Karine Joly of Collegewebeditor.com wrote a short blog with five steps for preparing your campus for an crisis. Here is a repost of the five tips:
- Make sure the chief communication officer of your institution is part of your emergency team.
- Include in your crisis plan your institution response to different possible scenarios. Define the type of communication channels to be use for the different situations and prepare the notification templates for each. In case of a crisis, you’ll be able to update and send these templates in minutes.
- Practice, practice, practice. Train your emergency team to assess, evaluate and make decisions. Review and edit your crisis plan with what you learn from your drills.
- If a crisis happens, send your alert notifications via several communication channels (phone, cell phone, email, text-messages, loud speaker, PA systems, etc.) and post the notification on the homepage of your website.
- Use your website as the main hub for your communications with your campus community, parents, media representatives and the rest of the world throughout and after the crisis.
My 2 cents on this would be what about also having a Facebook app that flashes red when an emergency at your school is announced?
