Brands need to develop ways to manage their communications in the context of short news cycles and near-instant social media sharing. Communications strategies designed to avoid crisis situations require both internal operations and public conversations that can adapt to the unpredictable.
But, no matter how well a company plans, crisis happen. A solid brand reputation not only contributes to company growth, it can be a positive asset in weathering a crisis.
Toby Webb is founder and chairman of Ethical Corporation, a publishing and conference business. This week, I participated at a conference on reputation and crisis management in New York City hosted by Ethical Corporation, along with its sister company, Useful Social Media.
At the end of the conference's first day, Toby posted fifteen tips that came out of the sessions featuring GE, Alcoa and P&G, among others. In this conversation, Toby adds some depth to the observations in his blog post. Among the topics we discuss are:
- The relationship between business objectives and reputation
- How PR has evolved from press releases
- The essential nature of local knowledge
- The perception that it takes a generational change in top management for companies function in today's always-on communications channels.
This convo is sponsored by:
Vitrue, an original Facebook Preferred Developer Consultant, is the leading social marketing platform facilitating relationships between brands and their fans across multiple social networks via its software-as-a-service solutions. Social marketers and agencies world-wide use Vitrue's Social Relationship Management (SRM) platform and its Publisher, Tabs, Shop and Analytics products.
Brandwatch is one of the world's leading social media monitoring and analysis tools, with offices in the UK, US, Germany and Brazil. Global brands and agencies use our tool to cut through the noise on the social web and find the conversation that matters, empowering decisions that improve their business.
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Neil Glassman is principal marketing strategist at WhizBangPowWow, where he delivers integrated social, digital and linear media solutions. Join his conversations on Twitter and Google +.