Assess

Take a critical look at your company and make a list of your risks. In collaboration with your department heads, examine your exposure to personnel issues, business conflicts, and industrial accidents—anything that could publicly jeopardize confidence in your firm. It’s hard to prepare for problems you don’t anticipate. Research the crises that similar firms in your field have encountered, and observe what worked and didn’t for them.

Plan

Robust, methodical communications planning is the foundation of solid crisis management. Look at your risks and create a template for how the firm would respond in each case. This should include the chain of command, media relations, client relations, employee relations, and internal communications. Make sure you have clear guidelines defining who is responsible for what under various conditions.

Investigate

If a crisis is already occurring, put your plan into action as soon as possible. Make the effort to get the facts first; you must know the whole story before you can predict how your stakeholders will perceive the situation. This is often a time-consuming step, but a crucial one. However you decide to communicate, you must equip yourself with as much information as possible.

Be Prepared for Difficult Questions

Crisis media relations can be the hardest part of an already taxing situation, especially for those businesses that rarely speak directly to the public. That’s why it is important, at the beginning of the crisis, that your company’s communications apparatus follows the plan when developing statements. It is always better to over-prepare than to be caught off-guard and make a PR mistake that will make the situation even worse. Think of the questions you’d hate to be asked and spend extra time preparing for them—appearing dishonest or out of your depth on TV can have disastrous effects.

Debrief

Once the crisis has abated, it can be tempting to take a breath and move on. Don’t. Analyze how you and the plan performed, and revise it where necessary. A crisis is only a total loss if you don’t learn from it.

Tucker/Hall provides crisis support before, during, and after—helping you anticipate and plan for risk, manage ongoing crises, and repair your reputation afterward. To see if we can help you with your crisis communications needs, you can contact Darren Richards at (813) 228-0652 ext. 1116 or at drichards@evoqueag.online.

The Audience Is Changing…Change With It

Remember that as time passes, potential customers’ increasing preference is to interact with your company on social media. The 35-and-younger demographic leans heavily on these sites to inform them about businesses and products. Make sure you’re doing your best to be present and active on these platforms; failing to do so cuts you off from future and present customers. If you don’t have a Facebook or Google Business page for your business, make one and maintain it. Solicit good reviews from current customers, and respond promptly to messages and negative feedback. Facebook even tells your page visitors how responsive you are.

Double-Digit Factors

It’s not just a “virtual” thing that exists outside the world of dollars and cents. The strength of your social capital actually produces tangible results. AdWeek’s Erich Joachimsthaler, who claims to have first come up with the phrase “social capital” in 2009, notes that studies showed that 13 percent of sales directly resulted from online/offline recommendations; for higher-end products, those referrals accounted for a whopping 20 percent of sales. You don’t want to miss out on that slice of business.

Build It and They Will Come

Aside from actually selling your product, perhaps just as important is selling yourself. More and more, younger talents are attracted to brands as prospective employers; they take pride in being part of a hip, cutting-edge operation that knows its way around social media. In the end, the more top-end talent you attract, the more social capital you’ll build with future employees, too.

We at Tucker/Hall are experts in developing and maintaining your business’s social currency. Contact us to see how we can help you clearly and effectively communicate the attributes of your company to all your audiences.

Having a communications degree from a highly-reputable university can be a great ticket to a good-paying job in public relations.

If you are a recent college graduate with a degree in communications, these are just some of the entry-level public relations jobs you’ll be qualified to fill:

Research analyst. Whether for political organizations or private companies, public relations and marketing campaigns rely heavily on research in order to identify and target the appropriate audience. A research analyst gathers and organizes relevant data for the campaign managers so they can make informed decisions.

Copywriter. Copywriters are highly sought after in the PR industry. A copywriter is someone who writes professional documents and marketing materials. In the field of public relations, copywriters often write news releases, blog posts, social media posts, and website content. You can work as a freelance copywriter, or in an entry-level position at a PR firm.

Social media manager. Social media has become more important in public relations in recent years, and many companies are seeking young professionals to manage their accounts and develop strategies for social media marketing. Because the field is so new, many small companies are willing to hire entry-level employees for their social media management roles. This sort of work also allows for work flexibility and creative outlets that other entry-level jobs may not afford.

To learn about public relations jobs with Tucker/Hall, one of Tampa Bay’s leading communications firms, contact us or visit our Careers page.

But traditional media outreach is still important. Reporters will publish through conventional channels, and they will post online as well, making for instantly shareable content. In addition, you can take your news releases and media pitches that you send to reporters and turn them into online-friendly content, which you can share across the web and on social media.

One of the easiest ways you can turn a news release into shareable online content is to edit it into a blog post. You can’t simply copy and paste the content from the release into a blog, but you can use it to help you write a blog about the story. Edit it to ensure the tone and language align with your brand voice instead of a strictly informative news release.

If a third party publishes your news release or an article related to it, share the online article from the publisher’s website. Sharing content from another website helps add credibility to your news. Sharing their content on your social accounts will multiply the number of people who see it.

If you’re looking for a more creative way to make your news release online-friendly, you can use the information in an infographic. Infographics are popular online and on social media because they are simple. It does not take much time for the reader to understand all the information. When information is paired with visual representation, people can remember the content better.

Many other options are out there to share your news release online, but these can help you get more bang for your buck. To learn more about best social media practices, visit the Tucker/Hall Resource Center.