Thread by @AubreyBergauer

Last week I oversaw the comms plan for @SFConservMusic. It was a doozy, as all crisis communications tend to be.

For anyone working on coronavirus communications and messaging, an "under the hood" thread that’s hopefully helpful:

@SFConservMusic 1) Don’t be reactionary.

Even if you are reacting to what’s going on in the world, don’t sound that way. Sound like you have a plan and are being proactive. “These are the steps we’re taking…” instead of “given the situation, we are…”

@SFConservMusic 2) The words you use matter.

I try to avoid words like “we are monitoring the situation” (automatically sounds negative…we’ve got a *situation*), or “crisis”, and instead say things like “we are monitoring the news” or “this is the preparedness plan.”

@SFConservMusic 3) Be as specific as you can.

Specifics provide comfort. If you don’t know how long performances will be cancelled, pick a date you know could work. Can always push it out longer, but it’s much more difficult to roll it back if you overshoot. Specifics > being vague and cagey.

@SFConservMusic 4) Know your topline goals.

At SFCM, we said again and again that our top goals were safety and health of our community, plus continuing student degree progress. That meant everything, including moving events and course delivery online, were in service to these goals...

@SFConservMusic ...so by Friday, when we became more concerned about stopping the spread, we were able to work that in without changing our original goals.

@SFConservMusic 5) Segmentation matters.

The communications that went out early in the week had 12 different segments. Students and parents, faculty and staff, people who had performance tickets, pre-college program, continuing education, general public, the board…

@SFConservMusic ...every one of those groups and others need a variant of the message tailor made just for them.

@SFConservMusic 6) When you send it matters.

3/6 FRIDAY: First round of info went live (website + social media).
3/9 MONDAY: A lot had changed and we were working on those 12 versions of comms. We didn’t get the first batch of those out until about 7pm that evening...

@SFConservMusic ...with changes effective the next day (moving to streaming for example). Not the best look, IMO.

@SFConservMusic 3/11 WEDNESDAY: The next round that went out, we were able to draft on Wednesday, *sleep on it*, tighten it up and send on Thursday morning.

Felt a lot better.

@SFConservMusic 7) Don’t have too many cooks. Do have proofreaders.

Every communication I drafted I first spoke with the senior leadership team to align on the top messages, then made the draft available for editing by two other people only, the Dean and President...

@SFConservMusic ...In some cases, another senior leader would draft the communication (e.g. cancelling donor events), and then I would review.

One time, someone sent a draft to the whole leadership team for edits and it was... frankly a cluster f***.

Too many cooks.

@SFConservMusic 8) Update your public-facing webpage or blog post with the date it was updated.

So it should have the original publish date, and then you can add below that the new date when changes or updates were added so that readers can see that the information is current.

@SFConservMusic If anything else comes to mind, I’ll add it onto the thread here.

Good luck to those behind COVID-19 responses. It’s a big responsibility to manage an institution’s brand, esp. during times where we have to act fast while navigating uncharted territory.

You’ve got this.