Coping with Crises

Your web site as a crisis communications tool

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By Suzanne Paschall

The worst has happened. Your organization has been hit with a crisis, maybe of a magnitude you had never predicted. You go into your crisis communications and management mode — the one so carefully thought through in last year’s strategic planning retreat. Suddenly, you get a call from your organization’s Web master, whom you actually haven’t yet informed about the crisis. He says, “Hey, what the hell is going on? We’re getting thousands of hits on the site — out of nowhere. They’re going everywhere on the site, and not hanging around very long. What’s up??”

You sit for a second, rub your temples and count to 10. The Web site. You hadn’t thought of that.

Amazingly, even in this wired day and age, you wouldn’t be alone in this scenario. Though it is certainly more common for larger corporations to involve the company Web site in their strategic thinking about crisis communications, it’s even more common that organizations don’t think about this important tool. The truth is: People have come to expect the most up-to-date information to be found not on television, but on the Web. There is a growing expectation that a responsible organization will use its Web site to be responsive to its stakeholders’ need to know what’s going on in a timely way.

But where do you start? Well, first of all, put it on the agenda for this year’s planning retreat. Next, think about the following issues:

Advantages
First, the good news. There are a number of excellent reasons to consider your Web site as an important element of your crisis toolbox.

• Targeting. You can target information to different audiences, by organizing your site in a way that tells visitors where to visit. (e.g., Media News Room, For our Stockholders, To our Customers, etc.) You can even secure certain parts of the site with passwords to segment the information even further, and to provide a communications conduit that is quickly and easily updated for specific groups of people.
• Tracking. In addition to your overall Web site tracking tools that will tell you how many are visiting which pages, when, for how long, and where they’re coming from, you can also track specifically who is accessing the site by implementing password-protected areas. However, you should only do this when necessary, as the last thing people want to do in a crisis is jump too many hoops to get at information they want.
• 24/7 presence. Except when it’s being updated, your Web site is up and accessible all the time. Period.
• Instant updating. Unlike publications or any other form of communication that is distributed, your Web site information can be immediately updated, so that current and archived information is always available. Indicating time of last update during a crisis is also important.
• Multimedia publishing. Again, unlike any one traditional form of communication, the Web is a meta-medium: You can publish text, illustrations, photos, even video and audio clips. You can publish 360-degree tours of crisis sites, for example. Following the September 11 disaster, Time-Warner Cable Inc. (Stamford, CT) offered a still-cam scene refreshed every 60 seconds that chronicled the disaster workers’ efforts.
• Searchable info. Searchable databases can be a valuable tool. Again, in the September 11 crisis, the lists produced of victims and survivors became a lifeline for families and friends who could not get in contact with loved ones believed to have been in the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon at the time of the crashes.
• Eliminating geographic barriers. Getting the word out to a vast international public is made faster, easier and more affordable by the use of the Web.
• Two-way communication. With the Web, you can create interactive tools that help you and your staff keep a finger on the pulse of what stakeholders are thinking, saying and wanting to hear. E-mail, bulletin boards, chat rooms, etc. are all good ways to keep the lines of communication open during a crisis, and to get clear feedback about what information people want but don’t seem to be getting.

Disadvantages
So, there are many good reasons to consider using your Web site in a crisis. But before you begin preparing your site, let’s look at the downside:

• Not a complete strategy. Of course, you can’t rely on the Web as your sole tool for communications. What if the crisis involved is a technical breakdown that affects your computer system? What if your computers are fine, but your electrical systems have been compromised? There are many disasters, including flood and fire, that could physically affect your ability to publish from your Web site. One way to minimize this risk is to have your Web site hosted and managed off your site, or to at least have a copy of your site’s content also contained in an off-site location.
• Doesn’t replace phone/paper/visits. Consider when it is appropriate to use the Web, and when it is more appropriate to make personal contact. If an airline has stranded passengers, those people need to be dealt with face-to-face. Stockholders may need to hear directly from the CEO, by telephone, what has just happened. Families of victims should be visited, not told to go to a Web site.
• Can’t reach everyone. Though we live in a wired world, there are still places and people that can’t be reached by the Internet. The most important thing is to know your stakeholders in advance. Are they Web users? Have you established a Web relationship with them? Are they used to coming to your site for information? Have you surveyed them to find out their information needs and preferences? Is this how they want to interact with you? This kind of research can be done in advance of any crisis — and, of course, should be!
• Can be complex. Web sites are built on a tree structure in which content refers to other content in many parts of a site. Changing information (especially without a structural plan in advance for this) can be a complex process, and difficult to do in the middle of a crisis. Which again calls for figuring this out when things aren’t an emergency! (Remember that planning retreat?)
• Can be costly. For the same reasons as above, especially without a contingency plan for Web site crisis use, changes that were not planned can cost extra, since they’re now being done in a crisis environment.
• Requires continual effort. Your Web master and/or staff content-developers need to be on board, in contact and have a strong existing working relationship with communications or public-affairs staff so as to move quickly and maintain staffing effort throughout a crisis, especially in the first 48 hours. Updates to the media, for example, might be as frequent as every hour in the first 24 hours.
• Security weaknesses. While security features are improving, you must still consider what content you put on the Web site and how you make secure information available to certain stakeholders or internal staff. Of course, you’ll need a legal consultant on board when you’re preparing any material for release during a crisis, and they’ll be able to advise you along with your communications counsel.
• E-mail doesn’t replace traditional mail . . . yet. Though e-mail is a great corollary tool with the Web, and creates an opportunity for two-way communication during a crisis, it can’t be relied on totally, for many reasons stated previously. Not everyone has an e-mail address — it’s hard to believe, but true.
• Opposition has level playing field. Anyone with a beef about your organization has as much opportunity to publish their feelings, accusations and suggestions as you do. You need to know in advance who your critics are, and have their Web sites monitored during a crisis, so you can respond to allegations or tailor messages to ensure you are communicating clearly and accurately if they are presenting misleading or incorrect information. “Anti-Web sites” are common these days. They used to be called the “sucks” sites (“McDonaldsSucks.com,” and the like). They’ve become more sophisticated these days, and not as obvious. Companies in the agbiotech sector, for example, may wish to monitor information on the sites of organizations that oppose genetically modified foods, such as Greenpeace Canada (Toronto, ON) and the Organic Consumers Assoc. (Little Marais, MN).

Preparing Your Web Site
So when you have that retreat, how do you go about planning to implement a crisis-ready Web site? Here are some starter tips:

• Include your Web master in the communications team. This might seem obvious, but it isn’t done in all cases. Your Web master will be a critical player. Make sure the Web staff is invited to that planning retreat!
• Meet with the Web master to determine content areas. Determine what areas are likely to be needed, such as a company history, media news room, contact information, maps and directions, etc. You may already have these things on your site, but might need to set up ‘ghost’ pages in the background that are crisis-ready.
• Build page templates and link to site but do not create link on home page. By using this strategy for your ‘ghost’ pages, you can have general content ready, but not accessible until you need it. Create a crisis icon link for quick uploading to home page when required.
• Train/practise. This may sound crazy, but you actually can practise this kind of thing. There are consultants who offer crisis communications training, but make sure their training includes discussion and practice with use of Web sites. If it doesn’t, they may not be as up-to-date with their training strategies as they could be.

With some preparation and forward thinking, your Web site can be ready for just about anything. Even though you can’t pre-write all the content you may need in a crisis, you can certainly have the Web site and staff ready to receive content, and a process in place to make certain you use the Web effectively when a crisis hits. You certainly won’t have time to figure it out when it has just happened, will you? So, next step: plan that retreat!

Suzanne Paschall is a leadership training and development consultant with Paschall Arts (Saskatoon, SK). She has 20 years of experience in senior management of communications and public relations functions, and has experience in advertising and journalism in major markets in both the United States and Canada. www.paschallarts.com.