Rehearse The Crisis

Train Before You Need It

One of your employees (or coworkers) just went rogue on social media. The world found out where they work and now they are targeting your company. As unfair as this seems, it happens, all the time. With good policies and a crisis plan in place, you can get the best outcome from the situation. We do a lot of crisis training here at Vendilli and here are some of our best tips.

1. Write down a list of your worst-case scenarios.
Don't try to plan for everything. Focus on the few that would really hurt, like the social example above or someone spoofing your CEO or your brand to send a fake message that looks real.

2. Run a 15-minute tabletop, not a workshop.
Get your marketing lead, IT contact, whoever owns your social logins or anyone else you deem right for a crisis response team and get them in a room. Walk through, "It's 9am and our Instagram is posting content we didn't write. What do we do in the next 10 minutes?" Assign real names to real actions.

3. Write down who does what and when.
Before the drill ends, you need a plan on paper. Who writes and posts the "we're aware, stand by" holding statement. No plan survives if the answer is "someone will figure it out."

4. Set a verification rule for anything that looks like leadership.
If a message claims to be from your CEO, a client or a vendor asking for something unusual (a payment, a password, an urgent post), require a callback on a known number before anyone acts. This one rule kills most impersonation attempts cold.

5. Re-run the drill twice a year.
Platforms change, staff turns over and muscle memory fades. Keep on top of it and keep on top of problems before they arise.

The teams that survives a hack or an impersonation scam don't have better luck. They have a plan they've already practiced. Check out our podcast with John Dwyer, as he digs deep into cybersecurity and how you can protect your team and your business.

We have a free crisis guide you can grab today and if we can help you get started with crisis management, please reach out.

Cybercrime is no longer just a big-company problem. If you own a business, manage a team or handle money, John Dwyer, Vice President of Cloud and AI Security Services at Coalfire, says you are already in the blast radius. The scams are getting faster, smarter and cheaper to run.

In this episode, Chris and John discuss what small and mid-sized businesses actually need to worry about right now. From deepfake payment fraud and business email compromise to ransomware, typosquatting and AI-driven scams, this episode cuts through the fear and gets specific about what really matters.

Alert Media

What it is: An emergency communication platform that lets your team send instant, multi-channel alerts (SMS, email, voice, app push) the moment something goes wrong, plus pre-built workflows.

Who it's for: Any marketing or comms team that would otherwise be scrambling in a group chat during a crisis, brand impersonation, a hacked social account, a PR mess that needs a fast, coordinated response.

Why it's worth your time: You can pre-load your tabletop drill (who freezes what, who posts the holding statement, who calls support) as an automated workflow. When the real thing hits, one click notifies the right people with the right instructions instead of everyone freelancing under pressure.

👉 Worth a look if your crisis plan currently lives in someone's head, or in a doc nobody's opened since it was written.

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