Peak Communicators
October 18, 2011

Reputation Managers Need to Remember Their Own Public Relations

You’ve heard the old adage about the carpenter falling through his own steps. He was so busy taking care of business he didn’t take care of business at home. Reputation managers often overlook their home turf. And it is sometimes at their peril.

For example, there is no such thing as a totally private life when you are a public relations practitioner. Remember that everything you do and say can live on the internet. So if you are going to tweet and blog about a public cause or politics that may not be popular with all your clients and colleagues, remember that this can come back to bite you…hard.

Communicators and public relations practitioners deal with a wide variety of individuals and organizations as clients. They may not always share your views. It is a good idea to remain neutral and apolitical because you could very quickly pigeon hole yourself or your company as being only about one cause or one party. Simply put, this can be bad for business and make it much more difficult to pitch stories to media.

Treat yourself like a brand

As a sole practitioner, a communications manager, consultant or public relations company manager, it’s important to apply the same public relations outreach activities that you do for your clients to build your own reputation.

Look for opportunities to blog about issues. Offer to do media interviews as a communications expert to comment on how individuals or organizations have failed to tell their story in the best way possible. The media is hungry for experts in many fields and communications is a very important element of crisis management.

Look for issues to weigh in on and let the media know you have something to say and are willing to say it. You never get what you don’t ask for and this type of publicity can really draw positive attention to you as a communications consultant, your organization and your services.

If you or your company is offering a new service or have an innovative product, frame the story and offer it up to select media outlets. An ‘earned media’ news feature has much more credibility than buying an ad and can go a long way towards building reputation and profile.

New hires should always be featured in the ‘Keeping Track’ sections of daily and business newspapers with good head shot photos. Again, this is free advertising and you will be very pleased when people comment that they see your organization is progressive and growing.

When you are communicating and doing public relations for others, don’t forget to build, enhance and protect your own reputation with the same communications outreach. It can pay great dividends.

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