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Reputation Task Force

Reputation Task Force

Building Your Reputation Task Force

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Building Your Reputation Task Force

Screen Shot 2014-05-16 at 10.21.36 AMTracing back to the early days of my career in PR and marketing, I remember a conversation with a senior account executive at my agency. She shared with me her thoughts on the importance of the brand and pointed out one resource she referred to as our “marketing bible.” You may have guessed already … it’s the branding guide or brand style guidelines.  Every project started with the brand style guidelines, which we followed carefully. These guidelines were often as thick as a dictionary and covered everything from vision, messaging and voice to accepted versions of logos and fonts.

Brand style guidelines are developed to keep the brand voice consistent across multiples channels, and the look and feel of the brand in tact at every communication touch point. We used these guidelines religiously as brand champions. Branding was important then and it’s just as important now.

Today, brand guidelines are critical and these style guides are still developed for the same purpose. However, when it comes to building your internal brand champions, you need to move far beyond the development and sharing of a corporate branding guide.  Getting your internal champions on board with the brand means involving champions in your brand; using brand exercises, training and initiatives that inspire employees to protect, manage and maintain the interests of the brand through every channel and at every touch point.

On May 21st, I’m co-presenting with John Mustin, CEO of Wasabi Rabbit, at the PRSA Connect 14 Conference in Chicago. We’re discussing the topic of building internal brand champions, online and offline. Years ago the “brand police” followed a set of brand guidelines. Now, it’s so much more than just following the guidelines, it’s being immersed in the brand to “Live the Brand.” My part of the presentation will focus on how to get your champions to become more involved and to “Live the Brand” online and in their social communities, how to motivate them to join a reputation task force. The more champions who become involved in the task force effort, the more eyes and ears that are ready and willing to promote, protect and uphold the image and integrity of the brand.

Here are a few simple steps to consider when you are motivating your online reputation task force:

1. Learn new ways to identify champions who stand out in the crowd. These are the employees who don’t always raise their hands, but would jump at the opportunity to be more involved with online communications. Many companies don’t realize that their champions exist in every department and often in the unlikely places. I’ve heard executives say, “Our employees don’t spend much time online and they don’t seem very social.” The truth is … the employees are online and very social, but they are just not social for the company. Of course it’s easy to identify the champions in marketing in PR. However, you have to extend your reach and find the internal ambassadors from other departments.

2. When it comes to online participation, social media policies are great to layout the guidelines for good judgment. More companies are developing social media policies to offer this good guidance. However, a policy can only take you so far. It’s imperative to train your brand champions so they understand the do’s and don’ts and the best practices. Companies go as far as simulating situations that challenge champion understanding and help them to feel more comfortable about social media. Feeling more confident leads to better communication and decreases the chance of employees fueling the escalation of negative issues. Training should be based on champion needs, so it’s important to structure targeted sessions with a core team and then eventually broaden the training to involve more employees (enterprise wide) as your reputation task force expands.

3. Create a place for your champions to collaborate. Building a reputation task force often means connecting champions and motivating them to discuss and learn from one another.  There are internal collaboration sites that allow your champions to share, innovate and grow together. From the simple discussion platforms to the more advanced social computing sites for the enterprise, champions are born daily when they have access to information and can gain additional knowledge from their peers.

Today, building champions goes so far beyond the brand style guidelines. Although still an important resource, it’s not the only tool in the toolbox. With so many different channels and touch points with stakeholders you need to expand how your own people look and live your brand.

Believing in the brand and embracing the brand will translate into protecting and maintaining the brand. Invest in your people and they will invest in return. There are champions just waiting to be born; now you just have to involve and inspire them the right way.

 

Practice 7 - Reputation Task Force Member

PR Practice #7: Reputation Task Force Member Chart of Responsibilities

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The day you started in communications was the day you became a member of the ethics committee and you joined the brand police force.  In public relations, it’s your job to uphold the integrity of the brand and ensure the messaging is consistent and remains intact across all communications channels.  Now, with social media, your messages go further and you cast a wider net; your company is automatically in the center of public conversations and in the critical eye of the consumer.  In my book, Social Media and Public Relations: Eight New Practices for the PR Professional, PR Practice #7 focuses on how PR professionals must concentrate more on reputation by building a human face, daily monitoring and more brand education for themselves and their peers.

Today’s post is a part of the “edited” or “cut” chart series, which includes the Reputation Task Force Member’s Chart of Responsibilities.  Even though you’ve always had the reputation of your brand front and center, social media increases your need to take a proactive approach on many fronts. Whether you realized it or not, being in the PR or communications means you an important part of an organically growing task force.

I mentioned in my book how, “The Reputation Task Force Member is a natural position for the PR person who usually is immersed in the negative communications issues, the crisis situations or the damaged reputation …  PR professionals also have the knowledge and skills to minimize or neutralize the critical issues or concerns.”  You can see in the chart of responsibilities how human and transparent communication, increased brand education, a proactive approach to reputation and continued task force growth lead to communications success.

© PR 2.0 Strategies

Here’s how the responsibilities break down in your new practice:

Build a Human Face

Proactively protecting a reputation starts with the human face of the company. Anyone who has said social media requires transparency and open communication is 100% correct.  People relate to people. We are social beings who want to connect and engage with other people in different ways.  Your ability to interact and build strong relationships may directly correlate to the transparency and human side you show.  Remember, consumers want to talk to people and not to logos.

Teach Brand Core Values

If you’re not directly involved in the creation of the brand communication guidelines, then you need to get involved! It’s really interesting to note that when an organization develops its brand style guidelines, there are areas dedicated to the communication and messaging, including voice, style and tone. Too often, PR people are not involved in the process.  This is right up the PR person’s alley, as we are responsible for responding to the public through a variety of channels, whether it’s via the media or now directly to customers in our social networks.

Develop a Sentiment Monitoring Program

You don’t want to be setting up your sentiment monitoring program after you realize your customers are not speaking favorably on behalf of your brand.  The time to think about sentiment monitoring is proactively beforehand and at the start of your social media planning. Determining the conversations to track and the keywords to monitor is critical to the success of your brand’s reputation.  You have to know what you’re monitoring, how frequently it’s monitored and the best way to report on your findings.

Engaging in Relentless Auditing

Social media turns the PR professional into a relentless auditor of social media for brand reputation.  Of course, you were always reviewing news clippings and online coverage, making sure your companies, products/services and executives were represented in a favorable light.  There were times when you were able to see a story before it went to print and then there were times you were chasing down an editor to get a retraction.  Today, through social media monitoring tools you can take a proactive approach to reputation, saving precious time and resources by squashing issues early on and neutralizing negative comments before they have the chance to go viral.

Become a Reputation Liaison & Grow Task Force Membership

Being on the reputation task force alone could be a full time job, so it requires the help of your peers in your department, as well as those across the company.  The overall goal of being a liaison and growing the task force team is to be able to better maintain the health and well being of the company’s reputation, in the age of public conversations.  Seeing positive progress through the growth of your task force, and effective and positive sentiment monitoring / measurement, is an indication of “reputation wins.” Positive progress means the participating task force members (and reputation liaisons) have done a great job.

Enforce Active Brand Policing

By growing the task force you will create an active force of brand police who naturally are watching, supporting and reporting on brand communications.  Today, as a result of social media, they say every person in the company technically becomes a part of customer service.  The same goes for the reputation task force members.  Whether officially assigned or spearheaded as a grass roots effort, it takes an entire army of employee champions, on the brand police force, to guide and uphold the brand values and messaging.

With your strong sense of ethics, your knowledge of the brand voice and your constant desire to be a part of the brand police, participating on the reputation task force is the best way to utilize your skills to maintain and often protect your brand’s reputation.