Several Las Vegas PR professionals were interviewed by the Las Vegas Review-Journal on the state of the industry in the area. These are people I’ve had the opportunity to connect with, and I’m impressed with how their firms both weathered a rough economic storm and have been able to adapt to the rapidly changing landscape of communication.
Many of their comments were spot on. Organizations need a strong social media presence; it takes more effort to impress an audience in today’s landscape; organizations need to dig deep to find a message that will resonate; creativity is key; and online reputation is an important consideration.
Let’s focus on that last one for a moment. Online reputation takes a variety of approaches, depending on the nature of your business. If you are a smaller organization, yours is the opportunity to mold your own rep. You narrate your story in an attention-grabbing way. A sharp website is a start. Consistent blog posts and social media outreach and conversation is key. I also recommend asking your customers to share testimonials/recommendations about you that you can share online to solidify your credibility.
As your customer base grows, there is greater likelihood individuals will share their thoughts about you without your initiation. Use Google Alerts to notify you when your organization is mentioned. When someone impressed with you takes to his or her blog or Facebook page and shares positive comments about you, this is a fantastic breakthrough! You can then share their comments on your own blog and social media network to continue adding to your rep.
On the flip-side, when someone has a poor experience and laments it on the Internet, it’s time for some damage control. This consists of responding in a professional way – apologizing for the poor experience, promising to do better, and resolving the problem as best you can.
On Aug. 2, Bluehost, which provides hosting services for many of the websites I work on, experienced a server-wide crash that left, I’m guessing, thousands of websites down for the better part of the day. Wondering why my websites were down, I visited the company’s Twitter feed and saw it answering the complaints of each frustrated customer.
We are continuing to have our best diagnose and understand this issue completely. We’ll publish updates as we get them
We’re continuing to make progress and publish the updates http://t.co/moBt6q9pYI Thanks for your continued patience
Sorry to hear that, we know yesterday was beyond inconvenient. Thanks for your patience and call us if we can help!
This crisis was handled extremely well by their PR department. They acknowledged and did not minimize the customers’ frustration. Despite receiving high volumes of complaints, they did their best to answer each one. There were a few soured customers who said they planned on taking their business elsewhere. But I saw more customers say something like this: “Yesterday was no fun, but you guys are great almost all of the time, and I’m going to stick with you.”
Of course if the issue happens over and over again, customers will be less forgiving. But if the company learns from what happened and resolves the issues that caused it, it will come out stronger than before.
Behind it all, I believe, is passion. The Las Vegas PR pros who weathered the storm and are constantly adapting have that passion. Bluehost’s PR firm seems to have that passion, even during a really tough day. If you have that passion and you share it with your customers through the right channels, you’ll be well on your way to building a great online reputation.