A recent posting on The Big Money by freelancer Matthew DeBord made one of the most misguided assessments of crisis public relations that I have ever run across.  Calling it “PR’s evil twin” and “a black sorcerer’s art worth millions,” DeBorg claims that in the social media universe “crisis PR is no longer up to the job”—that the “dark art” is in meltdown.  He bases his conclusion on what he called “a veritable deluge of crises since 2008.”

In his attack DeBord is right about two things:  Read more...

• There have been many high profile crises in the past two years.

Negative reputation management and crisis communications has always been important components of strategic communications. With the recent rise of user-generated content, however, the tactics to deal with these important communication challenges have changed.

A recent eMarketer post asks the question “how can you use social media to fix campaigns that don’t click with your targets?” How can you react to negative comments about your brand?

As the graph demonstrates, while direct engagement is still the most popular option (although this could be over the phone, e-mail, SMS, social networking sites, or other channels), other important methods to control your reputation online are also popular.  Read more...