The best-laid plans of any business can go awry. There are always ways to circumvent a crisis in business. How bad news is handled will greatly affect how good news is accepted by the media and the target audience of a company in the future. Each time a brand faces a crisis, it brings with it a lesson on what could have been done differently. Every business should have a crisis management plan, a team to manage the crisis, and crisis management tools. Given below are some PR crisis management tools that will help a business to deal effectively with a crisis.
Track brand mentions
It is difficult to deal with a crisis before anyone knows about it. The social platforms, news sites, and forums of companies need to be managed. Regular social media notifications do not suffice in this case. A tool that monitors social media mentions, hashtags, and keywords online is important. For instance, Mention is a monitoring tool, which helps a company to receive alerts for all conversations about it in real time. The mentions can also be filtered and prioritized with replies being given to notable influencers and media persons. Mention can also pick up any sign of negative sentiments about a brand.
Social media management tool
Communicating during a crisis and after it can impact the extent of damage done to a company. For instance, Buffer is a social media management tool that is helpful in times of crisis. With Buffer Publishing, one can schedule social media posts across different social media platforms. Buffer Analytics helps a brand to see how its social media posts are performing. It also helps to spread posts that are linked to updates and new information for people who didn’t read it for the first time.
Media briefings
Media briefings play an important role in guiding a brand through a crisis. A media briefing is a resource that lets the media know what a brand is trying to do, its scope, its objectives, its budget, and its desired outcomes. Media briefings can help a brand to create most relevant stories that can be shared with stakeholders. A media briefing will lead to mentions that indicate where a crisis is heading. The frequency of media briefing should also be determined depending upon the crisis. For instance, Bench is a briefing tool that speeds up the briefing process while making it more efficient.
Canned responses
Canned responses are quick replies to questions that can be used for sales, PR, or customer service. After the crisis is identified, customers, employees, the press, and other important stakeholders have to be updated. Chances are, most people will ask the same questions. It would save a lot of time and effort if answers are given in bulk. For instance, Gmail’s Canned Response helps to save the time that would be wasted by writing the same information repeatedly. Portions of the text can be reused to be used as responses to multiple mails.