4.     There has been a lot of negative news floating around in the media about your company.

When you contact the PR team, it blames the marketing department, mentioning that the latter
does not pass on information in time. The marketing department says it lacks the time and
resources to be more proactive. In addition, employees are using every possible avenue to write
blogs, bringing disrepute to the company. What are the corrective measures that you will take?

Don’t wait to become news, be the news.

I will talk about what my company is doing and get out into my community and talk about what
my company offers, about company products and services. Get your business into the press and
off your own back, but not because you’ve done something wrong.

This is a great way to ensure that there’s a significant amount of “positive sentiment”
surrounding your brand, if something does go wrong in the future.

Take the time to get press that covers your business in the best light possible, or simply to get
press. Neutral press is better than no press—at least that way people will have heard of you.

Turn existing customers into brand ambassadors.

“For a small business, social media channels are probably the easiest place to do this. By running
very targeted social media campaigns, you can slowly get your audience on board.”

Of course, this alone will not be enough to turn an average customer into an advocate for your
company. You also have to make sure to interact with them and to respond when they respond.
Be timely and be relevant. Make them feel special.

You might also get involved in your community and in community events. Show people you care
about more than just your own success. Show them you care about them and they will be more
likely to talk about you in a positive light, and for that matter, just talk about you at all.

Whatever the route you choose to take, turning someone into a brand ambassador begins with
consistent communication and extra special attention!

If crisis does hit? First, breathe. Second, have people you can turn to.

Let’s say disaster does strike—perhaps a tweet goes wrong, or someone says something that
casts you in a negative spotlight and the press picks up on it—if this does happen, rather than
reacting immediately, Catriona Harris recommends hitting the pause button.

“Take the time to think about it. You don’t have to jump immediately. Shut your door, then think
about it. What is the crisis? How is this going to affect me? Is it going to affect me only
internally? Externally? How big is it? How long is it going to affect me for?” And then think
about the approach that you need to take.”
Now that you’ve considered the repercussions of this event, the next thing to do is to get in touch
with the people who can help you fix or alleviate the problem. This is where your connections
and brand ambassadors will come in handy.

Don’t wait for disaster to strike before you think of how to create them. The more you build your
network, the more likely you will have people you can turn to for advice and input. And, if you
do have a PR firm on your books, speak to them about your crisis plan. It’s better to handle
things sooner rather than later.

Publicize yourself proactively, but be sensitive doing it.

When it comes to publicity, people sometimes think that jumping in on a trending topic will
propel them into the media. While this could happen, it’s not something Catriona recommends.
Rather, she advocates “joining the legitimate conversation of a marketplace.”

“I think people need to remember to be sensitive and think of ways they can actually publicize
themselves without having to jump on issues that could get them in trouble.”

Think less about taking advantage of a trend or news item and more about contributing
something of value, given that trend.

Remember, everyone in your company is a spokesperson.

When I ask Catriona if a company should have policies regarding how they approach the media
or how they represent the company to the public, she is very clear on the matter.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that marketing and sales are the only people in charge of
representing your brand.

The existence of social media networks means that every one of your employees with a presence
has an impact on your brand.

“When we start with companies, we always ask them to remind their employees that, regardless
of their title, they are company representatives. So, if anyone in the media does ever talk to them,
they need to remember that they’re a company spokesperson.”

This is why it’s a good idea to have a company policy regarding social media and to make sure
that your employees are all familiar with it. Catriona says:

“In social media for sure, I recommend to our clients that they do monitor what their employees
are putting out there, because again, I think consumers of information don’t always know the
difference between the CEO and the janitor.
Everywhere in between, people are out there, and if they’re commenting, making comments,
they have an association online with the company name, then they can be seen as a company
spokesperson. They definitely need to be careful with what they say and make sure that they are
speaking appropriately.”

Monitor the discussions happening around your brand.

Given how quickly word can spread online, we asked Catriona if she ever has companies that
come to her and say “It’s all too much to deal with. I don’t want to take the chance of getting into
a situation that could negatively impact my brand.”

Her answer? All the time.

“I tell them they’re on social media whether they’re there participating or not. People are on their
own social platforms complaining or praising a brand, even though they may not be doing so
directly. So, you might as well be there to respond and to listen to what’s going on in the market
so that you can make changes if necessary, be they internal or external.”

Whether or not you choose to be on social media, or even the internet, you still have an online
presence. Getting involved in the conversation is partly a way of controlling your own name and
your own brand.

If your company is not too big, you can monitor what your employees are saying by creating a
Twitter list. If your company is relatively small, this should be manageable.

“Unfortunately, there’s not one single tool we recommend. It really depends on the size of the
company and how active employees and clients are on social media. Myself, we only have 30
employees. It’s a scope, but I have a Twitter list where I can just very quickly, with one glance,
take a look at what all of our employees are saying.  If you’re a smaller company, maybe even
medium sized company, you could probably do that too. It doesn’t matter who handles this,
marketing or HR, but obviously as your business scales, you might need to start watching this on
a departmental level.”

To make this easier, there are also a couple of tactics Uproar PR recommends clients use,
including setting up alerts for keyword mentions on Google Alerts and getting into simple
practice of googling your own brand.

Google Alerts and other social listening platforms, like Mention, don’t always catch everything.
And, if you’re out there regularly monitoring what your social platforms look like, sometimes
you can catch things before they become an issue.

It’s also a good idea to have some sort of a social media policy in place. It’s best to work with
your legal department or your HR department on this matter but you can generally run it by your
PR firm to see if you’ve missed anything. Catriona recommends all businesses have something
like this in place, regardless of size.
Respond to criticism.

Naturally, if you’ve got a presence on social sites and on online directories like Yelp, at some
stage, you’re bound to get a bad review.

The question is, how do you respond and for that matter, should you respond? Catriona says:

“I recommend to our clients that they respond to every review, good or bad. I feel like consumers
who are willing to take the time to go online to complain are also the kind of people who could
become your best ambassadors if you handle the situation well and fix the problem. Sometimes
all these people are looking for is their voice to be heard, and if you recognize it and comment, I
think that goes a long way. Obviously there are people that go online and just complain just to
complain, but 9 times out of ten, we’ve found that replying to negative reviews works to really
rectify the situation.”

If, however, you are dealing with a spammer, or someone who is just trying to stir up trouble,
you can obviously report these people to the various social platforms and request that they be
removed or blocked. Or, you can keep doing positive things. People understand when someone is
just trying to make trouble.

Simply put, be proactive.

Regardless of what you’re dealing with, a proactive approach is always a good approach. This
doesn’t mean rushing into a situation, but it does mean responding in a timely manner and
dealing with issues directly.

Many of the companies that have suffered major PR disasters, like credit card security breaches,
have actually responded pretty well.

They’ve come out and said “Hey, we’re working on getting our platform upgraded and we’re
doing everything in our power to prevent such issues happening in the future. If you’re worried
you’ve been affected, we encourage you to change your passwords or cards.”

A simple approach like this is often enough to keep most people calm and to prevent too much of
a PR-storm.

You can’t always account for what people will do and as such, so long as you focus on
safeguarding your customers, on being positive and on fixing problems, you are much less likely
to suffer such a crisis.