Public relations and managing reputation

Reputation Renegades is a free e-Book. It addresses many issues, but chief amongst them is the fallacy that corporations have control of their reputation. This reality has been emphasised in recent times by the influence of web-based communities. The e-Book espouses internal lobbying to change the recalcitrants’ perspectives, humanise this communication and tackle the issue of trust.

Working in a PR agency is one of the most exciting, valuable and positive experiences any PR professional can have. In the early years of your career, in particular, you are less hamstrung by process and get your hands on a range of projects. Agency employees are often perceived as experts; it presents a range of professional and life opportunities; and you are surrounded by peers who understand the discipline and provide excellent support.

After having worked in PR for 16 years, both in-house and ‘in-agency’, I believe working in-house is clearly where one can make a more significant difference to an organisation and its stakeholders, as well as being more rewarding environment in which to work: you write the strategy, pull the strings and don’t have the hideous ogre of new business to deal with.

This is the second part of a two-part series on social media’s impact on the practice of PR and the profession itself. This post talks about how, in the 21st century, PR should be leveraging its logical leadership of social media for all its worth and use it as an opportunity to position itself more favourably as a management discipline that delivers business-relevant results.

Whilst I don’t pretend to have any great insights on this matter, I was recently interviewed by British uni student Hayley McDonald (@HAYCMAC) on how social media is impacting on the practice of PR and how it is changing the way PR pros work, with the critical upshot being that making the right strategic decision, on a variety of levels, is more important (and, yes, more challenging) than ever.

The most common thought that is contained within crisis management literature is that somehow a crisis is just an external event that can be managed with the right level of resources and preparation. Paul Ritchie, author of Stay On Message, says this is incomplete and it misses the most dangerous variable in any crisis and that is the way a spin doctor actually responds to the issue.

The strategy driving what content goes on corporate websites needs to fit into the overarching organisational communication strategy, yet so wide-ranging and large can corporate websites be, that they sometimes seem to occupy their own ‘micro-climate’ where a unique approach, arguably, needs to be applied.

In this post, with the insight and assistance of a range of communication professionals – digital, SEO (search engine optimisation), marketing, public relations – I am going to outline a number of strategic and tactical elements to consider when utilising websites as an organisational communication mechanism.

There is no guide, or overarching process, for how one should go about producing the content that goes on corporate websites…from strategic business planning, public relations or marketing perspectives. This is an almost unbelievable ‘informational gap’ due to the power that has been placed at corporate websites’ discretion due to the mind-bending capabilities of search engine optimisation.

In the rush to become social media experts, and to grab the largest slice of its revenue, responsibility and thought leadership pie, public relations pros are at risk of missing the main digital game: that of providing meaningful, resonant and useful content for corporate websites that is search engine optimised and customised to the needs of organisational stakeholders.

Nationalism is the antithesis of public relations, as the former is inherently opposed to the notions of diversity, multiculturalism and the sharing of power and is not representative of two-way symmetrical communication: nationalism, then, is bad PR. Or is it?