Public Relations Crisis

In today’s fast paced world, news on businesses is very common. The lead stories are based on mergers, acquisitions, plant closings, strikes, unemployment, company expansions, labor negotiations, building projects, catastrophes, and accidents related to construction. In spite of this exposure, many organizations are still unprepared or are unaware as to how to handle a public relations crisis. This can affect the organization’s employees, clients, and business. Hence, it is very important for companies to work diligently towards developing efficient public relations crisis management plans.

Even organizations that adopt contingency plans and are well managed can fall victim to scandals and catastrophes, but the damage caused by these events can be minimized. This means that public relations crisis management is not only a good practice but also a mandatory one for all businesses.

Ways to Handle Media during Public Relations Crisis

A public relations crisis can happen at any time and hence, it is good to be prepared for handling the media. Fact sheets about the organization or business should be prepared and kept in hand in addition to having contact information. A single communication center should be identified so that media can be sure of getting regular updates. However, care should be taken not to provide direct access to the organization’s facilities or offices. Individual calls from the media should be responded to either by briefings, invitations to talk, or sharing the time effectively. A single spokesperson can be selected to handle the public relations crisis situation on behalf of the company or organization as this ensures consistent communication responses.

Role of Search Engine Optimization in Public Relations Crisis Management

No organization wants its name on popular search engines being related to vicious blogs begun by disgruntled ex-employees, blogs/websites that are not controlled by the company but embedded within the official website of the company, or being negatively mentioned on Ripoff reports.

There are some tactics related to public relations crisis management which can mitigate the aforementioned situations. The popular and most important solution is to use a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tool that is focused particularly on reputation preservation and restoration.

SEO involves focusing on the search results of major search engines, reviewing the density and keyword placement of the business websites, and updating the websites often, as fresh information helps the websites sustain their popularity. SEO also includes validating the pages of the website for codes that are error free, as search engines downgrade websites that are poorly constructed. SEO helps in obtaining the links (inbound) from high profile, relevant websites having good page ranking, forms various points of presence through article publication, blogs, social media, and forum activities, and floods online communities with positive messages about the organization.