Yelp, and another website that allows customer
review.

Twitter: An online news and social networking service people can “tweet” in under 140
characters. Twitter is useful to search hashtags during an upcoming crisis or an occurring
crisis. If the crisis is severe enough, the hashtag will be featured in the “lightning” moments.
While searching on twitter, remember the symbols and what they mean.

#- searching hashtags. These are used to identify a message on a particular topic. They make it
easier for the tweet to reach a bigger audience--the general public who searches that particular
hashtag.

@- searching handles. To find a company, person, etc. always use the “at” (@) symbol to identify
you are in fact searching for a person or company rather than a tweet, photo or hashtag.

Geocode searching: If you wanted to search the area a crisis arose, for instance the FSU pledge
death, you could go to Google Maps, type in “Florida State University” and right click on the
location and select nearby. It’ll show the geocode. From there you would enter
“geocode:30.439421,-84.294167,20km” to see any tweets that were in that distance for the
geocode. Geocode searching is most useful during crises such as natural disasters to find an
SOS.

Tweetdeck: This is a helpful tool while searching for crisis. You can search multiple hashtags at a
time. Think of it as an advanced search engine, you can look at live hashtags at the same time.
They are separated into columns to make monitoring easier. Another helpful search tool is
searching location. By using the advanced search, you can drop a pin on a specific location and
those who have their location services on while tweeting will appear near the pin. This is
particularly helpful during natural disaster VOSTing.

3
Social Bearing: This works alongside Twitter. It is a search engine designed to look up geocodes,
tweets, profiles, hashtags and followers. It is similar to Twitter but shows more in-depth analytics.

Facebook: An online social media and social networking service. You can search this
platform by searching hashtags, posts the company is tagged in and words relating to the topic.

Communication
While handling a crisis, whether it is helping with a natural disaster or resolving an issue in your
company, it is important to always maintain communication through a back channel so everyone
is up-to-date and knows the missions.

Group Me: A group messaging app that allows people to communicate. Similar to
IMessaging, GroupMe sends notifications and allows people to react to individual messages and
you are able to tag people directly to notify them.

Hangout: Is a group or individual messaging system built through google. This

communication medium is more private than GroupMe because it uses an email address rather
than a phone number. Hangouts allow video chat, voice calls, group messaging with up to 150
people or individual messaging.

Slack: This program is convenient to keep a company in contact. It is a mix of Skype and
group messaging, similar to Hangouts. It allows you to voice call and also chat. There are public
channels, private channels, DM features, shared channels, guest accounts, screen sharing and
much more.

Skype: Allows people to video call, conference call and chat through a username.

4
Your Brain on Stress
During a crisis, it is difficult for the brain to understand information. In fact, Vincent Covello has
done extensive research proving this. According to him, when the brain is stressed, it can
process only 20 percent of the information presented. During crisis messaging, it is important to
simplify as much as possible.

Remember the rule 1N=3P: For every one negative in your speech you must say three positives to
bring the mood of the speech back up.

Trust is the key component during a speech. It takes only 30 seconds for someone to decide
whether they trust and care about what is being said. Furthermore, trust is determined not only
by the words you are saying but the nonverbal communication as well.

Remember the rule 27/9/3: 27 words, 9 seconds, 3 ideas. This is the rule of thumb to make a
lasting impression for your message.

Negative body language to avoid:

● Poor eye contact: dishonest, lying, unconcerned.
● Arms crossed: not interested, arrogant, defensive.
● Rocking/pacing: nervous, concerned.
● Hidden hands: guilty, deceptive.
● Touching face/fidgeting: nervous, doubt, deceitful.
● Throat clearing: nervous.

It is important that you put your best foot forward during a crisis. Your audience must know and
be able to trust what your saying; seventy-five percent of trust building is through your body
language. You must not only sound trustworthy but act and show it.

Positive body language:

● Eye contact: honest, open, caring, sincere.
● Open hands: sincere, open.
● Hands to chest: honest, dedicated, sincere.
● Proper posture: self-confident, asserted, determined.

Lastly, it is important to keep in mind what level you are speaking at. Since it is difficult to process
information while stressed, your audience will need information to be clear and concise; experts
recommend a fourth grade level.

5
Vincent Covello
In addition to his theories on your brain stressed, he created the CCO theory.
1. Compassion: Showing you care and empathize.
2. Conviction: Be committed to solving the problem.
3. Optimism: Explain what the future holds for the company.

W. Timothy Coombs
Coombs has done extensive research on PR crises and how to effectively communicate. He
breaks his framework down into three categories for crisis managers to focus on.
1. Timing: being the first to report the crisis your company is facing is beneficial.
2. Victim focus: show that you are responding to victims and emphasize that in your speech.
3. Misinformation and denial: only use when you are completely innocent.

Below is a table from a scholarly article from IPR. The screenshot explains the best practices for
crisis response with an emphasis on his theory above (timing, victim focus, misinformation and
denial).

Table provided by IPR, “State of Crisis Communication: Evidence and the Bleeding Edge”

Attribution Theory: During a crisis, people are going to look for who is at fault for the crisis.

6
Situational Crisis Communication Theory: Coombs theory suggesting crisis managers should
match strategic crisis responses to the level of crisis responsibility and reputational threat posed
by a crisis.

Primary responses:
1. Deny
○ Attack Accuser.
○ Denial.
○ Scapegoat.
2. Diminish
○ Excuse.
○ Justification.
3. Rebuild: Corrective Action
○ Compensation
○ Apology
Secondary responses:
● Bolstering
● Reminder
● Ingratiation
● Victimage

Beniot’s Image Repair Theory

Beniot’s framework is made up of suggestions for crisis response teams to use in order to have a
full recovery.
● Denial: This strategy is typically not suggested unless you are innocent.
● Evasion of responsibility: There are four different ways to go about this strategy.
○ A response to another offensive act
○ Defeasibility--couldn’t have been you to break a window because you do not
know how to play baseball.
○ Accident--it did happen but it was not intentional.
○ Good intentions-- the company would never do anything to ruin the trust it has
with its customers.
● Reduce offensiveness: there are six different ways to do so
○ Bolstering-- Offset the negative feelings by explaining all the good they’ve done.
○ Minimize-- the situation is not as bad as it seems.
○ Differentiation-- the act is distinguished from other similar but more offensive
actions.
○ Transcendence-- placing the act in more favorable context.

7
 ○ Attack the accuser-- slight chance this would have publics forgive your company
for the situations.
○ Compensation-- Give back to the victim.
● Corrective action: Correct the problem immediately.
● Mortification: Ask for forgiveness.

Crisis Relationship Repair Framework

This framework was established by Wallace and Ferguson based on the theories of Beniot and
Coombs. The framework breaks it down into the best strategies for a crisis response as well as
what you should never do.

The graphic above organizes the best strategies for simplifying the crisis. It is most important to
make sure you show the public you are sincerely sorry for what has happened and you are
working hard to correct the problem. You should not try to minimize the situation or justify the
problem. You should never say you were not at fault, blame someone else, deny there is a
problem or attack the accuser.