Twitter really become the ‘8-bazillion-pound gorilla’; a news channel in its own right – a powerhouse in a crisis where information travels at light speed.
Time and time again, we have seen Twitter unleash its power – thanks to millions of citizen journalists – and no more recently and dramatically than the tragic Boston Bombings. A lot of information was just wrong with many desperate to be first with the news that the terrorists had been captured (and how).
So what can crisis communicators do to lessen the inaccuracies and to help ensure that their official or accurate messages are heard and more importantly retweeted and shared?
One way is to use a strong descriptor (word) at the beginning of each tweet, for example UPDATE, ALERT, DANGER.
Another effective way to use Twitter keywords is by the stages – the four stages that the media report a crisis (the focus of my book, The Four Highly Effective Stages of Crisis Management).
For example, at stage one, the breaking news stage when all the focus is on the incident, emergency disaster, tweet:
- WARNING, URGENT, DISASTER – followed by a brief overview of what FACTS are known now and links to official websites.
- ALERT may also be appropriate.
In Stage Two, where the focus moves to the response and the victims (and back-stories), you may need to start your tweets with:
- UPDATE, OFFICIAL, CONTACT
ALERT is important for ongoing important messages. OFFICIAL – an important keyword to counter rumors and mis-information – can be added to any of the ALERT or CONTACT tweets.
And, remember, if you are linking (say to your website or a blog or a government website) then you will need to restrict your character count to 112 – certainly less than 120, particularly if you are also adding a hashtag (highly recommended).
We’ll take a closer look at Stages Three and Four next week. Thanks for reading!
The post Language for Twitter in a Crisis Part I appeared first on The Media Skills Academy.
