Template M5 · Social Media Management · owned jointly with the client
Crisis and Sensitive Moment Playbook.
What to do in the four hours nobody planned for. Written calmly, in advance, because the alternative is deciding these things badly while a notification count rises.
The decision this template protects
Whether this is a crisis, who owns it, and what the brand says in the first hour.
Social Media Management · owned jointly with the client
Main Course Module 5 · Execution risk management
Version 1.0 · 19 August 2026
Fill it in your browser →
Download the PDF · 4 pages · 160 KB ↓
The browser version keeps everything on your device. Nothing you type is sent to aFactor.
Before you start, you need
What has to be true first.
- Names and phone numbers for the client's decision makers, including out of hours.
- Access to pause every scheduled queue.
- An agreed definition of what counts as a crisis for this organisation.
What this template will not do for you
Its stated limits.
- It will not prevent a crisis. It prevents a crisis being made worse by improvisation.
- It is not legal or public relations advice. For serious matters, both are needed and neither is you.
- It goes stale. Contact details rot within months. Review it every six months and check the numbers.
What is in it
6 sections, and what each one makes you write down.
01
Is this a crisis?
- First response time
- Level
- Definition
- Owner
02
The first fifteen minutes
- Where the pause switches are, and who has access
03
What the brand says first
- Situation
- First statement should
- Should not
04
Sensitive moments that are not crises
- Situation
- Action
- Who decides
05
Contacts
- Role
- Name
- Phone
- Out of hours?
06
Afterwards
- Step
- Owner
- By when
Judgment prompts
Questions the template makes you answer.
- Can you pause every queue in under five minutes, right now, without asking anyone?
- Does your escalation list contain phone numbers of people who will answer?
- Have you agreed with this client what silence looks like, and who is allowed to choose it?
- In the last incident anywhere in your portfolio, what actually went wrong: the response, or that nobody had decided in advance?
The defensible output
What you are left holding.
A completed playbook with live contact details, tested pause access, and an agreed definition of what counts as a crisis for this client.
Published open. Copy it, adapt it, use it on client work. If you pass it on, keep the attribution line on it.
More from the library
Sixty-five instruments, eighteen published open.
Each one names the decision it protects, states what it will not do, and ends in something you could defend six months later.