Not long ago I was discussing with my friend Lisa Langsdorf (communications manager for About.com / NY Times and a real PR pro) the challenges of factoring online media into the PR equation, and she brought up an interesting perspective. I thought it would make an excellent topic for this forum, and am pleased to present Lisa as my first guest blogger and the following post that she wrote:
“As PR executives, we’re often under pressure from clients to
deliver results, quickly. From a client’s perspective, results are one of the
few components of PR that can be measured and attached to a dollar value. The
result is that often times we rush to adopt the next big thing without
thoroughly evaluating how to effectively use it. Whether you are an online personality like Kim Kardashian or have recently started running a business, having an positive online reputation is very important. With the use of the internet, anyone can post a review online or write anything negative if they have bad experiences with a individual or a company. When it comes to business though, it may be worth looking into sites such as https://tribelocal.com/reputation-management-software/, to see how you can effectively manage you online reputation by using software programs. Thanks to technology and the internet, it has never been easier to generate leads online for your business.
The Internet, followed by blogs is a good example of a
platform and a medium that have the potential to work against a PR professional
if not approached strategically. The challenge is that, for the most part, what
you put on the Internet stays on the Internet. And sometimes, things that
aren’t intended to be put on the Internet make it there anyway.
There are many examples of good corporate and personal
reputations that have been marred by poor use of the Internet by public
relations professionals. Wal-Mart and the company’s fake blog, or flog, is a
good example. It certainly didn’t help Wal-Mart’s reputation as a trusted
company, especially within the investor and media communities. But hiccups
don’t have to be monumental to impact your company’s reputation. Even small
mistakes such as misspellings and typos in an announcement can chip away at
your client’s, and even your, reputation.
A few months ago a former colleague, who is a freelance
publicist, worked with an agency that had an online document storage software
client in need of some quick coverage. One of the agency’s senior executives
was also actively pitching the client and, in poor taste, pitched a reporter on
why Anna Nicole Smith should have had online document storage. The pitcher went
on to assert that, if Anna had online document storage, some of her posthumous
legal issues would have been quickly and easily resolved.
I’m not sure how they would have been solved and neither did
the reporter who received the pitch because the full text of the email landed
on a bad pitch blog shortly after. The blog posted the name of the publicist
complete with a diatribe dissecting the pitch. While negative publicity such as
this probably didn’t have enormous impact on the agency or the client, it sure
couldn’t have helped the client / agency relationship and probably ended up
making them both look and feel foolish. The lesson: don’t send out anything
electronically unless you’re 100% comfortable with the possibility that
millions of eyes may see it too.
A few years ago I started working at a PR agency that
encouraged us to send our online media clients’ articles to bloggers in the hope
that the blogger would mention the article and link back to our client’s site.
Makes sense, right? Well, while it may have benefited the client (and the
agency with some coverage to put on the report), I quickly realized that the
bloggers were assuming that I agreed with the content in the articles. One of my clients was FOX News. I’m a Democrat, and, to this day, when people Google my name, they gather
from the results that I have some far right leaning tendencies. I often wonder how this will impact future
job offers. This serves as a reminder that publicists need to be as considerate
of their own reputations as they are of those of their clients.
So why does this happen? Why do we sometimes risk our
reputations, and those of our clients, through poor use of the Internet as a PR
tool, platform and medium? Part of the problem is that it’s too easy. The
results are almost instantaneous—you could potentially start a PR campaign on
the Web in a matter of minutes where, in an off line world, the results are much
slower.
The speed of the net also leaves a lot of room for
error. If a reporter wants the story yesterday, we may not have enough time to
develop talking points for our clients or to prep them properly. This takes
control of the message from our hands and puts it into the hands of the
reporter.
PR
professionals aren’t the only offenders online. Some reporters are too. I’ve
come across many an online reporter who, when rushing to file a story, didn’t
check their facts or didn’t grasp the story. This makes our lives much harder
and preparation beforehand even more essential. If the reporter doesn’t make
the correction, misinformation has the potential to linger indefinitely.
So what are the keys to successful online campaigns? Success
lies in ceasing to look at the Internet as a medium for instant coverage and
instead thinking seriously and strategically about the consequences of every
move we conduct online. It means rethinking every pitch, re-editing every
release and thoroughly outlining messages for our spokespeople. It means
thinking seriously about whether the message we’re sending out today will be
one that positively sustains itself for the long haul. And it means constant
vigilance and attention, and the nurturing of your online reputation, as the
image you would like to convey and what turns up in a Google search about you,
your company, client or brand may be two very different things. Because, while
we had almost a century to perfect print PR, the pace of the Internet and
technology generally leaves us little room for catch up but definitely no room
for error.”
Lisa Langsdorf
