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One of the trickiest challenges you will ever face when launching and growing your business is doing your public relations right. In its most generic terms, public relations involves activities that promote a positive image and foster goodwill in order to increase sales while conveying the right message. Reputation is everything for a brand and PR campaigns play important role in improving the brand value. Other advantages include:Improve engagement and image building. Reaching new target markets sounds great, doesn’t it? But one wrong step and you are likely to lose it all....
What do you do when your business has a poor reputation online or received a poor review?A lot of businesses and individuals often wonder how they can better their online reputation.
First, let me tell you how NOT to address negativity online. Don’t create fake reviews. Fake reviews, especially the kind that are paid for, are easily identified by your potential consumers and that will break their trust in you. In addition to being caught by potential consumers, you will likely be caught by site owners and/or Google. For sites like Yelp, they have publicly shamed businesses that they have caught....
One of the smartest things a brand can do is to respond as quickly and intelligently as possible to negative social media publicity, which is exactly what Taco Bell did.
Whether it’s an unsatisfactory customer experience, a management mistake, product malfunction or an employee of a major fast food chain publicly posting photos of themselves licking Tacos there are many reasons a company can get bad publicity.Below, we share with you some simple PR techniques that may well be worth thinking about so that your company is ready when people start talking about you on a blog, Facebook or Twitter....
The bombings at the Boston marathon were a tragic reminder that terrorism can strike anywhere at any time. Business Continuity professionals should be thinking about the effects of a terrorist attack and incorporate those scenarios into their plans.
After one of its planes crash landed into San Francisco, Asiana Airlines issued a press release that didn't even acknowledge the victims.
So far, during an overwhelming flood disaster, Calgary emergency personnel and police have performed incredibly well.
Twitter? Absolutely not!
As flooding surprised the city last Thursday, Calgary Police put its crisis management plan into action. Part of the plan included using its official Twitter account @CalgaryPolice. Providing updates, critical crisis information and engaging with residents wherever possible.
That is, until Twitter shut down the account for exceeding the daily 1,000-post limit....
If you’ve been using social media strategies to create loyal followers, you’ll have a decisive advantage when a crisis hits. Companies that have an advanced social media strategies in place will mitigate a negative event quicker and with less financial loss. Here, we are going to take a look at three areas that will help you manage a crisis with social media: tools, tactics, and tips....
Abercrombie & Fitch’s two-hour meeting this week with critics of its no-large-sizes strategy, and of CEO Mike Jeffries’ 2006 remarks that it only courts “attractive, cool” kids, prompted a mea culpa from the chain, and a vow to “take concrete steps to demonstrate our commitment to anti-bullying in addition to our ongoing support of diversity and inclusion,” the teen retailer said in a statement.
During the meeting, 18-year old activist Benjamin O’Keefe — whose Change.org petition urged A&F to carry larger sizes – Lyne Grefe, the CEO of the National Eating Disorder Association, among others, urged Abercrombie executives to add bigger clothes to store shelves, feature larger models in their branding efforts, cease hawking hyper sexualized advertising to its teen audience and redefine its warped, harmful notions of cool, O’Keefe told Forbes.com. Although the CEO was not at the meeting, the retailer offered a tacit apology for Jeffries’ remarks seven years ago, which included this gem: “A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes] and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.”...
Caribou Coffee’s announcement last week, that the company was shuttering stores and laying off employees, proves that relying exclusively on a press release to deliver unpleasant news is a bad strategy in the digital age.
While social media can build your business brand, it can also tear you down. View this list of 10 potentially damaging social media problems. Small business social media is a good thing…usually. Of course, this week observers in business and technology fields got a good look at how social media can also go bad. Challenges in small business social media are inevitable. Social media tools can build your brand. But, they can also tear you down. There are many uncertainties too. Below are 10 troubles with small business social media and how to set them right..--
We say sorry tens of times a day. ‘Sorry’ for bumping into someone in the street when it’s not our fault, ‘sorry, I didn’t quite catch that’ when you simply can’t hear; and of course we apologise for a perfectly legitimate complaint, ‘I’m sorry, but my soup is cold’. Perhaps our unique British politeness is to blame, but is the word sorry uttered so many times a day that it’s beginning to lose all meaning? I’d go as far to say that we don’t’ even realise when we’re saying sorry, or when we’re being apologised to. So for businesses caught in the midst of a PR disaster, how can they make their customers hear their apologies? Firstly, as Stephanie recently blogged, timing is everything; it took Apple two long weeks to apologise for the Apple Maps debacle and they’re still mopping up the bad PR around that one. We’ve seen many corporate apologies in the past few weeks, particularly in the wake of the horse-meat scandal, and some in particular have stuck out. Tesco, though not the only guilty party by any stretch, has been a serial apologist throughout horsemeat-gate. It has taken out full-page ads in every national newspaper, more than once, to say sorry to customers. There is something striking in this age of digital, rapid, instant, direct-to-the-consumer communication, that the full-page print newspaper apology is still so popular with big businesses; and looking more closely at what Tesco said is very interesting. An article on the BBC last week about the style of Tesco’s newspaper ads, suggested that they have more in common with poems than standard corporate apologies....
As the horsemeat saga rumbles on, it is becoming clearer and clearer which organisations invested in crisis management training beforehand…and which didn’t. This manifests itself most obviously in the performance of company spokesperson in their television and radio interviews. I was asked by The Grocer to assess the crisis communication efforts of the big supermarkets and as part of this I analysed the approach of their crisis spokespeople....
From hurricanes and tornadoes to wildfires, co-ops are harnessing the power of social media to reach out to members during times of crisis. “Ignore using social media for crisis communications at your own peril,” cautioned Chris Powell, director of public relations at Albemarle Electric Membership Corp. “Members not only expect real-time information, they expect to be able to respond back to it,” said Powell, adding that members always have the option of creating their own sites offering positive or negative feedback. “Within five years I expect social media to be the dominant force in crisis communications.”...
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Every publicist feels a combination of schadenfreude and cold-sweat relief upon reading about a crisis involving someone else’s client. And is it me, or does it seem that entertainment publicists have an extra helping of these opportunities? Whether it’s due to naughty personal behavior or corporate shenanigans, we all get our chance at crisis management at some point. This little multiple-choice quiz based on hypothetical scenarios (some of which may or may not bear a resemblance to real-life episodes) can help us all keep our skills sharp.
Whether it is fair or not, when your business is tweeting during a major negative news event, offense can come quickly.It’s important for social media managers to have a pulse on these events, and a plan in place to pause your scheduled content so at not to seem “out of touch” or insensitive to your audience when earth rattling news occurs.
Here are five considerations to make when a story breaks...
“Many studies have already shown how important crisis management is for organizations,” Hong said. “This study shows that Facebook can be a valuable tool for public relations professionals when working to solve or lessen the severity of a crisis. Because Facebook is very personal for its users, well-thought-out crisis management messages can be effective at reaching users on a personal level, which is a powerful way to persuade people to a cause.”
Hong also found that Facebook posts written in a narrative style were more effective than posts written in a non-narrative format. Narrative style is chronological and focuses more on story-telling rather than fact listing.
“This indicates that the effect of narrative tone in organizational statements during crises increases perceived conversational human voice, which represents a high level of engagement and best communicates trust, satisfaction, and commitment to the audience,” Hong said. “This is an important practice for public relations professionals because perceptions that an organization is sincerely trying to provide timely and accurate information during a crisis can lead to not only more favorable attitudes toward the organization, but also perceptions of less responsibility the organization has for causing the crisis.”...
...Edward Burkhardt, CEO of Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railways waited 5 days before visiting the crash site andmaking a statement to the media. His statement lacks a significant, quotable apology to those affected, while focusing too much on the technical aspects of dealing with insurance, finances and monetary issues. He even begins his statement by defending whether he is a compassionate person.
True, the CEO does not always need to be the spokesperson in every crisis. However, a crisis this big demands an appearance and statement within 24 hours of the onset of the crisis.
True, I believe a CEO should spend more time managing the crisis and running the company than trying to be a spokesperson, but a crisis this big demands at least a few hours to talk with the media and the families who have lost loved ones. News reports indicate that at the time of the news briefing, the CEO had not reached out to families....
Happy, Friday. This week's Friday PR Picks and social media missives are loaded with crisis management, content marketing and communication insight.
We're featuring 9 valuable crisis management, 10 public relations posts and 14 must-read social media articles. Perfect for the long weekend.
We never seem to run dry examples of easily preventable crises. Last week, an article on Home and Garden TV’s website discussing Fourth of July table settings suggested that an American flag be used as a “bright and festive table runner.” Whoops…
As you probably guessed, flocks of military vets and their families, along citizens from just about every walk of life, descended on HGTV’s social media sites to rip the network a new one for its misuse of the flag.
To HGTV’s credit, it quickly deleted the article and posted an apology, but to its detriment the apology was a weak one....
Twitter plays an essential role within your crisis management. The use of a crisis hashtag is one of the most important parts of your crisis communications. One of my favorite crisis bloggers, Kim Stephens, recently published an interesting summary of two reports by Project Hazards Emergency Response and Online Informal Communication (HEROIC), on their research around the use of Twitter by officials in the Boston Marathon Bombings. There are many aspects of these reports that are very interesting, but the thing that struck me the most was the inconsistency of hashtag use, across the board, during the week of events that followed the Marathon Bombings....
Mountain Dew might have thought twice about the risk and reward from a deal with someone just as focused on branding as it is. ...The company even earned some good press for buying a promoted tweet to publicize its mea culpa. And the top of its website leads with a giant “We Apologize” note. Following these comments, PepsiCo hasn’t put an executive on a public chopping block, and Tyler has declared they loved the idea when it pitched it. Which begs the question of how sincere this apology is. Audiences will probably trust artists more than brands, so PepsiCo cutting their losses must also include a loss of credibility with Tyler’s base....
Whatever services you provide, whether it be pizzas or hosting services, you should learn how to communicate with your audience, build up a positive image and react to negative reviews and comments of unsatisfied customers (or probably evil competitors!). This post focuses on some recent online reputation management tactics that can be useful for any website....
Case Study: Good Corporate Communications in a ‘Difficult Situation’ Earlier this month at PyCon 2013 — a big tech industry conference for developers — a female attendee tweeted a picture of two male attendees, publicly shaming them for making inappropriate sexist jokes. This tweet led to at least two people losing their jobs. One of them was the woman herself, who worked for SendGrid as a “developer evangelist”, and the incident has sparked heated debate about sexism in tech and attacks on all sides. But stepping away from the commentary regarding her intentions or actions, we can learn some valuable PR lessons from the actions of a company facing fire due to the actions of an individual employee. As the title of the CEO’s public statement implies, SendGrid did an excellent job of handling a “difficult situation” by taking a stance and communicating it quickly to stakeholders. SendGrid correctly decided that the incident required a corporate response....
Poland Spring, American Airlines, Taco Bell and NASCAR all make our list. The year is less than three months old, yet already several brands have made king-sized screwups in social media. Among their crimes: Using a four-letter word to insult a nine-year-old girl. Live-tweeting a mass layoff. And angering Dave Mustaine of Megadeth. Poland Spring, American Airlines, Taco Bell and NASCAR are among the brands who should have known better. All of the following social media fails triggered hundreds or thousands of responses, and made headlines in the regular media as a result....
Tesco salad allegedly contained dead bird; company unresponsive so far This is one of those shocking stories about food product problems that tabloid TV and newspapers love. Before UK retailer Tesco could respond effectively, the story’s going viral. Forget the UK horsemeat scandal. The Metro News headline said it all: “Dead bird five inches long found in Tesco ‘ready to eat’ salad.” Within minutes, the story was picked up on numerous UK media websites, competing newspapers and social media....
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Cause and consequences of PR disasters and examples of worst PR disasters as well as expert tips and advice on crisis management.
Cause and consequences of PR disasters and examples of worst PR disasters as well as expert tips and advice on crisis management.