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Community Relations


Marketing Outreach/Community Relations

For many companies gaining good relations with key audiences includes building strong relationships with their local community. Companies implement programs supportive of the community ranging from supporting local organizations and institutions (i.e., arts organizations, community activities, parks) to conducting educational workshops, to donating products for community events and charitable fundraisers. The goal is generally to develop a positive relationship with members of the community (i.e., be known as a good neighbor). Effective community relations can help a company weather bad publicity or a crisis situation that can unexpectedly arise due to a problem with a product, unethical behavior by management, or even by false rumors. Some companies also make an effort to contribute to charitable organizations, often organizations that have some relationship to the company's mission or to a key principal of the company. Additionally, community relations is the process of approaching business and other community organizations in an effort to build relationships.

Monitoring Successes

Monitoring public relations articles and media hits for a company is vital. If you have a medium to larger size company and you cannot designate time to search the web constantly or search the local papers for your information on your company, it may be well worth your while to hire a clipping service. These services are great, and they do the work for you. A great way to track PR successes is to use a spreadsheet to track the publications your company or business was noted in for the month, list the total circulation for that publication, and you have a good idea of just about how many people possibly saw your ad. The validation for this is if the New York Times has a circulation of 500,000 for a Sunday run, and a story about your company ran on a Sunday, we would report that there were 500,000 eyes that possibly saw your story.

Crisis Management

In addition to positive news, all companies should have a plan to be prepared to respond quickly and effectively in light of a possible crisis. When an issue surfaces, an organization's image can be at stake. Today, with the prevalence of the Internet and wireless communications, negative information can spread like wildfire. Through monitoring marketers can track the issues and respond in a timely fashion. To manage responses effectively, many companies have crises management plans in place that outline steps to take and company spokespeople to speak on behalf of the company should an event occur.



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