Using Social Media for Internal Crisis Management

Social media is catching on with small businesses, large corporations, non profits and even some banks. Yet, as active as these organizations are in the social media world with their clients and consumers, what are they doing to engage their employees and internal staff?

With the growth of social media, the news cycle has become shorter and more open to various types of journalism found online as Tweets, blog posts, Facebook status updates, comments on other posts and articles on news sites. Not only should organizations review their crisis management plans to include social media outreach for their external audiences, they should also consider how they can use the tools for internal communication.

By utilizing various social media tools and keeping some basic tips in mind, organizations can interact in two-way conversations with employees faster and more efficiently when a crisis occurs.

Be Available

Similar to a traditional crisis management plan where a spokesperson is made available to the media for responses and updates, the spokesperson(s) and management of a company should also be available to staff and employees if they have questions or concerns. This availability can be through phone, in-person or using social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook and IM. Using these social media channels, management can communicate in real time answering questions, calming anxiety or concerns about a situation and providing immediate updates about what the company is doing to handle the situation.

Be Open and Honest

It is likely that at least a percentage of many organizations’ employees and staff are already engaging in social media in one way or another, whether it be through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Plaxo, blogging, interacting on message boards and forums, listening to podcasts and viewing webcasts or YouTube videos. Therefore, it is important to establish a presence on these channels with your employees before a crisis occurs. Your employees are going to view and read updates/comments about your company and how it’s handling the crisis on these sites anyway from other users. It will be better for internal morale and for your company’s reputation if you have direct contact with employees on these mediums to communicate your own key message points about the situation.

A great example of why this is important and how to utilize these tools is the Virginia Tech shootings in 2007, and the role social media played in that tragedy. Students, teachers, family and the rest of the world read constant updates and opinions of how the school was handling the crisis via Twitter, Facebook and other social media venues, causing some negative images of how the crisis was handled by the school’s leadership.

Since then, Virginia Tech has initiated several programs for alerting students and faculty during emergencies and crisis situations on campus, including:

• VT Alerts – offers three new methods for alerting the campus community and beyond about emergency situations. The newly developed system will allow students to sign up for the services – they can provide a cell phone number, instant message (IM) contact, or additional phone numbers in order to receive a text message, an IM, or an audio message in the event of a campus emergency. Mandatory sign up for VT Alerts is being considered.
• All students will be notified directly by email during the week of July 2 with detailed subscription instructions, at that time they can subscribe through a website, 24 hour a day, 7 days a week.
• Broadcast e-mails are sent when necessary during an emergency situation to all students, faculty, and staff.

Be Consistent

Although a company may designate one person as the crisis spokesperson, all employees need to know the key messages. This is important because although they are not the spokesperson, they may still share pieces of the information with family and friends, and as the president of a company you want those messages to be consistent with what the company spokesperson is saying to the general public.

To accomplish this, a company can use an internal enewsletter to distribute information about the crisis situation and the message points; they can post it on a Facebook page visited by employees; and the social media spokesperson can post the company’s main message or several key messages on Twitter to get the word out to employees and the general public simultaneously.


It will also be important to incorporate social media into boosting morale after a crisis. This can include the use of webcasts that can be sent by email to employees and/or posted on an intranet system. These webcasts should include an appearance by the CEO/president of the company reassuring employees that the company is okay, what steps they took to manage the crisis and what the company will do in the future to prevent similar crises.