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Updated: March 23, 2020 Talking Points

Communication tips for dealing with coronavirus

By Andrea Obston
Andrea Obston

You can fight the coronavirus with your words.

Amidst the screaming headlines and clickbait-driven posts, communicators can and should use the power of their words to fight the panic that’s spreading, well, like a virus.

Here are a few tips for communicating with employees, customers and suppliers:

Nix the adjectives: Using words like “deadly” and “catastrophic” fuels the panic that’s being fed by social media and gossip.

I like this advice to journalists from the Poynter Institute: “There is no law that says every time journalists mention the word “virus” that they have to precede it with the word “deadly.”

It is true some people die. But we don’t call the traffic jams every day in every city “deadly traffic jams” even though somebody will die every day in traffic. By now people know this is a serious issue. Stick to the cold hard facts.

Choose images carefully: When choosing images for website landing pages, eblasts and blog posts pick those that focus on healthy habits instead of sickness. Showing someone in a mask only fuels the fires.

“The public is starting to freak out. Don’t add to it with screaming clickbait headlines and scary generic images.” That’s another piece of advice to journalists covering this story from the Poynter Institute.

Offer advice. Not emotion: Your employees, customers and vendors are looking for practical information about how this virus is affecting your operations and workplace. They want to know what you’re doing and what they can do.

For example, Trader Joe’s is encouraging ailing employees to stay home by changing its sick-leave policy during the coronavirus outbreak to allow unwell workers to get reimbursed.

Address the status of upcoming events: The people who depend on your business need to know what you’ll be doing about upcoming events. Are you cancelling? Considering cancellation? Going forward? When will you make those decisions if you haven’t already?

Provide scheduled updates: Now is the time to demonstrate that your business cares about its employees, customers and vendors by serving as a source for clear-headed information.

Establish a firm schedule of information-packed communications through eblasts, social media, blog posts, podcasts or YouTube videos. Sticking to that schedule will position you as a dependable source of credible and useable information.

Make worker safety a priority: Demonstrate your employee-centered culture by providing workers with information about what you’re doing to make their workplace safe.

Do this through individual emails to workers, communications on your intranet and YouTube videos by your leaders. Intel also shares this information with their suppliers and visitors and has been updating it almost daily.

As communicators, we are all striving to showcase our companies as thought leaders. Now is the time to do it, but in a responsible way. Make sure all communications provide usable and not emotional messages.

In the rush to deal with this virus, do not get so carried away that you fan the flames of fear.

Andrea Obston is president of Andrea Obston Marketing Communications, a reputation-management firm in Bloomfield.

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