Tips & Talk 29 – How to Manage Through a PR Crisis

Hi there.

It's Sue.

And thanks for joining me for tips and talk day.

These are bite-sized topics that I pull from community questions and

things that I'm observing in the world of handmade small business.

If you'd like to submit a topic,

DME, over on Instagram at gift biz unwrapped today,

we're going to talk about managing through a PR crisis.

This is something you can have in your back pocket,

so that if you are in a situation where you need

it, it's going to be here,

ready, and available for you managing through a PR crisis.

Something happens,

you weren't expecting.

And now what,

how do you manage through it?

Do you even address it at all?

These are all the things that we're going to cover.

This might apply for you as a maker in a couple

of different ways.

First off,

if you have some type of an ingredient in your product

that has started to make people sick or anything,

that's in the news,

that's associated directly with your product or some element that's included

in your product.

That could be an issue and a reason why this would

become a PR crisis for you.

Another thing could be if you've been associated with somebody and

their behavior is just not acceptable,

this may be something you need to address.

Let's talk through.

What would you do if this type of situation comes up

for you?

I have three different things that I want you to think

about to gauge what your level of response is going to

be. The first thing is what's your level of connection with

the situation at hand.

It could be very distant in that case.

I wouldn't even bring it up.

There's no reason that you need to do anything at all.

You could have a moderate connection.

In other words,

some of your customers know that you're linked with this situation

or this person,

or you could have a high connection,

a very obvious direct link with that person or company.

So that's the first thing you look at.

What is my level of connection with the situation distant,

moderate, or high?

The second thing that you do is think about your position

on the issue.

Do you support the position?

Do you feel like,

yeah, I wasn't really happy about this,

so I'm not liking it,

but I get that you made a mistake and we'll be

okay. Or is the situation such that you feel like you

need a major disconnect.

You do not want to be attached or you feel like

you need to disconnect from the situation or person entirely.

So this is the second thing that you want to analyze.

What's your position on the issue.

And then based on that,

then you decide what your actions are going to be.

The reason this is important is because want to make sure

that any response that you have is in line with the

level of intensity or severity of the infraction.

If you're not really connected with the person to a high

degree and their infraction is minimal,

I wouldn't do anything at all.

Because if you do something you're actually calling attention to the

situation versus you not being connected with it in the first

place, in terms of number one into your level of connection

and your position on the issue.

Sometimes it's best just not to do anything.

But if you have a strong connection with this person saying

nothing could suggest that you're condoning the behavior.

You want to be careful with that as well.

So you've got to think of while he's doing nothing,

sending the wrong signal to my customers.

Once you've judged this.

And you've decided if you first off need to do anything

about it.

And if you do,

to what level here are some different types of actions that

you might take first is totally pulling the product either out

of your inventory.

Certainly if you're a baker and there's an ingredient that has

started making people sick comes with some health ramifications,

anything like that,

that's pretty obvious you're going to stop using that product.

And if customers knew that you were using that product,

then you probably going to want to make a statement that

yes, in the past,

we've used that ingredient.

Now that we know that it's not healthy and has been

pulled out,

it has been replaced.

If you have something that you've included in a tangible product

that maybe is now dangerous,

or has a metal that's been found not to be good

or something like that,

or even a business that represents that product has come under

some scrutiny,

that's to a level that you don't condone,

then you're going to address it.

You're going to talk about it with your clients,

you're going to address it.

And then you're going to say what your action is going

to be.

And this is the last part is either yes,

you're going to address the situation or no,

you aren't,

but if you are going to address it,

here's how I was related with it.

Here's how we feel about it.

And here's what we're going to do about it.

This is how you manage through a PR crisis.

I bring this up because this recently came to the forefront

with my business.

I've had a couple of situations like this,

where there have been PR questions,

but this particular time it ended up being a little bit

more severe because as I ran it through the levels of

analysis, I decided that,

yeah, this is something that I'm going to need to address.

So what happened is I had a guest on one of

my podcasts who is intimately involved in the maker world.

And I didn't agree with the behavior.

It was so off acceptance to me that there wasn't even

a question about whether this behavior was appropriate or not,

but I needed to sit back and think like,

how do I actually handle this to me?

It was serious enough that I couldn't just not do anything.

I needed to make a statement and I needed to take

action. So here I was associated with this particular person,

great interview.

Honestly, it was so good.

I'm sure a lot of you who follow the podcast would

have heard it,

but I needed to pull it down because even being associated

in that way,

looked like I was condoning what had become big news.

So I ended up pulling the podcast down in its entirety,

but I had links everywhere.

So if I pulled that podcast link and made that a

dead link,

that wouldn't be good for SEO.

Wouldn't be good if people went searching for it,

et cetera.

Because, you know,

over time you forget where all of your links are to,

you know,

if you're promoting certain products that you make,

you don't remember if maybe they're on an Instagram post or

in some type of collateral material.

So what I did instead is I scripted out a response

to the situation,

explaining why the episode has been pulled down,

not totally bashing anybody,

but being very stern on how I feel about a situation

and then explaining why it was no longer there.

And if you want to hear it's just a two and

a half minute response that is in episode number 1 58.

And what I did was I left the link there so

that I won't have any dead links,

but if someone goes back and they're looking for it,

they're going to hear my response.

Instead of hearing the interview.

The other thing is I was an affiliate with this company.

And again,

I felt like my linkage with that affiliation no longer aligned

with my core values.

So I pulled the affiliate link down as well.

Will I lose money because of that play probably,

but it was something that I felt I needed to do.

My other suggestion for you,

if you're ever met with a PR crisis is to try

and take your emotion out of it because you are still

representing and are the face and the leader of your brand.

And you want to make sure that you're positioning any response

that you have in the light of the reputation that you

want to see.

If I started complaining about that particular person,

not addressing it in a professional light,

I guess is the best way for me to say that

that would come back to me.

So the emotions behind it are not what I want to

be sharing.

Maybe I'll share that privately with people here in the office.

If I chat with you,

one-on-one, if we're over in my private Facebook group,

maybe we would talk about it.

You want to make sure that the way you're presenting yourself

is in a professional light,

the way people would want to see you stay logical.

And clearly you can have emotion.

If you're disappointed,

you can say that if you're totally against a situation,

yeah. Say that,

but getting into nitty-gritty or dirty talk or bashing people,

none of that,

the situation with a PR crisis is you want to act

quickly. You want to take your actions and response quickly in

a logical way.

This may not be something you address.

Even in this whole year.

You may never address it in the whole entire lifetime of

your business.

But if you do,

this is how you work through it on a logical level

and take action the way you need to and represent the

situation to your audience in the best light that you can

so that you remain a leader and someone that people want

to follow.

Let me summarize once again,

the steps that you were take first off the application would

be if you have a product or an ingredient that you're

using that is meeting with some controversy,

the second might be an association you have with a person

who heaven forbid has committed a crime or their behavior is

less than representative of what you would want associated with your

business. Anything that that's negative press that could spin around and

point to your business.

I consider a PR crisis.

That's the definition.

Here are the three steps that you would take.

The first one is gauge the level of connection that you

have with the ingredient or person.

Is it distant?

Is it moderate or is it high?

Secondly, what's your position on the issue?

Do you support what they did?

Do they get a hand slap?

You're not really happy about it,

but you're willing to give them a second chance or is

it a line in the sand that they have crossed?

It is just too much for you.

So what is your personal take on the situation from there?

You guide what your reaction is going to be,

and you want to keep your reaction in line with where

you stand on one and two,

if you are kind of disconnected or almost totally disconnected from

this person,

and you would give them a hand slap,

maybe you are not going to do anything because you don't

need to call to light,

to all your customers.

The fact that you're associated with something that's negative,

if they wouldn't know it in the first place,

but if it's high,

you're very connected with that person.

And you totally don't agree with what's happened.

Not doing anything,

sends the statement that you accept that behavior and that can

affect your business and your sales options that you have of

what to do,

pulling the products or switching out an ingredient for something different

who knows,

maybe it'll even be better.

And then a verbal statement.

You leave emotion out of it.

You act logically by going through this,

you know what action to take and you can take that

action right away and then carry on and move forward with

business. That's what I've got for you with handling PR crisises.

That's a wrap.

I'm a get to the point kind of girl.

And this is what you can expect from these quick midweek

sessions. Now it's your turn go out and fulfill that dream

of yours.

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