What to publish during a crisis depends on the audience’s needs and the information your company can responsibly provide. These five criteria emerged in the context of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic and can guide other uncertain situations, adapted to their nature. They are communication recommendations: they do not replace health instructions or specialist advice.
The objective is to inform clearly, explain changes, and offer relevant help without using fear to pressure a purchase. A publishing calendar helps with organization, but it does not oblige you to keep messages that no longer make sense.
Publish for usefulness, not just to follow a calendar
The usefulness filter
Before preparing a piece, ask: does this help someone understand a change, resolve a question, or make a decision? The answer may be a brief update. If the post only repeats what is already circulating or adds an uncertain promise, review or pause it.
Not every piece of content needs to produce an action within the next 24 hours. Some people need to know what will happen over the coming days; others need an immediate answer. The timeframe depends on the situation and what you can confirm.
Examples of concrete usefulness
A guide to rearranging a delivery, a checklist for coordinating remote work, or an explanation of how to contact support can address real needs. If you share a regulatory change, link the relevant authority’s source, indicate the date, and clarify its scope. Avoid turning a general explanation into advice your company is not equipped to provide.
A tone that respects the situation
Use approachable, restrained language. Acknowledge what you do not yet know and distinguish confirmed information from what remains under review. Avoid dramatizing, minimizing the problem, or guaranteeing a return to normality you cannot foresee. Expressions such as “take advantage of the panic to buy” turn concern into sales pressure and must stay out of the message.
Five criteria for deciding what to publish
Use them to review the plan and each piece according to its purpose. An opening-hours notice does not also need to include a guide or an offer: it does need to be clear, relevant, and reliable.
1. Help people decide with verified information
Consult primary sources, date information that may change, and separate facts from interpretations. A post forwarded many times does not replace checking its origin. Nor is it enough for two media outlets to repeat the same claim without providing independent evidence.
Before publishing, review who issued the information, when, whom it applies to, and whether an update exists. Cross-check when the topic requires it and make the limits of what you know visible. Assign someone to be responsible for that editorial review. Do not set ten minutes as sufficient for every verification: doubtful information may need more work or may not be ready for distribution.
2. Explain how your company is operating
The community needs to know about changes to opening hours, deliveries, availability, and support. Communicate what affects service and avoid promises that operations cannot sustain. If a date is estimated, say so and indicate when new information will be available.
An operational notice should answer four questions: what changes, from when, whom does it affect, and where can people inquire? Keep a complete version on an easy-to-find page and link to it from relevant channels. The strategic web design service can organize that information and its navigation within the agreed scope.
3. Offer a concrete and appropriate step
Combine context, a possible action, and an example. For example, if order pickup changes, explain how to check its status and what information is needed when contacting the team. Do not propose actions that depend on resources the audience may not have without acknowledging that limitation.
A useful structure is to describe the situation, organize the steps in bullets, and close with the help channel. The length should allow the procedure to be understood; a short text is not better if it omits an important condition. Also review readability, links, and alternatives for people unable to access a format.
4. Care for your community without pressuring purchases
You can share templates, guides, or support directories when they are relevant and reviewed. Explain their scope, access conditions, and who provides them. Do not present a commercial resource as independent help or assume the crisis affects everyone equally.
The email marketing service lets you organize messages by need and relationship with each contact, starting from databases whose use is authorized. Do not turn every service update into a promotion or add recipients to campaigns without checking that permission.
5. Maintain a sustainable, reviewable pace
Publish at a frequency allowed by information quality, audience needs, and team capacity. Three pieces a week could be a planning example, not a universal target. A changing situation may require immediate notices; in another, repeating the message every day only adds noise.
Organize owners, approvals, and review points. A plan could combine operational notices, practical resources, and answers to frequently asked questions. The marketing automation service can support compatible, agreed workflows, but scheduled posts must be reviewable or stoppable when the context changes.
What to avoid even if it looks like an opportunity
Using concern as a sales argument
Ask: does the message provide necessary information, or does it use fear to pressure a purchase? An operational update may legitimately depend on the crisis. The problem is inventing urgency, hiding terms, or promising certainties to obtain a conversion.
Publishing first and checking later
Speed does not compensate for incorrect information. If you must communicate before having every answer, publish only what is confirmed and explain what remains pending. When you detect an error, correct it at the primary source and in channels where it may still be circulating, indicating what changed when relevant.
How to coordinate the website, social media, and email
Use the website as the reference for your company’s operational information, not as a substitute for official emergency sources. Keep the review date, contact information, and terms visible. On social media, you can summarize the change and link the full version; by email, inform those actually affected.
For example, a delivery change can have an explanatory page, a short post, and an email for affected orders. Check that hours, dates, and links match. Avoid keeping contradictory versions when the procedure changes again.
How to evaluate whether communication helped
Observe questions received, recurring doubts, clicks to instructions, saves, and shared content. These are signals that require context: an increase in comments can also show confusion. They do not, by themselves, demonstrate trust, usefulness, or sales.
Compare those indicators with what the service team hears. Do people find the information? Is a question being repeated that the notice should have answered? Those answers help decide what to clarify or which format to modify.
Lessons to preserve
Record what worked, what caused confusion, and what information was missing. That learning can guide inbound marketing and the voice and identity criteria of branding, without assuming that every decision made during a contingency will be useful afterward.
For a retrospective, ask: what did we publish that helped, what added noise, and what did we fail to communicate that would have been necessary? Adjust the plan with those answers and define who will keep the information current.
If you need to organize topics, tone, and formats, let’s discuss your communication. The social media and video content service lets you agree on an editorial strategy, pieces, and reviews according to your context and resources.
