The US election result in 2016 suddenly focused us on the major problems caused by the spread of false information. This problem continued to increase with the advent of the coronavirus. But the problem of fake news, misinformation, false rumors, and propaganda has been around in various forms for thousands of years. The main difference now is most likely the use of the internet. Not only is biased news and commentary available in traditional ...
Read moreSuccess in crisis management depends largely on how quickly and accurately your organization communicates with its stakeholders. Stakeholders have something at risk, and therefore something to gain or lose as a result of your organization’s activity. By using their influence, stakeholders hold the key to the environment in which your organization operates and therefore its subsequent financial and operating performance. During a crisis your organization has to look at itself from your stakeholders’ perspective ...
Read moreMany people hate office politics. But staying out of office politics may hold back your career. You can see what happens when someone doesn’t play the game sufficiently – they lose influence and credibility. Probably you know people who have made that mistake. As a communicator, especially if you are head of the communication function, you are responsible for building productive relationships throughout the office so you can influence people beyond your formal area ...
Read moreMedia relations was at the core of PR for decades. Some people in the industry still think media relations is PR. However, the internet has changed all that. A new type of stakeholder is the online influencer. What’s more, these influencers can be present internally as well as externally. The key is to identify influencers and win their support. Internal influencers are not just people who hold management or supervisory positions; they are very ...
Read moreWhat exactly is a corporate reputation? How important is it? What is it worth? Isn't it only an intangible, 'feel-good' concept? The answer: Corporate reputation is an invaluable asset with significant impact on an organization’s bottom line. It is even more important internally and externally during the COVID-19 pandemic. Corporate reputation defined After reviewing 5,885 articles on reputation, Veh, Gobel & Vogel (2018) note "there is no agreement on one definition" of corporate reputation. ...
Read moreWhen I joined a billion dollar engineering company as Corporate Affairs Manager, I found my CEO thought internal communication should mostly comprise propaganda and gloss. He was only interested in good news being communicated to employees. This approach meant that important and difficult issues were not shared with staff, even though the company was struggling as the economy turned down. It was a frustrating time because employees knew the communication wasn’t candid and therefore ...
Read moreInequality leading to major disruption Findings from the highly respected annual Edelman Trust Barometer surveys over 20 years pointed to community trust around the world being spurred by economic growth. However, the conclusion in 2020 is that community trust continued to be maintained in Asia and the Middle East, but not in developed markets, where income inequality is now the more important factor. A majority of respondents in every developed market do not believe ...
Read moreHow credible are different sources of news and information in people’s opinions? When putting PR programs together, it pays to understand how well different spokespersons are respected and to focus on the most trusted for best results. You could even keep these results at hand as a reference when planning communication programs. Below is the graph from the annual Edelman Trust Barometer global survey, 2020, which shows the extent to which various sources of ...
Read moreDeveloping trust in someone can be more subtle than we realize. Researchers from North Western University in the United States recently found that trust development can begin even before people meet or learn about one another’s professional reputation or social status. To some degree, at least, the placing of trust is not the result of a deliberate assessment, but of subconscious cues. The cues seem to be based partly on Cialdini’s principle of social ...
Read moreIn a previous article, “Stakeholder relations management is a key skill,” I mentioned that you can determine your most important stakeholders by developing a matrix to calculate a numerical value or rating for each stakeholder. The overall rating of each stakeholder is simply the aggregate of numbers calculated by rating the stakeholder against several criteria or attributes, as in the example matrix below. Obviously, the stakeholders with the highest scores are the most important ...
Read moreBad timing is the single biggest reason journalists reject media pitches. A total of 25% of journalists participating in the
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