Think your business is too small to need public relations efforts? Think again. Small business needs a good public relations plan more than a big one! Public opinion can turn on a dime, and if one of your employees gives bad service, or your franchisor has a problem at the corporate level or in another market, it's going to hit you hard whether you did anything wrong or not. If you don't have a crisis management plan ready to go, by the time you put one together it will be too late--and probably wrong, since you did it under stress and under the gun. You need pre-existing relationships with the media, news organizations and investigative bodies, so that they'll be willing to listen to your side of the story, and that's just the beginning. You need to embrace fully all the opportunties that social media offer--Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc. If you have a substantial existing 'Friends" database on Facebook for example, you can communicate with the public directly, and you can say things your way--but the groundwork must be in place before anything happens. Call The Devine Company at 641-420-1465 to get started.
