Community Relations Advisory

The world of media and press relations has collided with the online world, leaving many companies at a loss. They must determine how to engage directly with existing and potential customers in online communities as well as how to engage emerging new media thought leaders. The advent of social media makes it easier than ever to communicate freely and openly, but also increases the risk of negative publicity.

Foskett Services can help. We are active participants in these new connected communities and can guide our clients to achieve successful engagement there. Just as PR and AR professionals assist in communicating with press and analysts, our Community Relations offering fosters successful direct relationships in the online world. We partner with our customers for the long haul, constantly monitoring the flow of conversation and uncovering opportunities for interaction.

Your Community Relations Advisor

Long-term relationships are not built overnight. Communication and engagement takes stamina, commitment, and understanding that goes beyond the presentation and into the world. Our Community Relations service partners an engaged community member with your company in an ongoing advisory role. A simple recurring fee enables us to commit to open-ended association, deep understanding of your company, technology, products, and market, and deployment of strategic projects.

The Community Relations Advisory service is customizable:

• Consider the type of community you are trying to build. Do you want to spread awareness of your company and its products, become part of the conversation, initiate discussion, or build and manage your own community? More-focused engagement requires greater time, effort, and commitment. We can tailor our monthly commitment to match your desired level of interaction.
• Are your existing team members ready to create the content, join the discussion, and give to the community? It takes time and skill to provide the quality input needed to really shine. Our services can include planning, coaching, and content creation as required.

A Roadmap for Success

The process of engaging our Community Relations service involves three key phases:

1. Initiation
   1. Authentic representation requires understanding, so we begin by focusing on your company and its offerings. The corporate strategy session is our chance to discuss who you are, what you do, and where you are going.
   2. Many companies are already engaged in social media and communication. We will complete a community relations survey to identify and classify these efforts.
   3. We will report back our findings in a state of the community address. This includes an overview of your community relations strategy and efforts as well as baseline metrics demonstrating your effectiveness to date.
2. Planning
   1. Now that we all agree what your message should be, we will develop a concise list of talking points that highlight your differentiators and spark interest.
   2. It is important to focus your efforts, so we will create a roadmap for communication identifying where to get involved. Should you focus on your own blog, Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn? Where can you syndicate the content you create? And what other conversations should you join?
   3. Community is all about people, and companies need to know who to engage. We will deliver a lineup of thought leaders who may be interested in championing your message and product.
   4. It can be difficult to measure community engagement, so identifying key success metrics is critical. These will be tracked over time as part of our feedback process.
3. Ongoing
   1. It takes time to get the message out. We will refine our talking points, roadmap, and lineup as the conversation evolves.
   2. We will convene regular meetings to present ideas, discuss the value of our joint efforts, and report the latest metrics.
   3. As needed, we will provide feedback, coaching, and suggestions to increase the effectiveness and hone the messaging.

Working With Us

Every element of our Community Relations roadmap is important, but flexibility is essential. We are happy to approach the process as a series of discrete projects, a single ongoing relationship, or something in between.

The tasks associated with the Initiation and Planning phases are designed to be a series of projects, each with its own valuable deliverables. We can contract and schedule these at your convenience and proceed according to your needs and availability, working our way through each major task in order.

Our ongoing support service is a long-term commitment to delivering success. You will have our focused attention and consistent support month after month. We can adjust the scope of this service based on the level of effort required to meet your goals.

Contact Us

Image credits: The Green Light by Ted Percival, Joystick base and circuit board by someToast, Scaffolding: Not just for construction workers anymore by kevindooley