5 Modern Principles for COVID-19 Response
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The COVID-19 pandemic caught us all by surprise. It moved rapidly. It forced unprecedented action. It brought every established process to a halt. In what seemed like an instant, citizens and residents everywhere turned to government for daily - even hourly - communications. While peoples’ lives were disrupted, they were more connected than ever — urgently seeking out information about unemployment, business closures, distance learning, and health care options. Out of this unprecedented time came many lessons learned that helped to shape newly-realized principles for crisis response. In this guide, we’ll uncover these takeaways to help modern government communicators build a digital-first strategy for crisis response.
Crisis Communications
Click below to learn more about each principle
Principle #1
To Win the Public’s Trust, You Must Actively Work to Combat Misinformation
Principle #2
Immediate Response Requires Broad Comms, and Recovery is All About Coordination
Principle #3
Err on The Side of Proactive and Frequent Communications
Principle #4
Data is the Most Valuable (and Affordable) Crisis Consultant
Principle #5
Plan Ahead, With Room for Real-Time Agility
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Granicus Communications Software is Trusted With 1.7+ Billion Coronavirus Messages
At the beginning of the pandemic, pressures escalated quickly with conflicting data sources and the rapid spread of misinformation. With more than half of U.S. adults getting their news from social media, false and deceptive claims about the coronavirus were able to spread like wildfire — putting lives at risk. Communicators can counterbalance inaccurate information with timely accurate, truthful and expert advice. While this includes using all channels including social media, it also means finding ways to proactively tilt the scales against misinformation with communications from trusted sources. those with a robust digital approach to crisis communications that includes websites, email, text messaging, and social media and ready with a team of experts at national, state and local levels were able to mobilize quickly to inform communities.
Trust-Building Action Plan
On the onset of a crisis, hit pause on all non-crisis news. Send the signal to your residents that your top priority is what’s top of mind for them.
Look for accredited local, state, or national experts who can readily address the topic at hand. Elevate their expertise to the public via multi-channel communications (emails that refer to landing pages with more information, Twitter Town Halls, or video interviews).
Develop a landing page on your website with all of your trusted information related to the crisis. Keep it updated regularly, and direct residents there for the latest information.
Offer state, national or other local news collected in one central place (link to free tools).
Protip Insight: Remember, more than half of all website traffic is on a mobile device. Ensure your website (or landing pages) are mobile responsive and that information is easy to find on all devices.
1 Case Confirmed: In March, when the City of Berkeley experienced its first confirmed case of COVID-19, communicators were able to mobilize against misinformation with a multi-channel response — sending an email to their active subscriber base within 3 hours and hosting a digital town hall with the local health authority’s chief medical officer on social media shortly after. Learn more >>
Immediate Response Requires Broad Communication, And Recovery is All About Coordination
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In all your communications, feature local and national experts and refer people to detailed information from other government departments like transportation, education, parks & rec, health & safety and so on.
Coordinated Communications Action Plan
You have the public’s attention right now, but you might not soon. Use this moment of urgency to get the public to opt-in to your communications.
Incorporate text-to-subscribe calls to action in social media, press conferences, radio, TV, newspapers, and digital advertising.
Use website overlays (or “pop ups”) to draw extra attention to your email subscriptions. This will help build your audience, and prompt for additional demographic information.
Review your contact list and topic subscriptions. Did your crisis communications-related topic receive a rapid increase in subscribers? Go back to them and ask them to self-segment by type of information they want to hear (business, employment, benefits, etc.)
At its core, communications is all about aligning a message with what an audience member needs or wants to hear. During COVID-19, communicators did not have the luxury of aligning specific messages to different sub-audiences. The immediate response to COVID-19 required broad, mass communications that included simple and direct stay-at-home instructions for general audiences. The waves of communications that followed had much more complex communications challenges. Messaging became more nuanced, more tailored, more consistent, and more coordinated in order to prevent confusion and chaos. These messages that audiences needed became more aligned with audience segments such as small business owners looking to reopen, parents in search of school safety, the unemployed filing for benefits, etc.
The District Health Department in Michigan is capturing their engaged audience by using an overlay on their homepage that asks website visitors to subscribe to future updates.
Step 1: Capture New Audience Members - ASAP
Step 2: Build the Foundation for Coordinated Communications
Request detailed contact information either when you capture the contact or in follow up communications. Look for info like phone number for texting, area or zip code, or community name, school district, age range and other demographic information. Use this info later to better target and segment your messages.
When it comes to crisis communications, the rules on how frequently governments should communicate go out the door. Residents need information frequently and quickly, and it’s evident in the engagement data. In a recent survey of 250 government leaders, when asked how often they communicate with citizens regarding COVID-19. Top responses: Daily (39%), 2-3 Times Per Week (21%), Weekly (17.5%). It’s clear that many governments are communicating more than ever. And even more validation is Granicus’ email data showing noticeable increases in digital engagement during COVID-19. Email open rates had a 22% increase and click rates saw a 36% increase. On average, government websites saw a 25% surge in traffic. It’s clear that more proactive and frequent communications during COVID-19 is working to connect residents quickly and reliably with needed information.
Proactive Communications Action Plan
Identify an expedited approval process for communications that is three people or less (if possible).
Have a plan in place for creation and approval of both urgent and non-urgent messages (and a process for how to identify which is which).
Borrow content from your peers, sharing information they’ve already vetted and promoted, which ensures you can move quickly.
Governors have taken a leading role on communicating statewide COVID-19 information. New York Governor Cuomo supplements media briefings with a popular email newsletter sent directly to state residents. In one email, he asked 560,000 people with presumed medical skills to volunteer in NY hospitals, and was able to recruit 40,000 volunteers.
Data-Gathering Action Plan
Review email messages with highest/lowest open rates.
Review email messages with highest/lowest click rates.
Review subscription rates and subscribers per topic.
Data is a powerful ally, and can help you adapt, iterate, and improve your communications. Even in the midst of sending many messages multiple times a day, reviewing metrics like email open and click rates can help you refine your strategy. The COVID-19 pandemic also revealed that communicators don’t always have immediate insight into the spikes in services requested or needed during a crisis. With many services, programs, and benefits being transitioned to online delivery, it’s important to build in room for process change communications — bringing your audience the most helpful information when they need it most.
A combination of concise language and clear calls to action helped the Small Business Administration deliver engaging messages and connect its audience with the content they needed. Learn more >>
Email
Digital Properties
Review website analytics for pages with highest traffic.
When appropriate, optimize pages with the most traffic to UX and messaging.
Gather numbers of service requests, 311 account overviews.
Participate in ‘social listening’ on social accounts for complaints/questions.
Text Message
Get citizen feedback via a brief survey or poll.
While very few in 2019 could have foreseen a global pandemic on the scale of COVID-19, there are some core communications messaging that can be created ahead of a crisis. Knowing what you know about your audience (see principle #2), you can identify your most critical functional areas during a crisis scenario, and build templates for these segments. Of course, your ability to adjust to the reality of what is happening really counts. That means noticing change, adjusting messaging, then moving quickly. Both priorities and messages must be shifted in real-time and quickly.
Planning With Agility Action Plan
Identify a dedicated, multidisciplinary crisis team that’s ready to act, and begin identifying core functional areas that need communications templates at the ready.
Meet as much as needed with your multi-disciplinary team to assess priorities, opportunities. (How can communications support what your community needs? Is there a short-term plan we can execute quickly?)
Re-evaluate approval processes and streamline wherever possible.
Pro-tip Insight: Don’t be afraid to reverse course, sometimes communication is like sailing, you have to traverse sideways to move forward.
By staying agile and open to real-time community needs, the Emergency Response Team in Alameda, California, was able to generate $11,000 for a local food shelter with one well-timed email to residents.
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