By: Sarah Reyes, Director of Digital Strategy, Bellevue Communications

When I worked as the City of Philadelphia’s digital director, I often coordinated the City’s digital communications response to large-scale emergencies such as fatal fires, shootings, flooding, and damage from severe weather. These are life and death crises for those involved, and they demand fast and effective responses from the City.

At the same time, however, we also learned while speed and accuracy of response are the primary focus, it’s important to address another message in every crisis:

People need to be heard, which means that those of us crafting responsive comms need to listen to what people are saying.

People want to help

During nearly every crisis in my years at City Hall, we would see an outpouring of support from residents who wanted to help. Our social media channels would be flooded with people asking what they could do. We would hear stories of good Samaritans showing up and dropping off clothing or other materials at the site of a crisis.

It was incredibly heartening to see, but sometimes it also affected operations if the site wasn’t prepared to accept material donations. We knew we had to find a way to help direct peoples’ generosity so it could have the greatest impact.

Spurring compassion into action

Having identified the need to provide residents with a specific action item, “how you can help” became a part of our crisis response model. During any crisis, we would ask partners if they were accepting any donations. We would then include the partner’s specific needs as part of our secondary messaging.

The City’s digital communications channels often experienced large spikes in user activity within the first 24 hours of a crisis. By including an action item for residents who wanted to help, we were able to direct the goodwill of thousands of people to take a specific action that could positively impact those who were affected by the crisis.

So, what’s the bigger lesson?

A good communications plan must be responsive to the needs of your audience. Through feedback from residents and partners, we identified the need for a new key message in our crisis communications plans. Once we identified that need, we incorporated it into the template we used for all large-scale crisis responses.

We listened to what our audience wanted, and what our partners needed, and ultimately were able to increase impact through our messaging. It was an easy change that made a big difference.

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About the author

Sarah Reyes joined Bellevue Communications Group in February 2024 as Director of Digital Strategy. Before joining Bellevue, Sarah served as the City’s Digital Director in the Mayor’s Office of Communications, where she oversaw social media and digital communications on behalf of the City of Philadelphia, including managing the mayor of Philadelphia’s social media channels, @PhillyMayor.