What are effective ways to manage content-related issues and crises?

1 Identify the issue

The first step to manage a content-related issue or crisis is to identify and assess its nature, scope, and impact. You need to gather relevant information and evidence, such as the source, the date, the platform, the content type, the audience, the feedback, and the potential consequences of the issue. You also need to determine if the issue is internal or external, minor or major, isolated or widespread, and factual or emotional. This will help you to prioritize and categorize the issue and decide on the appropriate course of action.

2 Communicate the issue

The next step is to communicate the issue to the relevant stakeholders, such as your team, your manager, your client, your partner, or your audience. You need to be transparent, honest, and respectful, and avoid blaming, hiding, or ignoring the issue. You also need to use the appropriate tone, channel, and format for your communication, depending on the urgency, sensitivity, and complexity of the issue. For example, you may use an email, a phone call, a blog post, a social media post, or a press release to inform and update your stakeholders about the issue.

3 Resolve the issue

The final step is to resolve the issue in a timely and effective manner. You need to take responsibility, apologize, and offer a solution, if applicable. You also need to follow up, monitor, and evaluate the outcome of your actions, and collect feedback and lessons learned from the issue. You may also need to update, revise, or remove the content that caused the issue, or create new content to address or prevent the issue. For example, you may correct an error, acknowledge a mistake, credit a source, remove a plagiarism, respond to a complaint, or restore a reputation.

4 Prevent the issue

One of the best ways to manage content-related issues and crises is to prevent them from happening in the first place. You can do this by implementing and following some preventive measures and quality standards for your content creation and management process. For example, you can use tools and techniques to check and improve your content quality, such as editing, proofreading, plagiarism detection, fact-checking, accessibility testing, and SEO optimization. You can also use guidelines and policies to ensure your content compliance, such as style guides, content calendars, content audits, content governance, and content ethics.

5 Prepare for the issue

Another way to manage content-related issues and crises is to prepare for them in advance. You can do this by developing and maintaining a content-related issue and crisis management plan that outlines the roles, responsibilities, procedures, and resources for dealing with different types of issues and crises. You can also train and educate yourself and your team on how to identify, communicate, resolve, and prevent content-related issues and crises, and how to use the tools and systems that support your content management process.

6 Learn from the issue

A final way to manage content-related issues and crises is to learn from them and use them as opportunities to improve your content management skills and competencies. You can do this by analyzing and reflecting on the causes, effects, and solutions of the issues and crises that you encounter, and by identifying and applying the best practices and lessons learned from them. You can also seek and share feedback and advice from your peers, mentors, experts, or communities on how to handle content-related issues and crises better in the future.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?