Ouch. This article in e-consultancy is pretty painful for anyone in PR. In a nutshell, what it suggests is that although some PR people might spend time considering their client’s reputations, through instances of careless, dismissive or sloppy behaviour, they aren’t doing much for their own.
This complaint from bloggers in particular isn’t new. And the ensuing battle which resulted wasn’t pretty. So why, months after the initial firestorm, are people like Chris Lake feeling the need to keep writing posts complaining about the apparent lack of care on the part of some of the PR people he has encountered? Why are those people in the PR industry still doing it wrong?
Let’s look at this problem from an online reputation point of view.
Firstly, the PR industry need to do a bit of monitoring of what their reputation is. A savvy PR firm which is really keen on getting involved in the digital side of communication on behalf of their clients should perhaps spend a little bit of time looking around the internet to see what is going on, how things are being done right and what kind of behaviour to avoid. This isn’t just the mandatory narcissistic search for your own agency name. This is a much broader monitoring exercise dealing with the industry in general.
The second step is to figure out where the reputation is coming from and what can be done about improving it. Judging by Chris’s article, the problems still stem from those PR people blindly pitching, not bothering to read blogs, sending out global press releases just to get the numbers, and expecting bloggers to do the work in order to get information. Chris’s list suggests that the offending PR people either aren’t that bothered about online (they are doing it because they have to), don’t understand online (they are doing what they always have) or resent online (and therefore are treating it with the disdain they might feel it deserves). In all cases, time should be taken to step back are really consider the engagement. Yes, PR is hard work – it requires long hours and any piece of time saving activity that can be done should be done. But not at the expense of your or your industry’s reputation.
Once you have compiled a list of the issues which are causing problems, sit down with everyone in your organisation who could have any kind of involvement in the digital aspect of your company, and go through the issues, asking people to give suggestions not just on how they can be avoided, but how they can turn the reputation around so that everyone comes out happy. It may be that through these discussions you feel that online involvement isn’t right for a particular client or campaign. It may be that you discover that you staff simply need more education or clarification on processes and purpose. Or it may be that you uncover deeper dissatisfactions which you are better of finding out about now, rather than waiting until the reputation of your firm and your industry has taken a bigger hit.
Then, get on and do it.
It’s that simple really. But it does require some time and effort. PR have had a rocky reputation since the 1920s – there is no need to perpetuate that. Communication on the internet is only going to grow, so rather than burn your reputation bridges now, why not develop ways that you can work with content producers and achieve a great reputation for yourselves as well as your clients.
Image: bestfor
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=325023d6-089a-4852-a385-2b192f3103e4)
If you like this post, why not subscribe to our RSS Feed. Or you can visit our main website at Tiger Two or follow me on Twitter or Friendfeed
Tags: Business, Online Reputation, Public relations, Reputation management, Social Media
