Here's a transcript of what was covered:
What PR crisis have you helped other recruitment businesses through before and what can we learn from these situations?
Okay. I’ll cover off the first point about what crisis we've helped people through before, and if I’m honest with you every crisis is different for every business. And there's no kind of one size fits all process with crisis PR, it really does have to be tailored to your firm, and obviously the current economic climate and environment but I think the biggest PR crisis that we’ve helped firms through previously that's most relevant now is the recession. And the financial crash because that was a period of nationwide global crisis. And we had to support a number of clients and yes for our own business as well through very uncertain and difficult times. And the train of thought that every crisis is different, you do have to tailor your response depending on who you are; we did the same for all of our clients during the recession. We had to react and respond based on who they were, what they did how big their business was, what clients they won or lost you know there are so many different factors to take note of when you're managing any crisis PR. But what we can say is there are a number of foundations, which you can follow to make sure that you're putting yourself in the position for the best possible success. And the key for me really would be, first and foremost be vocal.
Again, this helped a number of businesses to navigate through the recession previously. If you are sort of very quiet and are saying nothing to your audiences who may have been used to reading blogs from you regularly, seeing you on social media all the time or reading an article or watching videos of yours all the time, if you suddenly go quiet, the assumption from your audience is going to be that you're not doing very well. And that perhaps in your business is no longer operating. So, we've always advised to stay vocal during times of crisis like this because it just shows people still here. In fact I, you know, I've had that conversation with a few of our clients, as soon as all of this starts to kick off across the UK. And we talked about what comms strategies we could put in place and the key priority was to, if anything, increase how much communication we're pushing out with, with audiences and keep it going, keep vocal.
My second point on that though is to remember to be smart and be professional. I think when you're going through a time of crisis it is all too easy to take things personally and start to get a bit personally involved in conversations. Because it is tough for everybody and people do have very strong opinions in a time of a crisis, but it is important to keep anything you're pushing out, any comms and messaging very professional, because that could come back to bite you in the rear, if you don't. So, do remember that point.
And positivity is another thing that I think has helped people through previous crises. And I think being different and being positive is going to really stand out from the crowd at the moment, there's so many negative news items out there. I'm pretty sure you’re all inundated with negative news left, right and centre, but I think if you can be different in the crowd and start to sort of push up positive messages.
I lost my marketing person a month ago, what should I focus on now as nothing we had planned before they left seems relevant?
Do seek out expert advice, there are a number of free resources available for recruiters, look at TRN for example, or if you're an APSCo member, they've got all sorts of resources on there that will give you a lot of this guidance. But if that doesn’t give you what you need, my views would be that you need to be reactive in any of your marketing activity, and what you had planned over those few weeks with your marketing person before they left is obviously either used or no longer relevant. I think what you need to be doing now is being guided by what's going on in news agenda. And what's going on in your networks, so monitor what people are saying and how people are responding to certain conversations and use that to feed your marketing and comms activity. If you have regular mailers going out then perhaps consider a more personable approach, so you know, a letter from your CEO, you know, if you're the one managing it have a personal letter that you're sending out to his contacts but just remember those points earlier about being different, being positive and being smart in what you're saying. Be guided by what other people are engaging with but also get your personality across and keep it professional. I think as well, that whole need to be reactive is included in joining in with conversations online. So, make sure that you are getting involved in conversation, so when you might not perhaps be able to push out as many marketing and comms activities that you used to. You can do any type of social media instead as a little bit of a, kind of, go between until you can replace that person and get things moving again.
Seek out expert advice when you can, be guided by what’s going on in the news agenda, and just keep talking; keep communicating because that’s what’s going to be crucial for businesses at the moment. I hope that answers that question.
In regards to social media, a lot of recruitment firms don’t realise they have a lot of evergreen content in terms of resources and blogs on their website as well. So, a quick fix you can do is look at some of your older blogs and see if there's anything relevant to the current situation, you might have a lot of blogs on staff development and employee engagement and things like that. So, feel free to re-share those or you know maybe just go back into the blog itself and give it a quick tweak at the top just to make it a bit more relevant to what’s going on at the moment. That’s just a simple way of getting a quick win in terms of your marketing.
There's so much advice that can still be relevant now, have a look at what you can repurpose. As a case and point I keep referencing the stuff we have on our website – there’s a crisis PR webinar on there, and as I've gone back through that, the advice I'm giving is very relevant now so you know there’s so much content you have available already that you can use and you might not even think of now but that’s perhaps a year or two old. So, definitely go back and review what you’ve got.
I keep reading articles about how to hire during a recession and about staff engagement that I have opinions on, how can I get involved in the conversation, besides making personal posts on LinkedIn?
Okay. And that's a really, really important point actually, because we are seeing more people be very vocal, I mean I certainly am any way on LinkedIn and sharing their thoughts and views, and they are often view that are actually of interest beyond your immediate network. So, there are a couple of things you can do with this. If you do have any experience with media, or if you have anyone in the business who has experience in the media, perhaps your marketing person or if you have a PR team for example, those opinions should certainly be pushed out beyond your immediate network. See if there is interest in your industry specific publications for example, at the moment as there is so much uncertainty, any experts that have valid and well thought through advice, opinions and guidance is going to be in high demand. So, if you have a particular point or particular opinion that you're certainly going to add some value to or your audiences there's likely to be a number of publications that would be interested in that. That is something that I would say if you're going to go down that route you have to carefully manage and dealing with the press is a process that you do have to have some experience of or have professional guidance, you know, before you go down that route, so just bear that in mind. But beyond your LinkedIn groups, there are so many other social media channels you can share your opinion on, and there's the opportunity to record a video rather than just join that conversation from someone else, perhaps record a video where you're leading your own conversation, drive that conversation and topic rather than just letting others comment on it. And consider how you perhaps have a blog on your own website where you're expanding on it a bit more. That can then be pushed out from your social channels, link to it in any marketing emails that you're putting out, and as long as you’re using the right key phrases and you’ve search engine optimised that blog, the likelihood is you'll get an increase in organic traffic that's going to be relevant to you as a business. And that's going to give you more opportunity to give your views and thoughts. And consider if it's worth looking at working with the person who's driving that conversation as well, that post on LinkedIn. And, you know, if you have a very strong opinion for or against whatever that person has said, keep it professional but, maybe speak to that individual and see if there's a way of collaborating to spread that message far and wide. So if someone has a particular topic, or a question they posed, that you are able to guide on and have a particular opinion on, see how you could work together to tap into your wider networks together, and push your views out that way. That’s another thing to consider.
I hope that answers that one.
If any of these questions resonate with you, we'd love to hear from you. Please do add your two cents to this conversation too. If you’re catching up later down the line and you think, actually that's a really good point or actually I have something else to say, join the conversation with us because we’d love to hear from you.
And if anyone has any other questions, just message us either via social media or you can contact us through our website as well. We can answer your questions and look back through our resources, some questions may be answerable through content we have on our site but do keep posting questions our way.
Thank you everyone. Take care guys.
This is a condensed version of the original transcript from May 2020.
