I’ve seen this question several times in LinkedIn and other forums: “What would you do if Penn State were your client?” It’s similar to the ones that swirled for months during the BP oil spill in the gulf and the tense posturing that followed. And the answer is the same for both questions, and any other like them: “I don’t know, exactly, because I’m not on the inside, hearing the secrets, reading the face of the guy who has to go on camera, seeing the possibilities and the problems first hand. And I don’t know, more importantly, because I haven’t spent hours and hours researching, interviewing, formulating and preparing.”

So my advice is to stop wasting your time thinking about the crisis you aren’t called to handle, the one you’ll never need to walk through, and start thinking about the ones that might become your waking nightmare tomorrow. Or later today, for that matter. There are some things every single business owner should do, right now, to help prepare for the inevitable, and believe it or not, one of them is NOT putting a PR pro on retainer.

1. Develop a set of “Who We Are” statements. This need not be a formal process or an official mission statement. The value of official mission statements varies inversely with the size of the company printing them on internal posters. But knowing what you stand for, really, and knowing your employees know it, feel it, live it, is crucial to avoiding many crisis in the first place. If your statements are just hollow words… either take a harder look at who you are, even if it’s painful or you don’t like what you see (you can change it going forward), or fire some people who aren’t rowing in the same direction.
2. Think deeply about your business environment. Categorize risks… do your employees travel by car to locations? To client’s offices or homes? Is your company in the business of advising people on a course of action that might affect their health, wealth, enjoyment or happiness? Are there regulations that change or may change that affect how you do business? Is employee turnover high? Do you have proprietary information that could be vulnerable? Make some notes about some of the possibilities, including ones that don’t seem all that likely, such as a high-profile client claiming your employee’s errant word of advice during a chance meeting at a local restaurant caused him to lose (face, millions, a bet…whatever). If there are vulnerabilities that can be fixed or addressed, do that. Have a meeting with your employees and explain the “always representing” aspect of today’s connected marketplace. Have a social media policy in place. Make sure insurance, handbooks, regulations and information are all up to date and appropriately structured or protected. Do some research into other companies similar to yours, in the same fields, and what crisis they’ve weathered… how well, in what ways, with what tools?
3. Get to know some key people in your local media, trade publications, or other venues, including bloggers, social media influencers, city councilors, etc. This is not an overnight thing and following someone on Twitter or connecting on Facebook is not “getting to know them.” You need to have someone who will take your call if a storm does hit and provide you a friendly, or at least neutral, opportunity to share your side of a story. Remember… sometimes it’s not an accusation or a lawsuit. Sometimes it’s a video posted to YouTube about your business practices or showing all the bit of grass your lawn company missed the last time they serviced an irate customer’s yard.

Take a deep breath… when that YouTube video about the missed grass hits, and someone forwards it to you in an email, what then? How do you know when, or if, you should take action? How long, how much, how far? Those are the next things we’ll cover on the blog. In the meantime… what other prep work would you recommend?

From this past week’s Optimization Summit #optsum social media conference: How to Rock PR Coverage for Your Business or Brand. It was a two-hour workshop all about finding your stories and sharing them effectively. Enjoyed the audience’s involvement, questions and results. They were rocking their first pitchengine.com releases before the end of the workshop.

And from this past week’s Oklahoma Municipal League‘s Annual Meeting: Using ICSC To Attract Retail for Cities. A primer for cities wanting to grow their retail base.

Tomorrow afternoon I’ll be leading a two-part workshop at the 2011 Optimization Summit on How to ROCK Press Coverage for Your Business or Brand. It’s a bigger, badder and more hands-on version of an presentation I put together six months ago for the Social Media Tulsa conference and I’m thrilled I’ll get to share some good stuff about what I do & know and how to make it all work for other peoples’ businesses. One question I get asked all the time is some form of, “When you spend time telling others what you know and how to do what you do, aren’t you afraid they’ll, well, do it? Without you? Aren’t you essentially teaching people how to NOT need you?”

Leaving out the whole, “I’ve been doing this thing I do for a long, long time and all that experience can’t be shared in a two hour workshop” angle (And it’s inherently insulting, by the way, to assume I CAN share everything I know in a workshop), let’s take a look at the underlying motivation of the question. The key is “aren’t you afraid…?” and the answer is yes. Of spiders, of heights, of not being able to find good coffee when I need it, of milk in the carton (it’s a long story)…. Yes. Of teaching business owners or brand managers about New PR and how they can use it to their best advantage? Nope.

New PR is much like Old PR in that it’s driven by the story. We as humans are hardwired to retain stories, to seek meaning and context for information. A good story is the heart of any PR effort. Always has been, always will be. What I teach people is first to find their story. Not their mission/vision/goals/new product release blurb. Their story. Or, stories… It’s not the easiest thing in the world to think about your business or brand from new perspectives and to figure out where your human touchpoints are as a business. So learning how to spot a good story, idea, trend or opportunity is the first thing we’ll be talking about in the workshop tomorrow. We’ll also be talking about the tools of New PR, the reasons why they matter, the long term effects of doing a good job with New PR and how to put it all together into a package that is shareable, sendable, marketable and effective. I’ve yet to meet anyone who didn’t have a story somewhere just waiting, begging sometimes, to be told. It’s in learning to see the potential and how to align it with business goals and marketing campaigns (which hopefully were conceived in partnership with the PR peeps, but I digress…) that “doing PR” becomes something much more powerful. I can’t teach everything I know in a workshop, but if I can help people learn to look at their day to day work, business environment or content in a New PR kind of way and take some steps toward implementing a strategy that works to build their brand, it will be a good day.

I’m not afraid because sharing what I know, about something I love, expands the universe of potential clients for me and potential stories for us all. And that, I think, is something to embrace, not fear. If you’re at this year’s #Optsum, I hope to connect and share some stories while we’re here.

(and my apologies… if you ever tweeted or shared a post from the site, the numbers were all lost when I changed servers. I appreciate each and every share… just don’t have who recommended, liked, tweeted, etc., anymore)

Jessica Johnson of Tulsa Custom Concierge talks with Ron Terrell and Michelle Linn of Fox23 Daybreak during her segment.

NOTE: This post is by Crossroads Communications intern Brenna Wiebe. She’s been involved in several of our client projects from brainstorming to execution this summer and I asked her to share some aspect of that. This is her post. — Mandy

This week I had my first opportunity to see my work pay off on television. This interview segment was like my little baby… I watched it grow before my eyes as I saw it from pitch to production. By the time it was over, I felt like a mother sending her child off to college. Along with this sense of accomplishment came an unexpected bundle of nerves.

This is a guest post by Brenna Wiebe, OSU Strategic Communications Senior and summer intern at Crossroads Communications. Brenna is working on a major in Public Relations and a minor in Marketing and will be writing on the blog from time to time this summer. I’m excited to have her as part of our team for the next few months and hope many of you will have the chance to meet Brenna or connect with her on Twitter or here on the blog. — Mandy

Gymnastics of the mental kind wear you out, too.

Despite the late nights of last minute studying and the early mornings of my classes, I always managed to find time to catch up on rest in school. Well, then the real world hit me last week as I began my internship at Crossroads Communications. Never have I been more exhausted in my life. Finals week tired doesn’t even compare to your first few days in the real world tired. I don’t remember the last time I was passed out in bed by 9 o’clock multiple nights in a week; yet, last week it happened at least three times. It wasn’t until I had a chat with my boss, Mandy, on the way home from a meeting in Catoosa about why work was so tiring that I understood. As soon as I heard her explain the toll our jobs take on us, it was like the heavens parted and I heard the choirs of angels. As a public relations intern, I have the opportunity to work with clients in varying industries. This means that on any given day, I can go from a meeting with people who own a recycling plant to an owner of a pizzeria.

Note: This article is one I was asked to write on behalf of San Miguel Catholic Middle School. It will be appear as part of a newsletter to parents, donors, community members and students.

The small group of half a dozen students gathered in the studio art room at Bishop Kelly High School shifted in their seats a bit as they contemplated the question they’d just been asked: “What would have been different if you hadn’t been a San Miguel student?” The most interesting thing about their answers is how closely they mirrored one another… and how much the prospect of what might have been different bothered them.

In each case, the young men and women, all juniors or seniors at BKHS and among the earliest San Miguel Tulsa middle school graduates, felt their middle school years taught far more than English and science…  they learned believe in themselves, to push themselves, to achieve.

“We were always encouraged to believe in the possibilities and to be committed to our goals,” said Juan. “It was just expected that we could, and so we did,” he said.

Joe O’Connor, President of San Miguel, understands. “That’s the mission, and it matters. Our students see success and it feeds on itself. We hold our students accountable for achieving, we support them all along the way and we don’t give up on them.” Students say that the accountability makes a difference. “We knew we couldn’t give up, we had to keep pushing and believe we could do it [be a graduate],” said Carlos.

The seniors and some of the juniors gathered for the interview now have goals they found nearly impossible to contemplate six years ago… college degrees and professional career paths. Some have already earned scholarships to their college of choice. With plans from international business to architecture, their horizons are as wide now as they want them to be… and every student in the room said being selected to attend San Miguel made the difference. Some are the first high school graduates in their families and are leading the way for their younger brothers and sisters and their community. Many return regularly to San Miguel for service projects and serve as leaders to the student community as they manifest the mission of believing in the possibilities inherent in each student. All demonstrated the politeness and respect that I’ve noticed are hallmarks of San Miguel students during the many visits I’ve made to the school over the past few years.

San Miguel students arrive early, stay late (study hall until 5 pm is mandatory) and depend on each other and their teachers to make it through the rigorous education. Parents provide service hours to the school, transport kids on trips, cook meals and attend conferences… last year saw a 100% participation rate from parents at parent-teacher conferences. The result is an education that changes more than the knowledge base of a student. It’s an education that changes the possibility base of each student… expanding the opportunities in the whole community along the way. It’s the heart of long-term economic development and growth and it makes a tangible difference in the lives of every family the school touches.

San Miguel is funded almost entirely through donations, and those donations change lives in very real ways. Please consider helping to fund the mission of San Miguel to provide a private, Catholic education to impoverished and underprivileged children, regardless of race or religion.

Speaker Group from 2011 #SMTulsa conference. Image by Captured Charms Photography

When I entered the Hyatt Downtown hotel to find the registration area for the Social Media Tulsa 2011 Conference, I was running a wee bit behind, had parked (and trekked) two blocks carrying my very heavy laptop, iPad, charging cords and cable connector laden bag, and was mentally rehearsing the presentation I would shortly be giving on New PR: Beyond the Press Release. In short, I was not really focused on the people or environment around me. Don’t we all get that way? A little wrapped up in our own to-do lists, pressing work, writing, whatever?

Then I rounded a corner about five people said, almost simultaneously, “Hey! It’s Mandy!” I had kind of “Norm!” moment. (If you don’t get it… here’s a YouTube vid to help you, first minute will do it.) And yes, five people mildly excited to see me does equal a “moment” for me. Don’t judge.

The point is I snapped back to the present… engaged, listened, conversed, became social. I left the mental gymnastics and the day’s earlier frustrations behind and settled into the moment. I met lots new people, learned some new information, witnessed other professionals sharing what they knew with the audience. And I presented my session on Public Relations and how to use social tools to get better results. It was a blast… not just because speaking, teaching and interacting like that energizes me, but because the audience rocked. They had great questions, and didn’t wait until very end to ask them. That meant we had the opportunity to branch out and explore a few topics like negative comments, corporate versus personal voices and other aspects of the world of socially enabled public relations. People in the audience were connecting with each other, too, which means more knowledge-sharing and learning per capita than what would have happened if it were just me talking up there.

I left at the end of the day reminded of why I love what I do… I love finding the (sometimes hidden) stories in a company or personal story and helping to tell them through public relations, marketing or even traditional advertising. But, if you don’t get out there and meet people, listen to what they wonder, what they question, what they believe, what they want… you miss out on lots of great stories. Even if they aren’t the kind that need to be told to a wider audience.

I like to speak because I like to connect, listen, learn and share. I like to speak at events like Social Media Tulsa and last month’s Spark and Hustle because the audience they attract is top notch, and that elevates the conversation and connections to a place where the time spent preparing, delivering, and attending the whole conference is totally worth it.

Thanks, SMTulsa people, for making the day such a vivid reminder of why I love what I do and for sharing your day with me and the other speakers… and most especially thanks to Cheryl Lawson for putting the whole thing together. Can’t wait till next year!

Photo Credit: Captured Charms Photography.

Lately, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend…. people who think because they blog, because they’ve written family newsletters or company e-mails to subscription lists, they are “in PR.” Why is this disturbing? In the real world, good PR is hard work. It takes technical skill, marketing insight, network juice and a savvy business sense to perform consistently in the field. The problem is that so many PR customers out there think the performance achieved by the people serving them “in PR” is acceptable.

Where is the disconnect? I’ve seen scads of “learn as I go” approaches to PR utilizing social media channels, in particular. Against all odds, I hope it stops. Badly or mindlessly promoting a client to a scattered, disinterested audience via spraying social media sites with links gives the industry, the client and the so-called practitioner all a bad name. People new to public relations need to take the time to read, learn, study the ethics, guidelines and rules of PR before making very public mistakes.

Mistakes happen… we all make them… but the stakes are very high these days for people entering the public relations field. Publicly sharing your learning process isn’t good for your clients or your career. Public relations and Twitter, etc., are a beautiful marriage of story and channel distribution when used thoughtfully.

I’ve been working on this story for the past week. It’s a great story, really… and I tweeted and FB’d the link to the story to my followers, since many of them are either in the biz or are local and might therefore enjoy the story regardless. I’ve been way busier though, on the phone, sending personal e-mails, personal DMs, etc., to those media contacts I thought would be most likely to love the story. That’s PR in the real world. No short cuts, no quick-and-dirty-career-switch, no waking up one day and deciding to “be in PR.”

And I’m done now. Am I overreacting?