Ask who created the field of public relations, and the most common answer you’ll get is Edward Bernays, the spin doctor of the 20th century. Bernays was famous for both stunts and spin – he’s credited with, among other things, with making smoking cigarettes socially acceptable for women.
Gini Dietrich, founder of media communications firm Arment Dietrich, wants to leave Bernays behind and reinvent the field with an emphasis on truth and transparency.
I interviewed Gini in Episode 5 of The Brainfluence Podcast, Building an Impactful Online Reputation with Gini Dietrich. In that episode, we cover a wide range of subjects, from how PR turned into content marketing to the importance of fiction in telling your brand’s (true) story.
Feeding Trolls?
Gini’s new book, Spin Sucks, talks a lot about community, and every community manager has to deal with trolls and negative comments. I asked Gini when one should just remove problematic content. She said,
I would always recommend not deleting comments. You always want to have a policy that’s published on the website that’s linked to from your social networks that talks about what kinds of things are appropriate and not. Now, if they’re saying anything that’s slander or libel… For us, we have a social media policy that you can’t swear. If you’re swearing, we won’t delete you, but we’ll edit you. Those kinds of things. If you have that policy and you’re very clear about what that is, then if it gets to the point where they are doing things that could be slanderous or libel, then you could delete it.
Gini’s advice is highly practical and actionable for businesses of every size. Read/download the whole transcript of our conversation, listen to it on the page, or grab it at iTunes. You’ll learn how to manage the online reputation of your brand and company in the real world of today. It’s all here: Episode 5: Building an Impactful Online Reputation with Gini Dietrich
