Trust in Public Relations

I’ve been thinking a lot about how recent world and industry news have given us more than enough examples of how important establishing trust is to an organization. We all grew up in the world of “PR Spin,” but that doesn’t feel like a good term anymore. Our jobs as PR professionals are fundamentally changing, in relation to the counsel we need to be giving to our clients. I saw the following post on the PRSA site reflecting this thinking:

Transparency has become increasingly necessary in our society. As communicators, we are tasked with sharing information from our organizations with members of the public. How can a communicator assure the public the organization he or she represents is a transparent one? How should a communicator handle information that is negative?

These are all questions we need to be asking ourselves as PR professionals with consumers and businesses prioritizing trust and transparency in an organization over products or services. How do we help create that trust for the organizations we represent? How does that effect the counsel we give regarding messages and how to communicate those messages? All questions I will be thinking (and blogging) about in the months to come.

Megan McKenzie

Author: Megan McKenzie

Megan McKenzie provides strategic leadership to McKenzie Worldwide and the agency’s work with technology companies in enterprise, consumer, wireless, networking, & cybersecurity.