You & your brand: 'Make the truth fascinating'.

AuthorStricker, Julie
PositionMARKETING

Listen. Do you hear that? It's your co-workers and employees talking. Do you know what they're talking about? Their jobs and the company they work for. In short, you and your brand. And they're not just talking to their spouses at the dinner table, they're sharing it with their one thousand friends on Facebook and tweeting it to the world.

Social media has changed many things about doing business in the twenty-first century. Twitter and Facebook and other social media platforms are the modern equivalent of the office water cooler, only the stories get passed farther and faster.

Do you know what kind of messages your employees are sending? That's the kind of question keeping company and organizational leaders awake at night, and it's one that public relations specialists are ideally equipped to handle in such a way that the company can benefit.

In short, a business can't control the message, but it must participate in the conversation, says Mickey Nail, managing director of Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, based in Atlanta. He is also national chairman and CEO of the Public Relations Society of America, the country's largest organization of public relations and communications specialists. Nall has worked with clients ranging from the White House to Coca-Cola to United Way of America. He is accredited in public relations and a member of PRSNs College of Fellows and has won many industry awards.

"Word of mouth is much more powerful than advertising," Nall told Alaska public relations professionals during an August trip to Fairbanks and Anchorage.

With the rise of social media bringing more and more channels through which people are seeking information, it makes it hard for public relations specialists to keep up with rising expectations. Communication is key. And the best way to get your brand's story across is to tell a story.

"We have to become better storytellers," Nall said. Public relations professionals are "the people who can put a subject and verb together and put together a narrative on what we want to do."

Storytelling isn't the most accurate term he's looking for, Nail acknowledges. "I would rather call it truthtelling, because storytelling can be construed as fiction," he said. "Our job as public relations practitioners is to make the truth fascinating."

His presentation, "Storytelling, Media Relations, and Reputation: Putting it all together for your brand" is full of anecdotes from his years in the public relations business.

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