One of the most challenging circumstances in Public Relations and Reputation Management is anti-brand activism. Coordinated activists use tactics such as protests, negative media coverage, and even political pressure to effect change. Companies may rightly determine that their business’ long term interests are best served by agreeing to a group’s demands. However, if a company believes that certain demands pose a threat to its business, there are important considerations regarding how to respond.
Continue reading ‘Crisis Management with Activist Groups: How to Respond’
Brands caught deleting unfavorable comments from their social media properties have compounded their troubles. Attention is drawn to the negative comment, the brand appears to have no meaningful response, and the company now has a reputation for social media censorship. A brand known for discouraging social media dialogue may as well have no social media at all.
Continue reading ‘Clear Social Media Commenting Policy’
Organizations and brands should maximize their own social media channels to engage with their patrons and customers. However, detractors intent on criticizing, attacking or being downright disruptive can create a number of challenges for companies striving to maintain a positive narrative.
Continue reading ‘How to engage with social media detractors’
Is your brand getting the attention it deserves? Do you have the right balance across the various distribution channels? You’ll find a superior marketing plan involves a strategic integration of blogging, PR and industry news exposure.
Continue reading ‘Balancing PR, Blogs, and Industry News’
So your public relations strategy has gone well thus far and you have finally landed the interview with a member of the media. Congratulations. But it’s not all smooth sailing from here. Without a plan for the interview, things can head south rather quickly. By not being prepared, you run the risk of being misquoted, wrongly identified, being left out of the article entirely, and even being portrayed negatively. Continue reading ‘Practice Makes Perfect Public Relations’
Does your company embrace community relations? Here’s why you should! Community relations goes hand-in-hand with being a good corporate citizen and while you’re building all of that good will in the community, it’s been shown that in times of company crisis, communities are more likely to give the company a chance to rectify a situation gone awry before the onslaught of public criticism. Continue reading ‘Are You a Good Corporate Citizen?’
The idea of public relations may evoke thoughts of the “mighty” press release, “spinning the story,” or chic parties. While we don’t like to use the term “spin,” those expressions are part of the bigger picture of public relations. So, what’s the buzz about PR? Continue reading ‘What’s All the ‘Buzz’ about PR Anyway?’
Bad press comes in many forms as you know. Historically, it was communicated through traditional media: print, TV or radio, thus allowing you the opportunity to tell your side of the story before the story hit the streets. Today, the media landscape has changed significantly with the advent of bloggers, consumer advocacy websites and the ever-expanding social media channels, and bad press can travel at light speed in a matter of seconds. How do you plan to protect your brand if your company was legitimately called out for wrong doing or error, or a customer received bad service and did not hesitate to share the adverse news with all of their friends? Do you have a damage control plan in place? Continue reading ‘Damage Control for Bad Press’
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Online reputation management is the practice of monitoring the Internet reputation of a person, brand or business, with the goal of suppressing negative mentions entirely, or pushing them lower on search engine results pages to decrease their visibility.
—Wikipedia Continue reading ‘Online Reputation Management Cheat Sheet’
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When blogging for your business, you are not only representing yourself, you are representing the brand for which you blog. With that said and because it is critical to follow established guidelines in the bloggersphere, as well as the industry, we have prepared these guidelines to keep you on the right track. Remember, be yourself, be truthful and most of all, be authentic.
Business Bloggers Cheat Sheet is the sixth “Cheat Sheet” in a series produced by Starmark. If you like what you see, please also check out our Web Design Cheat Sheet, Branding Today Cheat Sheet, Mobile Marketing Cheat Sheet, Twitter for Business Cheat Sheet, and our Social Bookmarking Cheat Sheet.
