Do you have a social media disaster communications plan?

Late Wednesday afternoon, a violent tornado ripped through Western MA, cutting a cruel path of destruction from Westfield to Sturbridge. It spun through downtown Springfield, mere blocks from one of my clients. All of my client's employees and others in the building at the time are safe, but there was a lot of glass damage inside and out. The parking lot was hit hard especially hard, with downed trees, branches everywhere, and smashed and overturned cars.

So, was my client, a law firm, open for business on Thursday? That was the question I had to resolve by first thing Thursday morning, as I knew the firm's clients would be looking to its popular social media channels for guidance.

I was in touch throughout Wednesday night with personnel from the firm's executive office, and at 7AM I called the managing partner at home. He shared with me that the damage was fixable, all hands would be on deck within an hour or so, and the public should be informed that, although the Springfield office was not closed for business, clients should call their attorney to check if their appointment would occur or be postponed.

With that information, I got to work on my disaster communications plan for the firm.

1. First I removed all items in the What's New box on the home page of the website and replaced them with instructions to call the office and speak with the appropriate attorney before coming to the office.
2. Next I posted similar messages on all 4 of the firm's legal blogs.
3. Next I posted the message on Twitter.
4. I monitored all channels throughout the day and responded to individual inquiries and sentiments of encouragement as they came in.

By the end of Thursday, the major damage had been repaired, cleanup was completed, and I was informed that the firm would return to business as usual on Friday, so I posted follow-up messages to all of the above channels.

Interestingly, traffic to those blogs and the website increased an average of about 15% since the messages were posted, so I do believe that people looked to them for information. The Twitter account was brand new, so it's impossible to gauge if that helped.

The above communications plan wasn't complex or difficult to implement, it just took a little thought and time to craft the appropriate messages. And time is of the essence. You need to have the messages available when people look for information, not 6 hours later.

So, what's your plan if disaster strikes? Your response would certainly vary by industry and organization size, and be appropriate for your particular business and the circumstances of the crisis. But have you given this any thought? How would you communicate with your business's constituency if traditional channels were impeded? Who would take responsibility? What messages would you send?

 - Christine Pilch

 

Photo credit: Kunal_Clicks