When a PR crisis hits, you need to know how to survive it. The media and the public don’t give second chances at a first impression, so it’s essential that you get it right the first time.
Red Banyan is an award-winning crisis public relations firm that knows how to get you safely to the other side.
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How Can Red Banyan Help with PR Crisis Management?
Why do I need a Crisis PR Management Firm?
What Are Public Relations?
Public Relations (a.k.a. PR) involves managing and disseminating information to influence public perception positively. It involves a range of activities, including media relations, crisis communication, event management, and community engagement. The primary goal of PR is to shape and maintain a favorable public image while also influencing public perception in a way that aligns with the organization’s or individual’s objectives.
If you or your business have any interaction with the public, whether it be in-person or online, then you can consider yourself involved in PR. However, interacting with the public isn’t always easy, especially when it comes to social media. Without expert counsel, mistakes can, and will, be made. What can often matter most is how you respond to these mistakes because, handled poorly, they can easily worsen your predicament.
If you find yourself in a PR Crisis, the best way to move forward is to start by not saying a word until you speak with a crisis management expert, and the team at Red Banyan are just that.
A PR disaster can occur when your reputation or business is connected to a negative event that gains the attention of the public. A public relations crisis can manifest in many ways, including employee issues, customer incidents, an online faux pas, or even suspect business practices. No company or person is exempt from having to do some PR damage control.
While you may do the best to control what you can, unexpected and disruptive events are likely to occur at one time or another. A PR crisis can jeopardize your company’s reputation, business integrity, and bottom line. Bad PR crisis management can sink the boat entirely.
What can make public relations crises so difficult is how little you can do to control the outcome. Once the public has seen negative publicity about you, whether it’s biased or not, your company’s reputation can be seriously tainted. The public will generally choose to do business with companies that it trusts. To put it simply: if you lose that trust, you lose customers, you lose business. If the damage is already done, it will need to be repaired as swiftly as possible.
That’s why having the best crisis PR firm on your side is so important. Your crisis response is paramount. Whether you release a statement or remain silent, there will be intense scrutiny while you are under the media spotlight. How you respond is key — don’t go it alone.
How you handle a PR crisis response can make or break your reputation, so it’s vital that you place your trust in the right PR firm.
That’s where Red Banyan comes in.
How Can Red Banyan Help with PR Crisis Management?
Red Banyan’s crisis management public relations services are unparalleled. If you’re at the beginning of a PR crisis, don’t panic. We’ll help you from here. Our team of highly experienced crisis management experts will assess the fallout. We’ll act as both a shield and a tourniquet, protecting you from further damage while working to staunch the loss of customers, income, and reputation.
To survive or handle a PR Crisis, you need the best crisis PR firm on your side. Red Banyan can help you:
- Assemble the best PR crisis response team
Ideally, you’ll have an emergency team already assembled, but if not Red Banyan’s PR team will make sure to help you appoint the right people to tackle your PR crisis. For organizations, the best response teams can often include a mix of in-house company employees, attorneys, investigators, fresh-eyed outside observers, and social media experts. A Red Banyan team member can also be your crisis spokesperson, ensuring that your business presents a single unified voice.
- Create a crisis PR response strategy
Red Banyan can help develop and disseminate important messaging to ensure that any statements released publicly reflect positively on your reputation and are in alignment with your intentions.
In a crisis, effective communication is key. As part of any crisis response strategy, it is essential to ensure every person involved in your business, regardless of their seniority or role, is aware of the company line. Social media outlets, like Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok can be minefields if not handled correctly. The public may have questions, and the media may want to know who to speak to or where to direct inquiries, so it’s important that the answers given by everyone are clear, specific, and unified. This is strategic communication and will ensure your messaging is delivered with unity and impact.
- Deliver your message effectively
It’s also important to act quickly with your crisis response strategy and crisis communication plan. The amount of time it takes to respond to a crisis can sometimes amplify the damage done. The Red Banyan team handles crisis every single day, and we can ensure that the right message is delivered at the right time.
When it comes to PR issues management, media training is essential to ensure that your message is effectively delivered, whether it’s through a personal statement from the CEO, a statement on social media, or an official press release. Your crisis communications plan should also involve getting in touch with your employees, investors, executives, and key stakeholders.
Be careful, sometimes a response can be seen as an admission of guilt; if you’re concerned that may be the case, don’t risk making a mistake. Let Red Banyan assess the situation and craft a response strategy that gets it right the first time. We will tell your side of the story, while being compassionate and considerate. Our extensive contacts in the media will enable us to amplify your message (if appropriate) in a way that best suits our communications strategy.
- Monitor the ongoing PR crisis situation
Red Banyan’s crisis PR management team employs cutting-edge technology and strategy to monitor online communication pertaining to your reputation and business. This ensures we’re kept up to date and can work on keeping any negative articles and comments under control and to a minimum. A company that has even one bad review on the first page of Google’s search results is more likely to lose up to 22% of first-time customers.
Our team will be keeping an eye on media mentions, Google reviews, images, posts, and social media outlets to track and observe content pertaining to your reputation. With this media monitoring and social listening, we’ll be able to identify negative trends as they develop and get ahead of them to protect your brand and reputation.
- Forge a path forward
Once the dust settles, you can go back to normalcy. Red Banyan will help you turn a crisis into opportunity. In some cases, you may emerge stronger than before. Our team can help you identify ways to move forward with the expertise and guidance required to help ensure you don’t end up in the same crisis again.
If you want to be pre-emptive in your approach, reach out to Red Banyan today and we’ll help you implement the necessary crisis management tools to ensure you never got into the crisis in the first place, or that at least you are better prepared with an effective crisis communication plan.
Why do I need a Crisis PR Management Firm?
There’s the court of law and there’s the court of public opinion. You can lose in court and win with the public and conversely, you can win your case and lose favor with the public. The best defense is a good offense.
Crisis public relations can be incredibly tricky. Without a skilled crisis PR firm to help you survive the storm, people have the tendency to make the wrong choices and often end up creating a PR nightmare:
- They lash out on social media instead of responding strategically.
- They react too quickly with unclear messaging, or too slowly, drawing ire from the public.
- They might even give the dreaded “no comment” response, effectively cutting themselves off at the knees.
Our team can ensure that these mistakes are not made by you or your business, now or in the future. Your reputation is important.
Red Banyan is here to help you respond to any crisis.