There are lots of great tips out there for dealing with a crisis. One of the nicest, most succinct ones we’ve seen comes courtesy of Melissa Agnes and addresses the Top Ten Crisis Management Take-Aways from 2013. So, the team at Capstone decided our Christmas gift to you is the Ten Days of Crisis Management – You won’t find any maids a milking here, but you will find the Capstone team’s deeper dives on Melissa’s list. To read Melissa’s original list, click here.
# 1. “Mobile is the new black.” – Melissa Agnes
When a crisis occurs, people want more information immediately. And most of the time, they will instinctually turn to their smartphones to look for it. In a crisis, your staff, your clients or customers, and the public at large will learn about what’s going on from the screen of their phone, so it’s critical that your content is accessible on that medium.
Much has been written on the new frontier that mobile platforms have created for sales, info-sharing in your organization, and entertainment. We are at a point where mobile is the best way to get information in front of people quickly, but you need to be ready to utilize that when a crisis occurs. To do so, you have a few options.
Large organizations such as the Red Cross use downloadable apps that provide the user information and tools in the event of a disaster. What this also does is give the Red Cross a means to reach out to people and encourage them to donate. Organization-specific apps are a big investment, but if you are serious about expanding your digital reach, it’s worth thinking about (see more on mobile growth).
You should also take a look at how your newsletters are going out and what they look like. About 50% of emails are read on a mobile device. Mobile email viewers are more likely to account for your unique clicks, so you should make everything you send out optimized for viewing on those devices. It’s also worth thinking about a push text notification service for your audience so you can keep them abreast as things develop (here is a great source for some statistics on mobile email use).
We’ve been saying that Twitter is the best means of sharing information in a crisis. When you realize that more than half of Twitter usage is through their mobile app, it cements the importance of mobile. Even when we are in front of the TV, 80% of us still refer to our smartphones while we watch. Audiences are going to look up what they see and you need to be in control, or at the very least informed, of what is being said about you and the situation. A crisis is a bad time to realize that your digital presence and monitoring is out of date.
Mobile IS the new black. Split-second commerce, research, and entertainment are all conducted on our mobile devices, which gives you a lot more power than you think. Used wisely they can be an integral part of your communications strategy. Don’t overlook it.
The views in this blog post represent the viewpoints of individual team members, not Capstone National Partners as a whole.
