Community and CSR

Harrison defines community as: ‘any group of people with a common interest as either stakeholders or publics’(2011). Further Harrison, quoting Peak, describes community relations as: ‘an institution’s planned, active, and continuing participation with and within a community to maintain and enhance its environment to the benefit of both the institution and the community’ (2011). Community relations differ from community engagement, which typically involved consultation for decision making. 

Understanding community is an important part of carrying out effective Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). The definition for CSR has remained somewhat of an enigma for todays PR professionals (Harrison 2011, 759), and I will not try and define it. However, I do tend to agree with Carroll’s summation that CSR is comprised of ‘economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic’ actions (1999).

The business that I am interning for provides professional services and, as a result, they value their corporate reputation. They are heavily involved in their local community and supporting fundraising efforts for charities. They have a number of events that they run each year. The most recent fundraising effort was ‘Loud Shirt Day’ which raised money for Telethon. Each team member wore their loudest shirt to work, and there were some hilarious garments to say the least.

However, what I noticed most about this day wasn’t the shirts, it was the internal impact that this community engagement activity had in the business. To link this experience back to our course, this week in Contemporary Practice we looked at Employee communications. It was interesting to see how a CSR initiative had the added outcome of improving team morale (everyone was in a great mood) and internal communication between staff.

From an external communications perspective, it was also great to that the team’s efforts received recognition in the local paper (see below picture).

References: 

Carroll, A. 1999. ‘Corporate social responsibility: Evolution of a definitional construct’. Business and Society 38(3): 268-95.

Harrison, Kim. 2011. Strategic Public Relations: A Practical Guide to Success. Palgrave Macmillan: Sydney.

Dealing With Negative Comments

Hi everyone!

This is my second blog post for my internship so far.

This week I was posed with a real challenge! In my previous post I mentioned that I will be shouldering some of the responsibility for the monitoring and content production for my businesses social media platforms.

Things were going well until I was faced with a  social media crisis. The business that I am interning for is a real estate firm. Apart of the service they provide is rental property management. The firm essentially is an agent for the owner of the property and deals with the day to day management of the property and its tenants.

Unfortunately, tenants can feel frustrated by the administration of this process. This week a disgruntled present tenant took to the firm's social media to vent their frustrations over a delay in repairs to the property they were renting. I was told this is a common grievance among tenants.

My first thought was to delete the comment! After all, it was very negative and aggressive so that can only be bad right? Wrong! I thought about it carefully, consulted my supervisor and proceeded with the following strategy: take the conversation offline. (all those readings in contemporary practice came in handy!).

I replied to the person, as the business, and asked them to please call the relevant property manager on a direct number. I could not speak to the person myself because I am not trained in property management, and I didn’t have the full background of the property and the discussions on the issue. I let the property manager know the person would be calling and that it was important that the conversation was productive.

I was happy and thought the issue would be neutralised within the next 24 hours. I was wrong. The tenant chose to reply aggressively. The comment included profanity and personal attack on a staff member at the firm. Both professionally and ethically I felt out of my depth. Keeping in mind that the businesses reputation was on the line I decided to consult the Frist National Head office. I spoke to their communications team, they took over the matter from there and after another failed attempt had to remove the comments that contained the offensive language and blocked the user. The head office explained to me that they only do this where there is offensive language involved.

I was disappointed that I could not handle the situation myself, but it got me thinking about the ethics surrounding social media censorship. More specifically, the question: when is it ok to delete a negative comment about your business?

I did some reading on the issue both on online blogs and the few peer-reviewed articles I could find (“How large companies react to negative Facebook comments” by Sam H Dekay was interesting!). The consensus was that when comments contain derogatory, threatening, racist or other unacceptable language it is ok to remove them. However, if they do not the organization should not delete them. They should instead view it as constructive criticism and try and resolve the issue with the person offline.

After doing this research, I felt better about the choices I had made, and I feel like I learnt a lot from the experience.

Hello, I just wanted to add an edit to this post. upon reflection I feel as though this was actually more in the realm of an issue, rather than what we would as a full-blown crisis. 

Thanks,

Sarah

Started From The Bottom Now We're Here

Hello Fellow Intern Bloggers!

This is my first blog post about my internship, I have been a bit snowed under with my internship days and University studies.

I am interning at a small family owned real estate business and completing my final semester at Curtin. I have been helping out with the firm on and off all year and began my official internship back in the semester break.

Unlike many of you, the firm I am working for does not have a PR department, or a marketing one, or anything really. There is one designated marketing position in the entire office. Her time is mainly taken up by preparing the adds for homes that are available for rent or purchase. This involves putting the add for the house together and then distributing it to the relevant outlets (print media, electronic sites etc).

Previously, I had only completed internships in a specific PR departments, so this entering a business that didn’t not have that framework was a bit of a shock. Initially I wasn’t sure where to begin, but luckily my supervisor has been great at providing me with direction.

At this point you may be wondering what I actually do if I’m not in a PR department. The answer is that basically I am steering my own ship. With no established systems or projects to work on I started from the bottom. I suggested to the firm’s management team that I give them a PR education. This so far has entailed me briefing them on the differences of PR and Marketing and preparing’s a report that explains their current situation (situational analysis). I am now in the process of preparing recommendations, I am hoping that the management team will green light some of my ideas and I will get to start working on setting them up.

Aside from this, there are a number of upcoming community events that I am going to have a hand in running. I am really excited about this because event management is something I love doing.

I am also active on the firm’s social media and have input into our other external communications. Social media has proven to be a very useful tool for the firm in selling so there is an emphasis on ensuring it is always engaging and moving forward.

So far, coming into a firm with no PR set up has been a bit daunting. Although it has been a challenge, I believe I am gaining very valuable experience. Having to go back to the basics has reminded me what PR is all about and why I decided to study it in the first place!

Is anyone else interning in a small business or an organisation with no established PR practises?

Thanks,

Sarah