Don’t be an Ostrich! Take Control of Your Reputation!

An estimated 80% of Americans between the ages of 33 and 44 use the internet as a tool for research, shopping and banking. With that said, do you know what they find when they search for you and your company online? Do you know what to do if a customer has a complaint and decides to post something negative on one of hundreds of online business directories that exist? Boy you had better know and fast.

A poor reputation online can be enough to sink the best laid marketing plans in an instant not to mention the amount of money in marketing dollars that can be lost trying to “out market” poor PR. The wrong thing to do is nothing.

This is where having a system for Reputation Management comes into play. In today's world it is vital for businesses of all sizes to have a strategy in place that can predict and address reputation issues, create a positive image and foster better customer relations.

The Internet is a fast paced and uncaring tool for communication. It does not care if what is posted about you is good or bad. The search engines don’t care either, they only care about making it findable. With the advent of social media consumers now have a means of spreading the word about of company, product or service to the multitidues with a simple click of their keyboard. In fact, social media has become such a valuable conduit of information that the news media is online using what people are talking about for their stories. So If a customer has a complaint and posts it online it can potentially become local or even national news.

Take for instance the lesson Pepsi learned when they decided to change the logo they had been using for 25 years of an orange with a straw to a glass of juice. Consumers were up in arms over the change and made it known quite loudly on social networks calling for a boycott of the brand. Pepsi waited two months to respond and then changed the logo back to the original one. The slowness of their response resulted in more damage as it was simply too little too late. Dominos pizza on the other had had an even bigger situation with two employees posting a video of themselves on YouTube defiling someone’s take out order. Yuck! Without delay Dominos was on the offensive with a YouTube video of their own launching a Reputation Management campaign that has been viewed as a success. The story about Dominos made it into the New York Times.

The most successful way of managing your reputation is to combine traditional PR with the new social media tools. There are hundreds of online systems for tracking, maintaining and repairing a reputation with more being developed on a regular basis.

A strong Reputation Management system is a must in any PR strategy in this day and age and can be the difference between simply fostering better customer relations and cleaning up a disaster.

About Diane Stein:As an Online PR and Marketing Specialist, Diane D. Stein, has been in the field of Public Relations for the past 20 years. At University of Georgia Diane learned what creates true camaraderie that fuels powerful campaigns. Ever since she has made it her mission to seek out the newest and fastest lines of communication to targeted groups of individuals, allowing her to create tight-knit societies that are the driving force behind big movements. During her early PR career in Atlanta, she tested her findings of creating communities, which naturally migrated into Online PR, Search Engine Marketing and Social Media Branding. Diane understands that social media is about creating a sense of place in a virtual and otherwise cold world, using only the most reliable tools to create Online PR campaigns that can increase page rankings, web traffic and make you and your business well known. Visit her at JoTo Extreme PR.

PR Crisis Management: Damage Control vs. Being Proactive

By Karla Jo Helms

When a prospective client comes to me to help them manage a crisis, my first question is always, “Do you want to manage it or be proactive?” That question always bears more questioning, but it gets them to start thinking.

Crisis Management is just that – the management of a crisis. It actually puts attention on the crisis. As much as a corporation or organization would like to avoid a PR fiasco, a PR campaign that only puts attention on mitigating the damage is only going to put more attention on the fact that there is or was damage.

Let’s put it in a different light. Say there is a well-established manufacturing plant that backs up to a beautiful greenbelt, and the factory workers eat their lunch in a park that the factory had developed for their employees to enjoy. The workers loved it and over time started feeding the wildlife that lived in the wooded area and then one day, accidentally, one of the workers gets bit by a raccoon.

You can see where this is going… a PR nightmare to say the least. The rumor mongering could be horrendous. Rabies, missing digits, wildlife gone bad… The company should take the bull by the horn and do everything they can to help that worker, that family and even get a team of zoologists out there to segregate the park from the woods and start an entire educational process for the employees to not feed the wildlife. That’s step one.

But for Pete’s sake, don’t take the mediocre stance of figuring out how to craft messages about what to say in regards to any questions or attacks the company could get about their park or factory being unsafe. Why pour salt on the wound? The more the company puts out statements that the factory is safe, what do you really think is going to be formulating in people’s minds? Exactly. That it’s not safe.

So what do you do? This is where the creativity comes in. Obviously the manufacturing plant has been doing proactive things for their employees up until that point – they erected a park, didn’t they? Well, what about that story? Who is the founder? What was his/her vision for the factory? What are their secrets to expansion? What precedents have they set in their industry? Do they have industry leading advice they can impart? Who is amongst them that are long-time employees? How many long-time employees do they have? What community service work do they do? If they are a young company, then what is their niche? What opportunities have they created for young professionals? I mean the list goes on and on and on. The possibilities are endless of what can be done to create more goodwill than that one incident can take away.

The point is that you should never focus only on the negative. Make some lemonade. Address concerns, but outdo any negative news with positive news WHILE working to handle, control and mitigate the negative. Take responsibility while letting your customers, shareholders, employees, community and the media know what you stand for, what your accomplishments are and what is in store for your (and their) future.

You can take some very dire situations and turn them into a positive light for a corporation… you just need to know how to harness the powerful technology of public relations to communicate what you are really all about. Because what you’re really all about is not rabies… get my drift?

About Karla Jo Helms:

“Public Relations is a powerful tool that can garner wide acceptance and delve into arenas that marketing cannot touch,” says Karla Jo Helms, PR Strategist and Published Author. Karla Jo got her start creating and implementing PR Strategies for entrepreneurs, which helped her develop a keen eye for how to hone in on the best use of PR for increasing a higher Return On Investment of one’s marketing dollars. Her background in sales, business management and media relations has given her the well-rounded understanding of how to harness the power of PR to communicate to diverse groups of people...the end result being a wider sphere of influence and the invaluable commodity of goodwill garnered on a broad basis for her clients. Visit HYPERLINK "http://www.JoToPR.com" www.JoToPR.com

Talking to the Media: Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?

By Karla Jo Helms

Talking to the media can be daunting – and is for many people. I have often wondered about this. I see my clients in awe of being able to speak to the media. It is almost of the same ilk as public speaking I guess. Maybe it is because a media person can rip you apart or set you on a pedestal with one fell swoop.

Not in my world. The media are just like any other people. They respond to the same things we all respond to – manners, good communication, ability to tell them what they want to know and the understanding they need of their time. And you have to know the rules of engagement. You would never talk to an 80 year old war veteran the way you would to a teenager.

Working with the media does take some research. You also have to understand what each journalist you want come in contact with is interested in, what they write, blog or talk about, what their passions are and how they portray the people and companies that they write about.

It is like any other client. You know what your clients’ needs are. And you know the difference in what you can say to one client in comparison to a completely different client. You know their go buttons and probably know what turns them off as well.

So think of the media as your client. They are individuals that are like anyone else. You are dealing with an individual who is then communicating to the masses. Ah ha – that is what you think! There is no such thing as the masses. You didn’t know that?

Every media outlet has a target market. No one communicates to the masses. So not every media outlet is going to be right for you or your company. Get to know who writes about your industry, read their articles, listen to and watch their shows, learn their style. And figure out WHO they are speaking to. KNOW their target market. Get educated on what they deal with on a daily basis. And then when you do get the chance to talk to them treat them like a human being and not a receptacle for your promotional message.

How would you like to be pitched every time someone spoke to you about topics you could care less about? What if no one ever asked you if you had time to listen to what they had to say? What if no one ever listened to you and only talked about what they wanted to talk about? What would you do?

So the media is not the big bad wolf. It is just that companies do not take the time to craft their own message, and do not learn the rules of engagement for dealing with the media. And they suffer the consequences as a result. Media relations is just that – relations. It takes knowing people, knowing how to predict what different people will do and being able to guide and control the media message to secure a larger market share.

So, who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?

About Karla Jo Helms:

After handling the PR for an Inc. 500 company for over four years Karla Jo Helms was ready to launch out on her own allowing her to bring her unique take on the world of PR to businesses both large and small. “Public Relations is a powerful tool that can garner wide acceptance and delve into arenas that marketing cannot touch,” says Karla Jo, PR Strategist and Published Author. Helms got her start creating and implementing PR Strategies for entrepreneurs, which helped her develop a keen eye for how to hone in on the best use of PR and technology to increase the Return On Investment of one’s marketing dollars. Her theory on how attaining critical mass by utilizing all areas of PR and Marketing in today's world allows her to put together complete strategies for clients that attain measurable results. A background in sales, business management and media relations has given her the well-rounded understanding of how to harness the power of PR to communicate to diverse groups of people...the end result being a wider sphere of influence and the invaluable commodity of goodwill garnered on a broad basis for her clients. www.JoToPR.com