By Gil Rudawsky, Rockford Gray Partner
During a crisis and recovering from one, shouting your side of the story from the treetops gets limited results.
A better solution is to have supporters offer responses on your behalf.
Effective management of your company’s or agency’s brand reputation involves thoughtful crisis prevention and response. And often times that means engaging stakeholders on your behalf.
Online reputation management involves more than apologizing and posting good news, it is driven by long-term reputation building. The sooner an organization responds to and addresses critics’ concerns, the sooner goodwill is built. This manifests when detractors step forward to complain, making room for your community of stakeholders to respond and help defend your brand.
Community Relations
Customers are likely most affected during a crisis, and their comments carry more weight than crafty messages from the communications team. Reputation management is ideally part of a long-term stakeholder relations strategy. A solid response from your customers during a crisis can prevent a full-blown crisis.
We suggest proactively creating forums for customers to engage with your brand, building a sense of community and trust. This peels away layers and makes an accessible corporate image – in good times and bad.
Public Relations Engagement Strategies
We talk about the 80/20 rule when engaging online with customers or your audiences. This rule, based on the Pareto Principle, suggests that 80% of your social media content should focus on providing value to your audience, and only 20% should be promotional. This principle helps businesses build trust and engagement by prioritizing content that educates, entertains, or empowers their followers.
These engagement strategies create a conversation. This way you can identify critic concerns early and work to address them. Focus on stakeholder relations to protect your brand reputation.
About the author: Gil Rudawsky specializes in issues and reputation management, and crisis communication. He began his career as a reporter in Aspen, Colorado and journalism took him across the country and then back to his native hometown of Denver, where he worked for the Rocky Mountain News. His journalistic skills – source development, research, credibility, storytelling, and curiosity – remain the foundation of his work with clients. He has experience working on a range of issues across sectors, including federal investigations, corporate and workplace issues, DEI and public advocacy campaigns. He provides expert-level strategic counsel, including on-the-ground support. He is a graduate of the University of Southern California, with a degree in philosophy.