How to manage Public Relations crises when your reputation is at stake?

A data breach, violation of terms & conditions or simply the mismanagement of the products and services may cause severe damage to an organization’s image. Whenever a scandalous or a fraudulent act is disclosed on the company’s part, its PR department or the authorities should instantly be engaged in developing a full-proof plan for saving the brand image. Hold on! I don’t mean you have to open the door, walk straight to the media, and speak your heart out. Whether you are responsible for it or the other, you need not have an instant and immediate reaction to disclosure. This calls for some time which you utilize to investigate the entire case, analyze the reaction of public and media, watch out for probable solutions to the situation and then confront the media to save your reputation.

PR crises happen every day to every other organization. It’s just that we get to know about the biggest of all only to leave us with some worthwhile lessons. Just look back to a few past years and you will get to know what I’m talking about.

What you can do when your public reputation at stake:

1.       Look for a modest spokesperson who can convey the inside story to the public diligently. CEO of the firm will be more preferable!

2.       Trace down the origin of crisis and the consequences. Meanwhile, do not forget to brainstorm the ways to manage the situation.

3.       Hold an open session meeting with your trusted employees, advisors and other stakeholders for bits of advice.

4.       Publish a press release on your website with the assurance of problem resolution or proper investigation of the matter. Maintain a complete honesty and transparency in it.

5.       Do not waste time on preparing your “The Finesse” speech or presentation skills when the crisis is going worse outside. Utilize it well in making plans how to tackle it.

 The two big lessons I learned from two major PR crises in the history:

1.    Watch out for the right time and effective means to communicate

In 2017 September, one of the greatest American credit reporting agencies had faced major public relations crises when the data of nearly 148 million people was stolen. The stolen data included social security numbers, addresses, birth dates, and drivers’ licenses.  The company knew the data breach occurred much earlier but deliberately chose to declare it after months.

What was the company’s take on this: The Company made many mistakes in a series. Neither its own customer service staff nor the people affected were informed about the breach. Instead, the company created another Wordpress website with a spam-like URL to deal with the situation and asked customers to sign up on it if they had to know whether their data had been stolen or not. The sign-up for credit monitoring PR service required the users to give up on their rights to sue the company for the data breach. Also, it came into news that the company would offer this credit monitoring service free of cost for initial one year and would later charge for it. Later, the company waived this off when consumers started complaining and the media started bringing this to the limelight. The company took too long to come forward and apologise for not keeping the users’ data secured.

What was the impact: Millions of users lost trust with the company due to the delayed announcement, apology, solutions, lack of transparency, and careless attitude towards the crisis. If the company had a plan and waited for the right time to communicate with the users and media, the brand image could have saved. Their unsatisfactory stance towards the crisis resulted in a huge loss to their business as well as their reputation.

2.    Personalize the communication with the public & act in favor of them

Not a long time ago, the social media industry experienced a lot of criticism as a popular social networking site was claimed to be involved in a data breach. The private data of around 87 million users was stolen by a third-party agency to manipulate the electoral results in the US. A year ago, the company got to know about the act, but only lenient actions were taken against it. When the whistleblower broke off the news next year, the social media users doubted the data security and privacy policies of all social networking sites and had quit on their accounts furiously. The millions of users trolled the company on social media and severely criticized the company.

What was the company’s take on this: When the news of data breach broke off, the Company took a few weeks to react. Along with a sincere apology, it presented the complete narrative of data breach till the date on its website with accurate and precise details.  A complete transparency was maintained between the company and its users. On the lawmakers’ order, the CEO of the company testified the whole scenario and conscientiously took the responsibility. Later on, the company came up with a variety of tools, techniques, solutions, and everything else possible to effectively communicate with the users and let them know whether their data was stolen or not.

What was the impact: The users could not resist the repeated apologies made by the company for the grievances caused. With immediate effect, the company rolled out various tools and techniques using which users can customize their data protect settings. By giving the latch in the hands of users, the company made its site useful and secured for the users. Unlike the previous case we discussed, this company let the users know if their data is stolen or not with a simple, quick, and free process at their online help center. All these measures taken by the company in favor of the users regained their trust and have been slowly normalizing the situation. I call it a perfect way to manage the PR crisis.

Has print media lost its credibility against digital?

No doubt, online news media is now counted as an inevitable part of the mainstream media but does it mean that newspapers, in particular, have lost their popularity? Where reading news reports and articles is made easy with free and unlimited access across the globe, does print newspapers charged with pennies still matter? This can be best explained by expert PR consultants in Delhi who still prefer print newspaper more than online for wide coverage in this digital age.

•    Reach & Accessibility

Certainly, the reach of the internet is larger-than-life and extended beyond the physical barriers. It means any news can be read by global audience creating a universal brand identity quickly and easily. However, there are innumerable areas where internet is still not available, and they stay tuned to current affairs through newspapers only. Therefore, overlooking news coverage would simply hint at the loss of visibility you are having.

•    Trustworthiness

A lot of news websites are competing with each other online to reach the users as quickly as possible. For this, they require tons of articles, press & matte releases, and every other sort of content that helps them drive the users in lesser time. And hence, many publish the news lacking data or originality. This is not the case with newspapers. Many PR companies in Delhi believe newspaper coverage is far better than online as credibility and trust are communicated with print more than digital. The journalists and editors of the newspapers work following all ethical norms and investigation process and deliver only the worth content to its readers.

•    Brand Salience

The entire purpose of Public Relations is to foster good relations with the audience in general. And, good relations influence the consumer’s behavior when he is in a state of buying product or services. Unlike online media where a consumer skims over a hundred of articles, one article published in a newspaper is 2X effective in creating brand salience. After all, print media has a long-lasting impression in the minds of readers.

With all these solid reasons, we may decipher that the credibility or popularity of print media may have declined but not lost. In fact, the PR companies in Delhi are delivering the fine-tuned quality content on both online and offline platforms to the readers. For instance, if anything goes viral online, it will surely be published on the first page of the newspaper.

Trends and Blings of Digital Public Relations

Public Relations is a dynamic industry ceaselessly evolving with the time, space, technology and the publics. Long past the days when PR practitioners used to fax media advisories, press releases and media kits for gaining coverage. A lot more than this has now gone digital and the traditional public relations turned into digital public relations. And this “digital” is nowhere to be stopped with the emerging tech-advancements. Recently, novice modern PR practices of connecting to the publics adopted by organizations as well as a few PR agencies in Delhi and outside are spotted. What are they? Let’s dive in:

1.    Digital Flyers:

Flyers, brochures, and leaflets are often considered to be of use for the marketers, but now PR professionals have transcended this limitation. Digital flyers are now being used as media invites as it has become quite a cumbersome venture to grab the journalist or the audience’s attention online. Moreover, the flyers are released on social networking sites instead of approaching the individual journalists personally. This has greatly reduced the load of PR professionals.

2.    Live-streaming apps

Nowadays, traditional press releases are replaced by live streaming videos where the spokesperson directly informs the audience about service or product launch. In the opinion of PR executives, going live on Facebook or other live-streaming app is a life savior for businesses as this eliminates rumors and enforces customers’ trust. This is so because brands are clarifying the situation personally through direct interaction with its consumers.

3.    Influencer collaboration

Today, PR consultants in Delhi collaborate with digital influencers such as Youtubers, Instagrammers, and vloggers more often. In regard to brand’s niche, PR professionals pick the digital influencers who have relevant, if not large following and collaborate with them to tell the brand story intuitively.

4.    Virtual Reality

With Virtual Reality, PR professionals can easily convey the brand story to the audience by providing them the real-world experience. For example, if a business is organizing a CSR event, PR can craft the content using VR that realistically tells them its benefits. Then, the audience will stay tuned to the event as well as the brand. Using virtual reality in the industry of Public Relations will surely upgrade a step higher and personalize the communication between the publics and the brand.

5.    Social Listening:

The job of PR is to give the brand insights into the public’s perception and brand’s reputation. Therefore, it is essential for them to adopt social listening practice for serving the brand better. By keeping a complete check on the brand mentions, reviews, conversations and every other social interaction the audience is making, PR companies can tailor astute PR strategies. Also, an honest feedback from the consumers of the brand collected by PR firms would enable the brand designing their products and services aligned with consumers’ requirements.

When PR & Digital Marketing Combines, Your Business Rises Sky-high?

Haven’t we all heard that PR is not marketing, and Digital Marketing is not PR? True that! But what sets them apart? Both have similar goals- the enhancement of brand's overall visibility which will impact its revenue. It’s, of course, the medium or practices of the two that keep them distinct and distant. While PR works on earned media to get unpaid press & media coverage, digital marketing uses all three- earned, owned, and paid media to sell the products and services. To be more succinct, PR practices are useful in brand building and brand positioning; the Digital Marketing practices are effective in obtaining the business leads.

If you own a startup business or a mid-size, why not combine both PR & Digital Marketing to get best of both worlds for your business as well as customers? Suppose you are going to organize a mega-event of new entrepreneurs which will be attended by all industry newbies or veterans for storming ideas & strategies. To make this event a success, you will need more attendees and the press coverage in a newspaper or online media.

Will digital marketing be able to give it you all? By running paid campaigns on social media or creating a specific landing page for this event calling for participants won’t be much effective unless journalists talk about it. Press releases written by journalists for this event when published in newspapers or online media portals will subject your event to large audience base. Perhaps, your event is very industry-specific, but it may interest the influencers in other industries also. Won’t it add 5 stars to your event?

Let’s take another example; you wrote an outstanding PR pitch to journalists for covering the same event. As it has become a universal truth now that journalists are extremely busy reporters who do not have time to respond to all pitches, yours may go overlooked. However, journalists are active on social media channels such as LinkedIn and Twitter. Using the hashtag #journorequest, they post requirements for stories or case studies they like to feature. If your social media executive is very active on Twitter, he can easily grab the deal for you. All you need to do is track (not spy) the journalists’ social media activities and you might bump on an easy to cater requirement.

Another thing in common between the two divisions, that is, Public Relations and digital marketing is that both involve guest blogging. In digital marketing, guest blogging is done for link acquisition purposes whereas the article submission to online media is done for profile screening. The first one increases the inbound links to improve search engine rankings of a brand website, and the latter increases the visibility of the brand itself. Hence, the PR & DM efforts combined will double your business success.

Why Video Content Should Be At the Heart of Your Digital Marketing Campaign?

The way people consume the content is changing. They no longer are interested in reading the extensive articles or looking at plain demographics unless there is really important stuff embedded in them. Meanwhile, online videos are leading the businesses to not only attract viewers, but also converting them into customers. These catch the attention of the viewer, trigger their emotional purpose, feed their curiosity, and answer to their queries in a fraction of minutes.

If you own a social media agency in Delhi, you better know the supremacy of the online video content. More than 74% of the audience on social media clicks a video ad if the thumbnail stimulates their sense in first five seconds. Preferably, the online video content or video ad should be a cornerstone for each of your digital marketing campaign.

Here’s why:

1.      Video ads are not meant only to let the viewer watch and enjoy your content, but to make him a part of it. The involvement of a user in video ad help in brand recall, which is useful to you for your long-term goal.

2.      A video ad delivers better results in lead-generation and conversion if compared to the other content type such as an article or an infographic. Video is dynamic, creative, and acts as a stimulant to the “lean-forward mode” of the viewer. It means the viewer is consuming the content more attentively.

3.      Video content is more than a boon not only for the social media but also the private organizations which offers SEO services in Delhi.  The video content used for SEO purposes drives user engagement as well as help you achieve the higher ranking in search engine results.

4.      Brand integrations with Youtubers or the other media influencers through the means of videos strengthen the brand presence in both online and offline market. A video ad featuring an influencer would create a huge viewer base and increase the lead-generation prospects. Isn’t it better than the textual content?

Almost all of the social media companies in Delhi have adapted themselves with video content creation and distribution and start bidding on it for winning their clients. And with the pros discussed above, every digital marketer should include the video marketing in his plan of action for magnificent results.