Effective corporate reputation management is comprised of many elements, one of the most important of which is stakeholder communications. Stakeholders come in many forms: investors, regulators, customers, legislators and of course the Media. Regardless of size, it is vital that public companies build and maintain good relationships with each group because left alone, stakeholders can and will receive information from many sources some of which may be less than reliable or include deliberate misinformation.

Consistency, understanding and preparation are three of the watchwords that public companies should hold dear:

Consistency of message – it is vital that the same key messages are communicated across the board. With such a large audience and so many channels available, your company must talk with a unified voice.

While your message must be consistent, you also need to understand your audiences in terms of what information they need to know and how they prefer to receive and engage with it. Press releases, briefings, statements, pod casts, tweets, blog posts… understand your audiences and channels.

Ensure your spokespeople are prepared so that they can and will be able to respond correctly, consistently and in a timely manner to enquiries from any stakeholders and you can reach out quickly to intercept any issues.

Managing your stakeholder relationships will help to build and protect your corporate reputation, directly benefiting your company at multiple levels.

Distinct PR was the only public relations agency that the company had decided to speak to. The other companies pitching for the business were all pure-play social media companies. Now I happen to know some social media firms that are very, very good at what they do – they understand social media’s place in the larger marketing mix and what is needed to deliver genuine business-orientated results (and I’m not talking number of likes, fans or follows).

Unfortunately the social media consultants that we were pitching against did not fall into the knowledgeable category and had instead filled the prospective client’s collective head with such meaningless drivel that even I, with many years of consultancy under my belt, was appalled. I’m not going to bore you with a lengthy account of the uphill battle to re-educate the prospect’s execs (which was successful because we got the business) but I do want to pierce a few of the smoke and mirrors that are being employed by certain firms and consultants out there.

It’s not about the packaging: It takes minutes to set up an account on most social media platforms. Sure, you can have a custom-made page for platforms like Facebook and this can take some time but be wary of anyone who makes a big song and dance out of getting you set up on the various platforms and creating specialized pages for you. Having a great looking page is worthless if you don’t have a corresponding content creation program.

Automation and integration: It doesn’t take long to send out updates on each platform so don’t be impressed by anyone stressing how they will update every single platform out there. There are many 3rd party programs out there that will enable you to put out a single update (tweet, wall posting, status update, etc) and have it published across multiple platforms simultaneously.

The right tool for the job: There are many forms of social media and online communities out there – from the big networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, to countless forums, blogs and more. Just because they all exist, doesn’t mean they are right for your company. Question anyone that gives you a long list of social media networks and communities that they will help you engage with. Depending upon your business model and industry, you may only need to get involved with one or two forms of social media to show the right ROI.

Of course, it’s one thing to know what to avoid, it’s another to know what to go for. I could write multiple posts on the subject of conducting social media in a professional manner that generates the right results but since this post is about what to avoid, let me finish by saying that if you find yourself on the receiving end of a social media proposal, if it doesn’t talk about things like audience analysis, listening exercises, joining and starting conversations and above all content creation then kick it into touch.

Now I’m not going to discuss the merits of social media networking vs offline, face-to-face networking – both are important in today’s business world. However, many of those involved in social media – from marketing and PR pros to industry observers – have become so obsessed with the numbers game – be it FB Likes, Google +1. Klout +K, LinkedIn Connections and Twitter Followers, that the art of genuine networking seems to be getting lost in the noise.

It was with delight therefore that I came across an article on networking, well an annotated slideshow actually, in the Harvard Business Review that discusses and advises on the art of networking at work. The main takeaways from the slideshow are as follows:

• Build outward not inward – don’t deepen connections with people you already know well – reach out to those outside of your main circle.
• Focus on diversity not size – focus on adding people with skill sets, experiences and views that differ from others in your network.
• Build weak ties, not strong ones – sounds strange but the idea is that strong ties tend to be your friends whereas weak ties (which only need contact a few times per month) are often your window and access point to skills and experience that you don’t share.
• Use hubs, not familiar faces – identify and reach out to hubs – those who are established and well-connected.

“With Twitter and Facebook and every other network that defines the statusphere, we are conditioned to publish and consume content at a rapid fire pace. In many ways, we compete for attention at every moment – all in 140 character bursts at a time (well 120 if we hope our words are to be retweeted.) I believe brevity fuels a hunger for depth.”

He’s right of course. The questions are how and when do you provide this depth? After all, if you’re a business looking to leverage the benefits of social media your research (or in-house/external expertise) should have convinced you of the need for quality content. It’s not enough to share. You have to share things of interest (to your customers/clients/investors/stakeholders) and with a quagmire of content already on the Web it had better be useful, informative and worth their time to look at.

The time constraints that come into play during content creation have given rise to the creation vs curation debate that has been going on for a while now. If you’re not familiar with the debate there are plenty of articles that cover it. Perhaps check out this recent post that I like by veteran video journalist Michael Rosenblum. It’s quite anti-curation but informative nevertheless.

Rather than get bogged down in the merits of each approach to providing content, I want to offer the advice that I give clients whenever this topic needs to be addressed:

Create when your expertise can shine and curate in all other instances. At all times make sure your content is relevant to the interests and needs of your target audience and, when curating, add value by providing objective commentary, overviews or other elements to save your audience time and help them to digest the info.

Some of his points were spot on, others less so but it was the comments afterwards that got me thinking about how professional PRs communicate to clients and potential clients just what part social media should play in business. I’ve been told many times by company execs that while PRs will happily explain how they leverage social media on behalf of the client, the conversations essentially boil down to “hire us and let us deal with all this social media stuff for you”. Yet the flip side is complaints by PRs that clients often do not listen to their advice on how to utilize social media.

The solution actually brings me back to Shankman’s post. His main thrust is that at its core, best practice social media utilizes the self same elements of marketing, customer service, etc. that have been the staple of successful business since well before the emergence of social media. In this same vein, PRs and clients need to share their respective expertise with one another in order to build a successful relationship – an approach that agencies and clients have always needed in order to succeed together.

As I mentioned in a previous post, it is curious that we as an industry ceded ownership of the emerging website development market during the dotcom boom to marketing agencies and boutique design firms. Granted, the more astute PR agencies hired or partnered with the necessary talent but many small agencies simply referred clients to website designers or marketing firms and in general did not educate clients well enough to ensure our involvement at a deep level.

In this age of information overload the need for high quality, audience-specific content, smart curation and clear audience engagement is key. Due to our experience and knowledge of content, audience and markets, PRs are ideally placed to advise, direct and generally be involved with a client’s website on an ongoing basis.

Does this mean that PRs should be html experts? No. Particularly when the use of CMS platforms such as Drupal, WordPress, DNN and others are becoming increasingly popular with corporations and SMBs alike. It does mean that PRs should understand and be involved with how clients create and curate content, how they integrate their website with mobile and social media platforms and apps, how they leverage SEO mechanics and what they do with site analytics.

Above all, PRs should have a clear picture of how we can facilitate this activity to deliver ever greater value.

He used these questions to illustrate the fact that as social media, networking and mobile tech continues to push the PR and marketing industries through a bumpy transition period, we PRs must educate clients, prospects and the business world in general regarding our expertise in the area of content and social dynamics. He went on to talk about the need for PR agencies to fill gaps in their service offering by bringing on board experts in mobile technology as well as ensuring regular ongoing training for all staff in multiple areas of our business so that we spread our arms wider than we did in the dot com era.

As it happens, many of us are doing just that. We PRs of course have a direct line to the professional Media (which has ever been our province) but we now have unblocked access to the end users, to influencers and online community leaders. We have the tools to identify them, to communicate with them and the training (as PRs) in how to engage them. What remains is to learn the lessons of the Dotcom era and make sure the business world knows what we are doing and how we are doing it.

• Be active or be absent – The top brands post an average of 24 times per month on their wall
• Give up control – Just under 80% of the top brands allow fans to post on their wall
• Respect is a reply – Two-thirds of the brands consistently reply to fan comments and questions

Considering the social awareness shown by these brands by their Facebook activity, it was interesting to see that only around one-third of them actively encourage fans to engage them (via surveys, contests, etc).

The full survey can be found here

The cry from a number of social media marketers is that the NYT approach is spot on and that companies are foolish to try and bind their employees with strict policies and huge ‘do and don’t’ lists. Employees will, goes the argument, use social media anyway so what’s the point in restricting how they do things. ‘Tell them to use common sense and leave them to it’ was the exact wording of a tweet I saw from one online marketer.

Common sense is about right but not in the way that the online marketer meant. Social media has created (and is creating) connections within and between companies and consumers like nothing before it. Not only is the business world still in the process of adapting to these dramatic changes but social media itself has not finished evolving. Companies therefore need guidelines in place. Where the common sense element comes into play is how you formulate these rules and how you present them to your employees.

So what should you keep in mind when figuring out your social media guidelines? As a tech PR veteran who has worked with many clients, large and small, my well-founded belief is that there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ for social media policies. The ‘don’t be stupid’ approach may work for the NYT but this is an organization filled with professional communicators. For other companies (particularly large ones) such a broad brush is rarely realistic. Here are some things to keep in mind when developing or reworking your social media policy:

1. Don’t listen to anyone who says you don’t need a social media policy. You do.
2. Make sure that whoever is responsible for creating the guidelines has a solid grounding in social media.
3. Bring in the relevant stakeholders for input – marketing, sales, HR, customer service, etc.
4. Don’t let fear of employee mistakes (deliberate or otherwise) lead you to draconian rules that will impede rather than facilitate.
5. Whether strict or lax, it is critical that your guidelines be easy to understand. Wordy, complex handbooks will not help people remember the do’s and don’ts.
6. Know up front what you want to achieve with social media and create guidelines that will help you reach your business goals.
7. Take a look at example guidelines and suggestions. No need to reinvent the wheel. Check out this site run by Chris Boudreaux called socialmediagovernance which has links to more than 170 social media policies used by different companies including big players like Dell as well as much smaller organisations.