At Briggs Communications we pride ourselves on getting job candidates to stand out from the crowd.  Today we’re sharing a bit of what we’ve learnt so far about recruitment in public relations, and how you can boost your chances of successfully navigating a competitive job market.

There are plenty of economic challenges ahead.  We see the fallout of these projections in government and corporate sector job cuts, but there is some good news about the public relations industry in Australia.  According to Australian consultancy, Economic and Market Development Advisors (http://www.emda.com.au/), there are now 21,500 public relations people working in Australia which constitutes an 11.3% increase in the year from February 2011 to 2012 read more of this article at Journos face being outnumbered by merchants of spin .  This month’s PR Report  puts Australia’s PR industry employment growth at nearly 20% over the past five years.

So, in short, there’s plenty happening in PR, but there will soon be many more people competing for work as government and some corporates pare back teams.  All the more reason to sharpen your tools and make sure you’re a standout candidate when you apply for PR jobs.

Your resume is just one part of how your application will be assessed, but it’s vital to make it strong.  Professional jobs website TheLadder.com researched the way recruiters read resumes.  Using a scientific technique called ‘eye tracking’, researchers monitored recruiters’ eye movements as they looked at resumes to establish where they looked on the document.  The research found that recruitment professionals look at a resume for just “six seconds before they make the initial ‘fit or no fit’ decision” on candidates read more here What Recruiters Look At During The 6 Seconds They Spend On Your Resume

Structure

TheLadder.com study showed that in those six seconds recruiters will look at your name, current title and company, current position start and end dates, previous title and company, previous position start date and end dates, and education.  So, as well as your name and those other basic personal details (not your address!), your career statement, education and the start of your recent employment history section should appear on the front page of your

Content

Brief and punchy is the name of the game.  Sell your skills by being specific and giving practical examples of your achievements.  It’s no good stating you have “exceptional written and spoken communication skills” unless you can give an example of something you have done that demonstrates these skills.  Citing ‘responsibilities’ tells a recruiter nothing about what you have actually achieved in your role; it only outlines what your employer asks you to do.  So, your examples have to demonstrate the ‘how’ factor.

Using specific examples of how you apply your stated skills will also ensure you don’t stray from the truth!  Never undersell yourself, but never lie; it’s just not worth the discredit and embarrassment you’ll suffer when you’re found out.  And you will be found out.  The forced resignation of Yahoo! CEO Scott Thompson is a recent example of how this happens, even at the top of the pile, read more: Yahoo Board Said to Meet Over CEO Record Amid Firing Call.

Style

Your resume is a formal representation of your professional profile, but your voice in writing it should not be overly formal.  The best resumes convey a true sense of the candidate’s brand and personality in addition to the skills and qualifications they cite.  Using a succinct but conversational style to tell your story in an opening career statement is a great way to capture attention.  If the rest of the CV is concise statements of fact, opening with a paragraph that expresses your character provides interesting contrast.

Once you’ve got a document that you feel really represents you and your professional value to a potential employer, it’s worthwhile getting an objective perspective.  Invest in a resume review with a specialist who does recruitment in public relations.  Seek out a career consultant at an agency like Briggs Communications that will give you real value for money by looking not just at your CV, but at your overall candidate presentation.  Make sure you engage someone you can trust, who listens carefully to your career aspirations, and with whom you can speak openly.  To get the best results from your time with a career consultant, they have to understand your potential and really ‘get you’.

You are the central figure in this engagement.  It’s your career and future so your satisfaction is paramount!

As we’ve established in past blogs, the meteoric rise of social media consumption is not slowing, nor is the advancing potential of the social platforms.  As an example, take a look at the speculation over Facebook’s IPO this week – it’s anticipated to open on May 17 between (USD)$28-$35 per share, with a $96 billion valuation, read more at Top 20 Social Media IPOs = 50% Failure Rate. So, the market seems pretty confident there’s more to come from these guys.

Social media in communications strategy in PR opens up a digital environment that creates both opportunities and challenges for big and small businesses.  Just for the sake of context – and fun – here are a couple of current (May 2012) statistics care of Cara Pring (@carapring) at The Social Skinny, 99 New Social Media Stats for 2012.

• 62% of adults worldwide now use social media
• In the first quarter of 2012, smartphone owners logged an average of 24 minutes per day using social networking applications.
• Twitter has over 140 million active users, sending 340 million tweets every day
• 40% of Twitter users regularly search for products via Twitter
• Facebook has 901 million monthly active users
• YouTube received 4 billion views per day
• 62% of Fortune 500 companies have an active corporate Twitter account
• 58% of Fortune 500 companies have an active corporate Facebook account

The opportunities and the challenges thrown up by social media and digital advancement tend to provoke two opposing responses from business managers and executives – one in favour of using it and the other against using it.  The group ‘in favour’ tends to be keen-as-mustard to get on-board the social media express train, and thinks social media can catapult the company’s public relations or marcomms campaigns into stratospheric success with little or no outlay.  Meanwhile, those in the group ‘against’ tend to be full of fear, have a lack understanding about the tool, and have perceptions of risk and ‘#epicfails’ at the forefront of their minds.

In this situation, your role as a public relations professional is vital.  You have to offer strategic advice on the where, what, why and how of social media application.  This means you have to know exactly where these social networking platforms fit into your overall communications strategy.

If your organisation is serious about its plans to launch social media, but you don’t know enough about it to understand where it should come into your strategic planning for public relations, then you had better get up to speed fast.  Alternatively, be prepared to hire a specialist consultant or dedicated social media manager to give your team the expertise it needs.

With all the sensation around social media’s ascendancy, some people are missing the fact that there are many things it will not do for your organisation.  You need to control the expectations of keen-as-mustard managers by being realistic about the necessary investment of human and cash resources, and the return the organisation can expect from this investment.  With so many businesses hopping into the social networking space, one thing is very obvious – there are plenty of companies out there using the platforms, but a very small proportion of them know what they are doing and do it really well.

Often this can be because managers or executives didn’t realise what investment is really required for training or hiring social media savvy staff, and for the ongoing staff hours to maintain communication on these platforms.  But, to realise the true value of social media, to mitigate risks, and to use it successfully for public relations and communications, it is imperative that staff know what they’re doing, and know how to measure what they are doing.

You should ask some fundamental questions in your strategic planning process to find a beneficial place for social media in the bigger scheme of your communications strategy:

• Where does social media fit in our Corporate Plan?
• Where will social media be relevant or significant to solving our public relations problems or seizing opportunities?
• What can and can’t we achieve with social media?  (And what is best done through traditional media?)
• How much emphasis should we put on social media – what is too much/too little?
• How will we monitor and track our activities on social media?

The answers to these questions will set you on the right track to establish how social media might contribute meaningfully to your communications strategy.  If you have thought carefully about these things, you will be in a strong position to provide strategic advice to your managers and executives about the future of social media in your organisation.

The Leveson Inquiry is British Parliament’s investigation into the “culture, practices and ethics” of the media  read more The Leveson Inquiry. As a result of phone-hacking revelations, the inquiry is investigating the relationship of the press with the public, police and politicians.  Last week, British lawmakers handed down a damning judgement saying, “We conclude, that Rupert Murdoch is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company.”

In delivering its judgement, the committee was split down party lines with a Labor-Conservative 6-4 vote majority passing the judgement.  The term “not a fit person” was rejected by the Conservative members of the committee, but upheld by the combined majority of the Labor and Liberal-Democrat members.  This reflects Labor’s strong belief that Prime Minister, David Cameron, and his government have been compromised by corrupt dealings with the Murdochs in both the last election and News Corp’s retracted bid for BSkyB.

News Corp owns a 39% minority controlling share in broadcaster BSkyB.  The carefully-worded judgement will be considered by British media regulator Ofcom as it investigates whether BSkyB is a “fit and proper” owner of a broadcast license.  Based on its findings, Ofcom may order News Corp to reduce its holding in BSkyB and other media assets in Britain to lessen its media market dominance.  An order like this will seriously threaten News Corporation’s business in the UK where its business model of incessant acquisition would otherwise continue.

Rupert Murdoch’s immensely successful business model is based on market monopoly:  the more you own, the less room for competition.  And the less room for competition, the more valuable the dominant stake becomes.  Of course, with this dominance in media comes the innate power to influence people.  This power, in turn, invites attention from both politicians seeking campaign support, and regulators wary of anti-competitive practices.

The dynamic of this relationship between corporations and government is nothing new – it’s lobbying and government relations at heart but the scale and scope of power in Murdoch’s media dominance, and therefore its value, is unique. Read Jack Shafer’s take on this Who cares if Murdoch lobbied?

He has spent the last 50 years building News Corporation’s power-brand by acquiring media holdings across the globe from newspaper titles and magazines to television broadcasters and internet sites.  By 2000 News Corp owned over 800 companies in more than 50 countries with a net worth of over $5 billion.

Under the News Corp umbrella, Murdoch has been a ruthless pioneer of brand-building and syndication in the news media business.  He has monopolised the word ‘news’ in company names and organisational slogans and his UK interests are particularly close-knit under the News International brand.  This immense focus on syndication is precisely why an individual threat to one of News Corp’s subsidiaries has such serious implications for its parent company.

When the News of the World phone-hacking scandal broke, Murdoch’s crisis management response was to immediately close the paper.  It was a severe and decisive move to isolate and contain the PR crisis in an attempt to minimise damage by association.  Many were surprised by his decision, but Murdoch was acutely aware that brand integration and syndication were now working against News Corp and its other subsidiaries and increasing their exposure to a serious PR problem.

From a public relations perspective, the fallout from the phone-hacking scandal has seriously undermined a suite of Murdoch brands.  Failures in organisational integrity, ethics, and management at some of News Corp’s subsidiaries have caused a PR crisis that threatens News Corp’s wider business interests in the UK.

As the Leveson Inquiry continues further revelations will be made about the relationships between Britain’s Government and News Corp’s business dealings.  The public perception of these revelations will have considerable sway in News Corp’s future.  The regulator, Ofcom, and Labor opposition will, no doubt, refer to public discourse to support their stance on the future of Murdoch’s British business.  If ever there were a time for News Corp’s public relations people to show their value to the company, it is now.

This case study is another example that all brands, no matter how powerful, become vulnerable when core values are not defined or adhered to.  At Briggs Communications we advocate a strong values foundation when building a brand, either business or personal, coupled with understanding the importance of company values during a crisis.

Government departments and agencies recruit public relations staff to handle stakeholder relations across their projects, or on a project-by-project basis for specialist or especially large-scale undertakings.

In this area of PR Briggs Communications know there are  crucial skills that affect competence and are attractive to hiring managers.  The ability to map a stakeholder matrix, then develop and implement stakeholder strategy is vital.  Stakeholder relations for need teams to drive community engagement with those most heavily affected by a project.

Proven project management skills are a great asset, and especially valuable in areas of government related to capital or infrastructure developments.  Public scrutiny is an intrinsic part of public relations for government in a democratic society, so practitioners working in this sphere need astute media insight to successfully navigate the environment.

For a firsthand perspective on stakeholder relations in government PRinsider speaks to Mac Henshall, General Manager of Stakeholder and Community Relations for VicTrack.

VicTrack is a government rail agency that supports public transport by delivering telecommunication, property and other services.  It works closely with Public Transport Victoria and other government bodies and  has a dual reporting line to the Minister for Public Transport and the Treasurer.

Mac has been at VicTrack for nearly five years and his PR career has spanned 23 years, all of it in government transport roles.  He explains that the attraction of this kind of public relations work lies partly in the challenges:  “With issues management I get a lot of satisfaction providing public relations solutions to problems.”

He continues, “I love it when a plan comes together; the more complex the issues, the more satisfying when you get a solution.”

With considerable experience working for government, Mac has a keen understanding of this sector’s specific attributes.  He notes: “Work in government can be highly complex with lots of political interests to consider.”

Mac has written a blog article for PRIA Victoria’s Priaezine, entitled Public relations in government – knowing your environment.  It discusses the nexis of public relations and government, and presents important considerations for PR practitioners working in this space.

Beyond broader professional considerations and challenges, Mac points out that some of the most rewarding aspects of his job come from ground-level community engagement.  This is realised through initiatives such as VicTrak’s partnerships with Keep Australia Beautiful Victoria (2008-09), and Heritage Victoria (ongoing).  Mac says, “I enjoy dealing with community-based people and building bridges with them to achieve things of mutual value.”

Partnerships and community consultation are essential components of stakeholder relations that help to achieve greater organisational goals, and grant commercial organisations a social licence to operate.

Mac Henshall’s description of public relations in the government sector illuminates the innate complexities of managing relationships in this environment.  He summarises the role, saying:  “In government you are paid to be a professional and paid to provide the best possible advice for the government of the day.

“Your job is to be frank and fearless; to tell ministers and their staff the good, the bad, and the ugly.

“You advise on how to get good results, and how best to hose down difficult situations.”

This kind of public relations role offers stimulating work that suits communications professionals who enjoy community consultation, have sound strategic planning skills, and are keen to work on the ‘gritty’ side of PR.  As Mac puts it, “You must be prepared to get your hands dirty.  This is 99% grunt work and 1% inspiration.”

Finally, political awareness is vital to successfully navigate the political agenda and support government objectives in negotiations with stakeholders.

If you are a practitioner seeking work in this field, you should be confident with media relations and prepared to embrace issues management.  If you lack experience in these areas, or you just need to refresh your approach, undertake some media training or an issues management course to boost your capabilities and confidence.

These core elements of communications form part of Briggs Communications strategic planning workshops.  When adopting a holistic approach, communication practitioners can achieve outstanding results.

Images supplied by VicTrack. The images are of mosaic mural installations at Patterson Station.  They were put in as part of the community relations project undertaken by VicTrack in partnership with Keep Australia Beautiful.

Crisis experts are often called in to recover control of a situation when there seems to be no hope.  Crisis recovery requires swift action to identify causes, isolate problems, and restore stability.  The major causes need the most urgent attention.

There is no doubt the Prime Minister left pressing crisis management decisions hanging in limbo for too long.  Fresh from a bloodbath at the Queensland election, the party is nursing gaping wounds with Peter Slipper and Craig Thomson embroiled in expanding scandals.  Labor advisors have allowed these scandals to advance, unabated, which has very effectively undermined any positive news the party might have hoped to promote last week.

With no decisive stance from ALP leadership to support crisis media management around these contentious issues, the media has been in speculation overdrive.  Then, after returning from overseas, Julia Gillard executed an about-face this week, shelving Peter Slipper and Craig Thomson until findings are handed down from investigations into their respective calamities.  The title of Katharine Murphy’s opinion article in The Age this week said it all Labor on the critical list.

It seems the fundamental causes of the current ALP crisis are lack of trust, respect and relationships, both internally and externally.  The goodwill bank is well and truly drained of funds for Labor, and for Julia Gillard.  Even the Prime Minister’s backflip on Peter Slipper and Craig Thomson this week has incurred a backlash as the public expresses frustration in the lack of constancy and credibility shown by the nation’s leader.  But then, trust has been a long-standing problem for Julia Gillard.  She has demonstrated a tenuous grip on the notion of keeping her word, and allowed herself to be known as deceptive and untrustworthy

This year the public has been privy to Labor’s fraction within.  Clearly these three key elements – trust, respect, relationships – are not strong in Gillard’s team.  A successful leader must be able to trust their team to be open and honest.  Solid and genuine relationships engender a team environment where leaders can expect staff to be forthright with facts, even if these are potentially sensitive or harmful.

The Prime Minister needs to square up for a full and frank chat with her team, behind closed doors, to establish the facts.  In providing a final opportunity for staff to air dirty laundry, Julia Gillard can stabilise Labor’s platform and ensure there are no more surprises.

Perhaps then Labor will have the inner strength to resurrect its brand with careful attention to core Labor values.  Without trust and stability anchored in clear values, there is nothing for Labor to cling to in adversity.

It remains to be seen whether the ALP and our Prime Minister can recover from their current political maladies.  It may be too late to salvage leadership at the next election, but Australia’s oldest political party has to consider its long-term prospects and arrest the brand’s downward spiral.

As a communications professional, you probably already think about these issues – if you don’t, you should.  In the event of a crisis you will be instrumental to response, whether managing the media or dealing with a public relations crisis fallout, you can be sure that you will be knee deep in it!  When a crisis hits, your organisation will respond, but the nature of the response will differ vastly depending on whether or not a crisis plan is in place. Get crisis ready

In 2009, global public relations firm Burson-Marsteller surveyed crisis planning in European businesses.  Respondents (business decision makers) widely agreed that the uncontrollable and uncertain nature of a crisis means it poses significant threats to a company’s reputation, and the results showed that crisis preparedness directly affects a company’s bottom line.

Almost two-thirds of those polled had experienced a crisis at their company, and of those, 59% had had a crisis within the previous 12 months.  However, astonishingly, only 53% of the businesses had a crisis plan.

The results showed that businesses with a crisis plan react and recover faster than those without: 59% of those with a plan recovered within six months compared to 42% of those without a plan.

94% of respondents that had experienced a crisis and implemented a planned crisis response believe that their crisis plan saved their company money.

Read  the full research report here New survey shows that only half of European firms have a crisis plan in place in spite of the significant financial and reputational benefits of crisis preparedness.

At Briggs Communications, we believe that crisis management planning, incorporating a detailed crisis communications plan makes an essential contribution to achieving corporate goals, and fulfilling organisational values and responsibilities.  Corporate goals, values and responsibilities dictate how an organisation executes its business and consequently, the implications for stakeholders.

A man is not an island, and nor is a company.  An organisation, no matter how large or small, operates in a wider business context and therefore has a responsibility to its stakeholders, as well as a fiduciary duty to its owners or shareholders.  This responsibility covers all kinds of things like providing a safe workplace for employees, making money for owners or shareholders, building and protecting the organisation’s brand, providing good products or services to customers, treating suppliers well, and being compliant with regulations.  To neglect crisis planning is to neglect responsibilities in any, or all, of these areas, because an unmitigated crisis will detrimentally affect any, or all, of these facets of an organisation.

So, we know how important it is to have a crisis plan incorporating  details of how to communicate with the media, public, stakeholders and staff.  Without such a plan there are  serious ramifications of crises on business reputation and continuity.  And we’ve established that an alarming number of organisations are unprepared for a crisis.

Now the question is:  why do so many organisations neglect the task of crisis planning?  Two common barriers to crisis readiness are:

• Executives in the business don’t recognise the importance of having a crisis plan; they haven’t properly assessed the potential impact of risks the business faces.

• People in the business who should be responsible for preparing a crisis plan don’t know how to do it, or believe it’s a complicated, difficult undertaking and therefore put it off.

These two quite simple reasons can prevent organisations from pre-empting and preparing for crises to safeguard their future.  This isn’t logical reasoning given the figures and real-world examples that illustrate how crises damage business continuity and how effectively businesses can guard against some of this damage by being crisis ready.

But there it is; people are human and not always logical.  We’re susceptible to complacence and procrastination, we are sometimes ignorant, we are often overloaded at work, and we sometimes avoid things that we don’t know how to do even when we know they’re important.

If all the best intentions are there, and still a crisis planning project is not on your organisation’s agenda, then seek clearance to delegate the task to a specialist consultancy that offers crisis planning services.  Look for an agency, like Briggs Communications, that can provide you with an expert consultant or team that will walk beside you through the process.  It’s vital that the consultants come in and liaise closely with your organisation to ensure the crisis plan is embedded, and supports perpetual information transfer.

A crisis plan is an integral document to have however training and testing have to happen, ideally biannually, to bring it to life.  People, strategy and the business environment (exposures/risks) change constantly; don’t look at crisis planning as a project that can be completed and never revisited again, rather as an ongoing management responsibility that receives cyclic attention and updates. BP’s disaster response to the Deep Water Horizon spill is a very clear example of how easily this element of continuity can be overlooked, and the inadequacy of an out-dated or boilerplate crisis plan (read more: June 15, 2010: Markey Holds Hearing With Top Oil CEOs).  If it can happen at a company that spends millions on risk management, then it can happen at any organisation – it’s imprudent and naïve to think this is not the case.

Resources (both money and time) need to be invested to get planning underway or to engage a consultant to do it, so ultimately crisis management planning has to be sponsored by the executive leadership.  However, as Burson-Marsteller’s research shows, the ultimate return on investment proves crisis planning to be worthwhile recipient of budget.

The biggest barrier to crisis management planning is complacence.  Don’t allow complacence to threaten the company’s reputation and relationships you have nurtured through your public relations work.  As someone who will be heavily involved in crisis response, it’s worth you getting the CEO’s attention and applying some influence to get crisis management planning to the top of the company agenda.

In February, our blog post “Build your personal brand to prepare for the workforce of the future”, discussed Briggs Communications’ predictions for the workforce of the future.  As a specialist PR recruitment agency, and in light of significant Victorian job cuts over the last 12 months, we gave some advice about building your personal brand to make the most of opportunities in a workforce tending toward sub-contracting and temporary employment.

In addition to building your personal brand, it’s crucial to remain focused and motivated toward exactly what you want to do for work in public relations.  This is especially true if you’re actually unemployed – whether between contracts or from redundancy or resignation.

Last week The Age article, ‘Unemployment worst on mainland’ reported the latest employment statistics released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics Labour Force, Australia, Mar 2012 . Victoria is doing it tough with the highest unemployment rate on the mainland.  At 5.8%, unemployment is up from 4.4% in March 2011, equating to job losses of about 28,200.

So, what can you do to keep yourself motivated while you scan the horizon for that next PR job?

1. Have a purpose
   • Get up early and get dressed in business attire every weekday, even if you have no meetings or interviews arranged.
2. Go to town
   • Make plans to meet people in the city for coffee or lunch at least twice a week, not on the same day.
3. Keep connecting
   • Attend networking functions – they’re worth the nominal ticket-price investment.
   • Ensure you have a set of business cards and you keep some handy with you all the time.
   • Follow up on all your contacts in case there’s a valuable job lead somewhere.
   • Keep your LinkedIn profile up to date, and make sure it speaks for you even while you’re unemployed.
4. Be in the loop
   • Read the daily papers so you’re always up-to-date with news.
   • Search out relevant free events – universities often have free events with world class speakers.
5. Budget
   • Prepare a tight budget and stick to it to alleviate some financial stress and ensure you can cover the cost of networking events and lunches in town.
6. Treat yourself well
   • Take good care of your health with sleep, exercise, water, and nutritious food.
7. Keep your hand in
   • Volunteer your services at an organisation that aligns with your career direction.  Maintain professional status even while volunteering.
8. Reward yourself
   • Allocate one day a week to you. This may be reading a book in the park, a swim or a day at the art gallery.
   • Enjoy some time out where you can relax with out feeling any guilt.

These suggestions will keep you on-track during a period of unemployment, and see that you’re in a positive state of readiness to approach the next suitable PR communications job that comes up for you.

These activities ensure you have the best possible chance of doing yourself justice when you apply for the job, or go for an interview.  You can also reinforce your professional focus by meeting with a niche PR recruitment agency, like Briggs Communications, to conduct a resume review, create a video resume, and undertake career coaching, all of which will help you stand out and be noticed by potential employers.

These symptoms indicate that your communications strategy and brand advocacy work is competing with an opposing force.  Unless you investigate and address these barriers from other areas of the business, they will quickly undermine your public relations plan. Public relations can’t fix everything, so find another way.

Fundamental underlying problems with your company’s products, services, or the business systems in place that define the customer experience, will be a constant obstruction to the success of your public relations work.  No matter how good the campaign or how big the budget, you will not achieve the results you want for your company if you are battling against operational obstacles.  Sometimes we have to admit there are things that public relations simply cannot fix!  But you can find solutions by other means.

As a PR practitioner you already know it’s vital to intimately understand your company’s products, services, and line of business.  What better way to get a true understanding of the customer experience than by testing and using the products or services yourself, or perhaps company-wide?  If you’ve got reservations about using those services yourself, then you know there’s a problem!

In the software industry this practice is known as “eating your own dog food” or “dogfooding”.  The idea being that if the company expects customers to buy its products, it should also be willing to use those products.  Anecdotal evidence suggests that pushing people who design products to actually use them, and rely on them, improves the quality and usability of products in the longer term.

Whether it’s a company-wide initiative or a solo research venture you undertake, Briggs Communications advocates this proactive and informative way for people in PR communications jobs to assess systems for potential issues, risks or problems.  This approach is your opportunity to identify barriers that might detrimentally impact the brand, and hamper the effects of communications strategy.

It’s also a great opportunity for PR staff to put their environmental scanning and consultative skills to work, and make recommendations about how systems or customer service procedures might be improved to remove barriers to business development and progress.

So, although you might find your public relations campaign can’t solve the problem in this scenario, remember that as a PR professional it’s your job to help preserve the company brand.  That encompasses the promises your brand makes to its customers in regard to product guarantees, quality, specialist service delivery and customer service.  So it’s important to do the research and give strategic advice where necessary to other areas of business operations that can benefit from a subjective analytical eye.

Social media platforms provide an ideal communication channel to facilitate the two-way symmetrical model of public relations famously theorised by James Grunig (Grunig & Hunt, 1984).  The intrinsic ‘social’ characteristics of platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Orkut, and YouTube make them effective and easy-to-use conduits for circular communication between an organisation and a public.  These platforms provide a forum not just for content output, but for cyclical feedback and comment interactions between parties.

Of course we have to recognise the risk of such instant global communication.  The vast reach of social networking sites can send one small human error onto a very public stage in less than a second.  The newsfeeds we read regularly contain examples of these mistakes and the effect they have on a company.  When an organisation’s online words or actions deviate from what the public expects of the brand a backlash ensues, often escalating to crisis status on social media sites.  Define your corporate voice with social media policy.

A memorable example from last year was fashion designer Kenneth Cole trying to hijack the #Cairo hashtag associated with the Egyptian riots.  In an attempt to promote his spring line on the back of the huge #Cairo following, he tweeted:  Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumour is they heard our new spring collection is now available online…” Read more Kenneth Cole Tweet Uses #Cairo To Promote Spring Collection.  The public response on Twitter and other social media sites was swift and damning, read more Kenneth Cole’s ‘punny’ Cairo tweet enrages Internet. Cole apologised quickly, admitting the tweet was inappropriate, ill-timed, and contradicted his goals.  He also admitted there was no filter in place to cross-check his tweets before he posted them.

The first moral of this story is: avoid self-inflicted crisis wherever possible!  Communications staff typically carry a heavy workload and the additional crisis PR work required to manage a situation like the Cole gaffe is an unnecessary imposition.  So let’s look at how a social media policy can mitigate risk and circumvent poor judgement by developing a corporate voice that authentically represents the organisation.

Briggs Communications advocates for companies to have a social media policy in place to guide all employees who communicate with stakeholders using corporate social networking accounts.  Among other things, policy should provide direction that covers tone, timing, and content.  In developing this policy, public relations staff must carefully define the corporate voice their organisation will have.  If communication on social media platforms portrays a consistent and recognisable corporate voice, it is a powerful technique that will build and reinforce the company brand.

To be really successful in social media interactions, language has to be conversational and the approach authentic and human.  These interactions – tweets, status updates, comments and responses – happen in real time and there’s no time for oversight from the editorial eye that would normally be applied to an organisation’s communication outputs.  However, a comprehensive social media policy will include a style guide to define the corporate voice and support communications staff who post online, bringing that voice to life.

Preparing a style guide is a significant undertaking and incredibly important.  This document must be easy to read and concise.  As a reference document, it should be written in plain English and organised logically in sections with an index at the back.  This ensures the information is easily accessible to staff from any department.  If your organisation’s line of business necessitates the use of industry-specific jargon words, acronyms, and references, include a glossary to explain these.  This ensures new employees at your organisation, or sub-contractors and agencies not yet familiar with terminology, can effectively use the style guide and remain consistent with the corporate voice.

A style guide is vital for companies that have high content outputs and are proactive in the social media space.  Staff in your organisation, particularly those in communications jobs, should receive training when social media policy is introduced.  If the policy is to be an effective preventative measure in your crisis management plan to guard against online aberrations, everyone who goes online under the corporate banner must understand how to apply it.

The maxim ‘think twice, publish once’ is a useful rule to keep in mind for online activity.  A social media policy and style guide gives employees a quick point of reference for that ‘second thought’ when in doubt.  From a strategic planning standpoint these documents are important to shape a corporate voice that builds the brand and can be consistently reinforced by all employees.

So it follows that the spirit of advocacy should be present in every activity a PR professional undertakes for a client or employer in the pursuit to support their best interests.  It is the daily responsibility of people who work in public relations to identify and seize opportunity where others see barriers or problems, and to foresee and prevent problems that others may not see at all. So include brand advocacy in your PR job.

When an organisation is confronted by a public relations problem, or a problem that might be solved or alleviated with a public relations approach, it’s imperative that the PR function is prepared to stand up for the organisation’s brand by planning and leading a response.  Briggs Communications believes the response should be swift and constituted by a communications strategy or crisis management plan that puts the company on the front foot in the public domain.

Issues that affect or threaten an organisation are often discussed in the news media and consequently become issues in the public eye.  Talkback radio, newspapers and television broadcasts will host comment and conversation about the issue whether your organisation is part of that conversation or not.  If you are not part of the debate, you have no opportunity to stand up and advocate for your organisation’s brand.

When an organisation says nothing to present its perspective on an issue, it creates an information void that will be filled by speculation or comment from other parties airing their perspective on the issue.  But, if your communications strategy leads the debate on an issue, your organisation’s standpoint will at least be heard, and there is then the opportunity to influence relevant stakeholders accordingly.

Nothing can be gained by sitting back and allowing the conversation to proceed without making your story a part of that conversation.  Issues of public interest are cause for the concern of governing bodies or supervisory stakeholders that are sometimes spurred into action by noise made in the news media.  If your organisation is passive and does not stake a position in the debate, you lose the opportunity to influence fallout decisions.  This might leave your brand at the mercy of unnecessary regulatory impositions that spring from invalid or exaggerated public concern escalated by sensationalist media coverage.

As an advocate for your organisation, be prepared to stand up to protect, or promote, the brand you have worked hard to create.  Don’t make the common mistake of defaulting to a defensive or passive position.  Instead, when it is possible and appropriate, seize opportunities to demonstrate thought leadership and pre-eminence on an issue.

Formulate a public relations response that leads the debate and employs savvy media relations, a robust message, possibly a position paper to frame and argue your case, and strong leadership from your organisation’s CEO.  Make sure your CEO or company spokesperson has received solid media training to prepare them to lead comment in the media.  Sometimes a news hook will present itself in disguise; it is the role of public relations professionals to recognise this and change a problem into an opportunity.

Above all, remember that your company brand is worth standing up for!  As an advocate for the organisation you will know, better than most, all the reasons why this is true.