By Thom Fladung Hennes Communications Plenty of people have talked about what’s wrong with journalism over the last decade. Shrinking newsrooms. More mistakes as fewer people do more work under more time pressure. Too much bias. Plummeting public confidence in the media. Some of the criticism is valid. Some is a tried-and-true tradition. (Check out […]
[By Thom Fladung, Hennes Communications] As of July, I’ll be able to say I’ve worked in the cities that played host to two of the last three Republican National Conventions. Given that I was in St. Paul, Minnesota, serving as editor of the St. Paul Pioneer Press during the 2008 RNC, people have asked what […]
[By Howard Fencl and Thom Fladung, Hennes Communications] It’s a nightmare scenario in every organization’s 21st century communications plan: Your reputation is under attack and it’s all playing out on Facebook, Twitter and other sites. Social media trolls light a digital wildfire, igniting a massive, cascading misinformation campaign about your business. Rumors, false accusations and outright […]
From ContentStandard: A string of food contaminations in its restaurants has put Chipotle in a desperate situation. Its sales in the final quarter of 2015 dropped by nearly 15 percent, and its stock is currently below $460 after an all-time high of $758 just a few months earlier. To try and correct its course, the […]
From SocialTimes: An unfortunate reality for page administrators on Facebook is the need to deal with negative comments, but deleting those comments or disabling them altogether is a mistake. Social analytics and reporting firm Locowise shared a guide to dealing with negative comments, saying that the positives of leaving comments enabled on Facebook pages still […]
[By Thom Fladung, Hennes Communications] The first of two parts on how best to deal with online comments. Today: How to be prepared. Next: How to get involved. John Kroll has some advice about news story online comments for folks in charge of their organizations’ reputations: Know the water before you jump […]
Stereotypes are tough to challenge or break. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, executive director, school superintendent, hospital administrator, businessperson, consultant or one of a thousand other job titles, the usual, and unfortunate, model of gravitas and accomplishment is the 60-year-old, gray-haired male. Especially when it “hits the fan,” clients look for both the familiar, the trustworthy – […]
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Flint, and, in particular, the governor’s office in Michigan, don’t have a communications problem. They have a performance problem. Sure, they need to talk to their stakeholders, quickly, clearly and with honesty and transparency. A skilled crisis communications firm can help them with that, especially when it […]
When someone added cyanide to Tylenol capsules in the Chicago area in 1982, killing seven people, Johnson & Johnson, owner of Tylenol was faced with an unprecedented crisis. How they handled that situation is still the gold standard for corporate crisis management. Today, the “gold standard” for how to not handle a crisis continues to be Volkswagen. […]
The second of two parts on how best to deal with online comments. Today: How to get involved and set the record straight. Previously: How to be prepared before the comments start. For years, as The Plain Dealer’s Online Editor, John Kroll spent time in the online comment boards attached to most news stories. He […]