Effective Communication During a Crisis

State Farm used a company blog to communicate during Hurrican Katrina in 2005. Despite the organization's lack of familiarity with blogging, they proved that it can be a successful means of communication during a crisis.

Business Challenge:
* Deliver on promises to customers while ensuring the safety of employees
* Standard communication methods were inaccessible
* Over 20 employees were unaccounted for 24 hours after the storm

Challenges
* No time to educate employees on blog etiquette and use
* Many managers didn't see the value of blogs and were only concerned with customers
* Wanted a "controlled blog" due to cross regional sharing - meaning all posts had to be reviewed and approved prior to being posted.

Solution
State Farm had recently discussed the idea of utilizing blogs within each division, though the idea had not been executed yet. Lewis Pryor, Communication Strategy and Planning Manager for StateFarm's southern zone had the blogs up and running within hours of an executive decision to attempt to communicate with a corporate blog.

State Farm send out a mass email to all employees and provided a link on their Hurricane Update site so each associate would be aware of the communication tool. One of Pryor's biggest concerns were the employees who were not accounted for after the strom. After much debating with the executive team, Pryor's second post asked associates if they knew the whereabouts of the missing employees and posted each persons name.

Results
* Over 1550 associates logged in to the blog the first week
* Within 2 days of posting the employees names, 19 of the 27 had been accounted for
* Two days later 22 of the associates were accounted for using the blog

You can view the complete case study here.