How To Adapt Your Content Strategy In A Crisis

Want to jump straight into the “how to” guide? Skip to the bottom for our actionable checklist.

In a crisis, everyone is a student.

No-one has all the answers. Business leaders are left wondering "What value can we create for our audience? And how do we stay relevant in this changing environment?"

Within uncertainty lies opportunity. In times of chaos, people look for leaders. Winners will not only attract loyal followings, but create tangible value for their audience in ways that weren’t possible before.

Our team has adapted the content strategy we're using for our clients. What follows is our exact process enabling business leaders to effectively communicate in a crisis. Like everyone in a crisis, we’re consistently learning how to improve it too. The process can be used for any channel: I use a modified version creating weekly episodes of my podcast, Subject Matter.

This framework will teach you how to:

1. Minimize risky communication by leveraging data-informed inputs

2. Stay reflexive and relevant by breaking your content strategy down into short cycles

3. Make your messaging practically valuable to your target audience in a crisis

Reducing Uncertainty

"Information isn’t what we’re told; it’s what we understand." - Alex Danco

Humans love being in control. We’re attracted to certainty like moths to a lightbulb. In Alchemy, Rory Sutherland points out this tendency:

"The single best investment ever made by the London Underground in terms of increasing passenger satisfaction was not to do with money spent on faster, more frequent trains – it was the addition of dot matrix displays on platforms to inform travellers of the time outstanding before the next train arrived.”

Reducing uncertainty improves lives, and saves them too. Countries including China and Korea have reduced accidents at intersections simply by showing the number of seconds left before lights turn green.

Yet life is rarely this certain. Frans Osinga points out “uncertainty is a fundamental and irresolvable characteristic of our lives.” And what happens when certainty disappears altogether? Panic sets in. Mild at best, hysteria at worst.

Our brains crave anything that creates stability. At a fundamental level, we look for stability through information.

Yuval Noah Harari advises us to “share reliable information" in a crisis. But what exactly does "information" mean? The founder of Information Theory Claude Shannon has a simple but powerful definition:

“Information is the resolution of uncertainty.”

Consider these two statements:

1) “The virus is spreading rapidly in our country.”

2) “There were 2,500 new cases in our country today, a 15% increase on yesterday.” 

The second statement clearly resolves more uncertainty, which is why we say the information is “higher resolution." There’s less potential risk of misinterpreting meaning.

In a crisis where things change daily, quality information satisfies our desire for stability. That’s why as we’ll soon see, one of the big benefits of our content strategy is reducing uncertainty in your target audience.

Cycles, Not Campaigns

In times of plenty, businesses plan far-sighted content campaigns. But in a crisis, time is the master resource. Industries evolve daily, and big campaigns are soon extinct if left unchecked. Sharing content in a campaign means swapping long campaigns for short cycles.

In a crisis, lengthy campaigns are rigid and inflexible. Short cycles are fluid and adaptable. Cycles break our campaign down into bite-size content we can test, share and improve on much faster.

Optimising your content through frequent, weekly cycles reduces uncertainty. Think of the difference between campaigns changed each month, and cycles optimised each week. Which one improves faster? There’s 4 times the opportunity to iterate.

In How To Measure Anything, Douglas Hubbard points out "the highest value measurement is the beginning of the measurement.” Short cycles let us measure impact on a weekly basis, and learn from our content much quicker. Learning over time goes up, while uncertainty goes down.

Short cycles lower the barrier to beginning. A World Health Organisation Expert recently stated “perfection is the enemy of the good when it comes to emergency management. Speed trumps perfection. The problem right now is everyone is afraid of making a mistake.” In a crisis where no-one has all the answers, the best solution is simply getting started.

Taking Control

In a crisis, leaders lead. Before starting your first content cycle there’s one important step: Take responsibility, and acknowledge the situation.

There are 3 things to publicly make your audience aware of as a leader during a crisis:

1. What is my personal perspective on the crisis?
2. How has this impacted our business and industry so far? 
3. What specific changes have we made in response? What can customers and team members expect to change?

A stellar example of this acknowledgment comes from Arne Sorenson, CEO of hotel giant Marriott International. In a 5 minute address, he’s almost moved to tears delivering one of the most heartfelt messages of his career.

Sorenson's delivery has 3 notable parts:

1. His personal perspective. “I can tell you that I have never had a more difficult moment than this one.”

2. Sharing the impact on his business. “In terms of business, COVID-19 is like nothing we’ve ever seen before.” Sorenson acknowledges the 90% decline in Chinese Marriott business, and a 75% decline globally - "more than 9/11 and the 2009 financial crisis combined."

3. Specific changes. These include limiting all non-essential travel, pausing brand marketing, and the Marriott executive team taking a 50% pay cut, with Sorenson himself taking no salary this year.

Sorenson demonstrates the importance of not hiding struggles from your team. Why is his delivery so powerful? Radical transparency. He’s sharing information that reduces uncertainty. The message is reassuring whether you’re an employee, customer or investor.

As a leader, publicly acknowledging the crisis lets you compassionately communicate what we’re going through not just as workers, but fellow human beings. After all, this crisis isn’t business-to-business. It’s human-to-human. 

If you haven’t already, publicly acknowledge the crisis by answering these 3 questions:

1. What is my personal perspective on the crisis?
2. How has this impacted our business and industry so far? 
3. What specific changes have we made in response? What can customers and team members expect to change?

Commit To A Frequency

Next, commit to how frequently you will share content. As a leader, it’s important to commit to consistent output so you can start building your audience's habit of expecting your content. My content frequency is a new podcast episode every Tuesday, and daily tweeting.

In times of crisis, I recommend committing to at least a weekly piece of content. A lot can change in a week. Weekly content ensures a strong degree of relevancy, whatever happens.

The Content Cycle

The content cycle has 2 simple steps: Inputs and Output. Collect the most relevant information from the crisis, then proactively share your informed perspective.

Step 1: Inputs

"You're on a never-ending search for better inputs." - Sam Hinkie

In a crisis, sharing off-topic content is risky. Your audience might think you’ve failed to see the most pressing matter we all face. It’s crucial to remain consistently relevant. That comes from harnessing quality inputs.

Inputs are simply the sources of information we’re consuming. Higher quality means information that’s higher resolution, and therefore less uncertainty.

Quality inputs let us design better messages for our target audience. That process begins with understanding the current landscape, so we can adapt to shifting priorities.

There are two free, powerful tools we can use to start cultivating relevant inputs: Google Alerts and Google Trends.

Google Alerts sends email updates with important news from your chosen keywords. It’s the easiest way to stay on top of changing priorities. 

Set up Google Alerts for your industry keywords. If you’re an Executive Coach, you might choose “Fortune 500”, “Executives”, “C-Suite”. For example, a Google alerts with "Executives" as the keyword:

To be even more relevant, set up alerts for crisis keywords too. For our current situation you could use “COVID-19”, “Virus” and “Influenza”. Depending on how frequently you want to communicate, you can change the alert’s frequency from weekly emails to daily.

Once you’ve set up your alerts, find opportunities on Google Trends. If the internet was a person, Trends would monitor their heartbeat. It shows you what the world is talking about in real time. Unsurprisingly, interest in “COVID-19” over the last 12 months looks like this:

Our aim with Google Trends is identifying popular topics we can create content around. For example, video-conferencing platform Zoom has become immensely popular in the last 30 days:

Take the keywords you’ve created Google Alerts for and run them through Google Trends. Has there been a sharp spike in the last 90 days? How about the last 12 months? You’re looking for keywords that have become more popular due to the crisis. The steeper the spike, the better.

However, we're not sharing our insights, we need to pair them with a personal perspective. You'll find out why this is so important very soon.

In times of uncertainty it’s important to ask: “What DO we know?” Your personal learnings could be more valuable than ever. Each cycle, ask yourself these questions to uncover valuable insights you might be missing:

1. What went well this week? What didn’t go well? (Your hard-earned lessons could save someone else from learning the hard way.)

2. What else have I learned this week that my audience could benefit from?

3. How is our business adapting to this new market? What changes have we made?

Before moving on to step 2, make sure you have the two inputs you’ll need:

Step 2: Output

“When the world zigs, zag." - Levi’s campaign slogan

Before creating our content, let’s take a brief step back to understand how a crisis affects online communication.

Why does most content during this crisis feel strangely similar? The Philosopher René Girard might have the answer.

According to Girard’s theory of mimetic desire, our desires stem from the desire of others. Think about Instagram influencers: you see a beautiful model wearing a jacket, suddenly it's more appealing. We’re deeply driven to imitate.

In their fantastic paper, Hobart and Huber illustrate Girard’s idea of “triangular desire”. Character A and B both want an object, but Character A only desires it through mimicking B’s actions.

In a crisis, mimetic desire triggers herd mentality. Think about the surging demand for toilet paper. There’s no evidence linking COVID-19 to increased toilet paper usage, yet millions are hoarding it. One leader acted, the rest followed.

Not everyone imitates. Mimesis is contagious, but it’s always triggered by an original model. In the content cycle, we’ll design our output to be models, rather than mimics.

Proactive Signal vs. Reactive Sponges

Think of the difference between models and mimics as signals versus sponges. A signal proactively broadcasts it's message. It embraces what makes it unique, sharing what it believes is valuable. A sponge can only absorb the messages of others. It’s reactive, and lacks original opinion.

Your content should proactively observe, not reactively absorb. This is the practical reason why we identified your personal perspectives during step 1. The alternative: reciting (or imitating) existing information might reduce uncertainty, but there’s no reason for your audience to associate that value with you. You miss the chance to build brand equity.

With that understanding, it’s time to create your content. A proactive observation uses both qualitative and quantitative inputs. We can break that down by completing our crisis content formula:

Using your alerts and trends data, identify the most important news to share with your audience. Assuming your frequency is one piece of content per weekly cycle, the goal is choosing the single most relevant idea you can share for that week. Ask yourself: 

If I were limited to sharing one valuable insight this week, what would it be?

(For a full guide on optimizing content to resonate with your audience’s values, click here.)

Next, bring in your personal perspective. You’re looking for overlap between the most relevant news from this cycle and your personal learnings. That forms the backbone of your content.

When it comes to writing the content itself, 3 things you should consider:

1. What is the goal of this content? What are you hoping this piece will achieve?

2. Is it personal? People learn from people. Is there a hero, heroine or anti-hero we can learn from?

3. What is the one big lesson you’re giving your audience?

(For a full breakdown on crafting compelling stories, click here.)

Communicate With Precision

Language is information. Unnecessary words are useless noise. Whether communicating through video, audio or the written word, precision is essential. Great content uses language like a surgeon with a scalpel: sharing only essential information with surgical precision. The tighter your language, the more you’ll be understood by your audience.

Nobody wants agreement in uncertain times. They want leadership. By nature, precise language meets this need. It pushes us towards decisive conclusions.

As you write your content, make your communication more precise by asking: “Is this word absolutely necessary?” If not, delete it.

Bias Towards Over-communication

In a crisis, overreactions are the best course of action.

Johnson & Johnson faced a crisis in 1982 after poisoned Tylenol bottles were found across stores in the Midwest. How did they react? By clearing the shelves of Tylenol across North America. It was an overreaction. And it restored public faith in the company.

Overreacting and over-communicating go hand in hand. Twitter Co-founder Biz Stone believes “At least half the job of being a good CEO is communication.” Every week Biz writes a letter to everyone at his company updating them on progress, good or bad. He keeps it short, using iA Writer to keep read time under 3 minutes.

Why? It’s easy to fear what we don’t understand. In a crisis this feeling is exacerbated. When you can’t see your colleagues in the office it becomes much harder to sense momentum. As a result, crises reward over-communicators. No matter what kind of progress you’re making keep uncertainty low by communicating constantly.

You can either share progress internally with your team, or externally with customers. Whatever you decide, don’t hide. Neither your team or customers have the usual number of touchpoints with you. Staying top of mind removes any potential fear of not understanding how things are progressing.

In uncertain times, transparency is a healthy habit. When in doubt, share.

Content Review

At the end of your cycle measure your content’s impact. We use a metrics report to measure our client's performance. Tracked areas include:

• Engagement (Likes, Comments, Shares)
• Reach (Views)
• Growth (Profile Views, Follower Count)

While reviewing, take the time to ask why your content performed as it did. And most importantly, what changes will you make next cycle? Take advantage of shorter cycles by consistently testing, learning and improving.

Once that’s finished, channel those insights, and begin again.

Every crisis brings opportunity. Whether change pushes us around or pushes us forward is a choice. With short content cycles, we can stay reflexive and relevant to the evolving crisis, reducing uncertainty while building brand equity.

In a crisis, everyone is a student. But will you become a teacher too?

Ready to apply the content cycle? Here’s a step-by-step checklist:

Step 1: Take responsibility and acknowledge the situation as a leader. Answer these questions in a public post:

• What is your personal perspective on the crisis?
• How has it impacted your business and industry so far? 
• What specific changes have you made in response? What can customers and team members expect to change?

Step 2: Commit to a frequency. How much content will you share with your audience each week?

Step 3: Gather data-informed inputs.

• Set up Google Alerts for your industry keywords, alongside crisis keywords too.
• Run your keywords through Google Trends. Look for popular topics: Has there been a sharp spike in the last 90 days or 12 months?
• Use your insights to identify the most important news to share. Assuming you’re sharing one piece of content per weekly cycle, if you were limited to sharing one valuable insight this week, what would you choose?

Step 4: Add your personal perspective. What can you share that will be valuable for your audience? Ask yourself:

• What went well this week? What didn’t go well?
• What else have I learned this week?
• How is our business adapting to this new market? What changes have we made?

Step 5: Be a model, not a mimic.

Data-informed inputs + Personal perspective = Proactive observation

Step 6: Craft your proactive observation.

• Identify the most important news to share. Assuming you’re sharing one piece of content per weekly cycle, if you were limited to sharing one valuable insight this week, what would you choose?
• Where there is overlap between the most relevant news from this cycle and your personal learnings?
• What’s the goal of this content? What are you hoping it will achieve?
• Is it personal? People learn from people. Is there a hero, heroine or anti-hero we can learn from?
• What’s the one big lesson you’re giving your audience?

Step 7: Communicate with precision. Is this word absolutely necessary? If not, delete it.

Step 8: Bias towards over-communication. When in doubt, share.

Step 9: Review. Measure your content’s performance. Why do you think it performed as it did? What changes will you make next cycle?

Done? Onto the next cycle.

Interested in getting support implementing this framework with your own content? Message me on LinkedIn to find out more.