6 Tactics For Leveraging Your Employees During a Social Media Crisis
From GaggleAmp: Every company of any size inevitably encounters a crisis situation at some point. Today, with numerous social media platforms, a crisis can quickly become very public and spread far and wide – well beyond your local city or even state. But, the same social media platforms that can help spread a negative story […]
Top 5 Mistakes Businesses (and Governments) Make in Disasters
According to the UK-based Business Continuity Institute, the top 5 mistakes that businesses and governments make when preparing to respond to, mitigate and move forward from disaster: 1. Failing to define worst-case scenario. 2. Failing to to fully understand the risks associated with its operation, and then failing to take the necessary steps to mitigate those risks. 3. Neglecting […]
How One Restaurant Critic Took on the Food Fables We’ve All Been Fed
Laura Reiley’s first investigation was a small one. But it proved to be a nibble into something much bigger, a story the Tampa Bay Times’ food critic took on this week. Four years ago, over dinner at Tampa’s famous Bern’s Steak House, Reiley listened as the waiter expounded on specials that came from the restaurant’s […]
9 Ways Spokespeople Can Annoy Reporters
It’s no secret that journalists get exasperated with PR pros who pitch wholly inappropriate stories to them. Even those PR pros who are experts at researching a particular journalist’s beat and outlet and successfully land an interview for their company’s lead spokesperson—say, a CEO—can aggravate time-strapped journalists if that spokesperson is ill-prepared or has a […]
A Harvard Psychologist Says People Judge You Based on 2 Criteria When They First Meet You
People size you up in seconds, but what exactly are they evaluating? Harvard Business School professor Amy Cuddy has been studying first impressions alongside fellow psychologists Susan Fiske and Peter Glick for more than 15 years, and has discovered patterns in these interactions. In her new book, “Presence,” Cuddy says that people quickly answer two questions when they first […]
Crisis Communications Lessons From the Campaign Trail
From our colleague, Caitlin Rourk: The 2016 presidential election has been nothing short of a spectacle, turning traditional political conventions (no pun intended) squarely on their head. And just as this election has forced the political establishment to alter its strategies, business organizations must reevaluate how to approach the unpredictable and unforgiving crises they face […]
Is Search Engine Suppression an Ethical Practice?
[by Howard Fencl, Hennes Communications] The University of California, Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi is on administrative leave for spending university cash to push negative news down in search engine results, among other allegations. She authorized spending $175,000 with a search engine suppression (SES) firm in an effort to move five-year-old headlines about campus police […]
The Globe Can Spin; You Must Not
[by Howard Fencl, Hennes Communications] I recently returned from a media training assignment in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and had a communications revelation: whatever your corner of the world, whatever your language, to gain the upper hand in a news interview, you must arm yourself with clear, quotable messages, you must believe them, and you must […]
4 Crisis Communications Lessons from Kellogg’s
The way an organization reacts in the first hours of a crisis will probably determine whether it succeeds or fails in regaining public trust. The way brand managers at Kellogg Co. recently esponded to the release of a video depicting a disgruntled employee should serve as a model for handling a PR crisis. When crisis […]
You Can’t Spin Your Way Out of Bad Behavior
A colleague of ours, Don Etling, said it best: You can’t spin your way out of bad behavior. The Penn State situation exemplifies that. Joe Paterno & Co. knew that Jerry Sandusky was abusing children – and they looked the other way. They didn’t have a communications problem – they had a performance problem. Volkswagen is […]