The Podcast Playbook For Managing A PR Crisis And Emerging Stronger

Want your podcast and videocast to be seen, heard, found, and rewarded in this noisy digital world, you are not alone. Join the nonprofit community at Podcasters United and podcast industry experts Tom Hazard and Tracy Hazard as they debunk all that outdated and bad advice you've been getting from the podcast gurus and find out what actually works. Today, get ready to feed. Feed your brand with smart cut tactics proven to cast your original voice to the world.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to feed you'd brand. I'm Tom Hazard, along with my co host, Tracy, and today we're going to talk about the playbook for managing a PR crisis and emerging stronger from it. And I have to tell you, we have seen many others deal with some serious PR crises in the past. And the big message today, I think you'll agree, Tracy, is what used to work years ago is not necessarily going to work today because technology has changed. Is that right?

That's right, yeah. So we have actually done this episode before. I mean, it's older. I think it was probably like three or four years ago. It's a while ago that we did this where we talked about how to combat negative SEO. That's actually what the episode was about. And so it's about when you have anything negative about you that's showing up in Google, how do you combat it? And so it's called negative search engine optimization. Right. You've got to combat the negative with positive or you've got to push it down in the search engine. That's what you do. But in an AI world, that's not how it works anymore. That's what we really have to talk about is you need a different strategy for how you're going to handle the pr. And I'm not so sure, Tom, that the PR firms are really up on this yet.

I don't know if they're aware of the reality of how this is changing their entire industry of pr, really. And I mean, honestly, they should be. But I agree. I think there's so much sneaking up on them because of the advancement of technology. And we know some people that have PR agencies who have been very skilled at pushing down negative stories and the way they used to do it, it just doesn't work today. But there is a method that does.

Yeah. So let's talk about the way it used to work. Okay. It used to work that if you had a bunch of negative stories. So let's say you had Acme business. Okay. Because I'm not going to pick on anyone. Real estate, Acme business, I'll Pick the real estate, because there's a lot of that fraud and somebody typed that in and there was any story about you that would come up, because Google and the SEO rankings is based on relevance. So if somebody put in a fraud alert or reported you to any one of those kind of negative companies, had a negative review about you, did any of those things, what was going to happen is, is that it would show up at the top of the search engine. So the only way to combat that is to take those same search engine terms, which nothing in that changed from what we're going to recommend for today. It's just how you do it. So if you had ACME business fraud as the search term that somebody did, or Acme business bad review, like any of those things, any of those negative terms, you have to put that in the title of your article or of your message of your interview, of whatever it is that you did. But the second part of that is, is that you could do it by proliferation, by having much more current content. So if you started a podcast, your content, because it's first person, would push down all those other things until they became no longer relevant because you just had so much new content.

No one's going to go to the fourth or fifth page of Google search. You're lucky if they go to the third. So in the traditional search engine model, this worked.

So a PR crisis firm, any firm handling PR crisis, they would go out and they would get you tons of interviews and they would recommend you wrote tons of blogs or did tons of podcasts or videos, all of those things. And so they would do that. And I think the number, if I remember right, was somewhere around 50. You'd need to do about 50 to push it down enough. And that would work. Now, some of them, not every one of them, but at some point in those conversations, in those articles, you had to deal with the bad review, the fraud. You had to address those keywords so that they would show up somewhere in the conversation or somewhere in the article. But you could flip it and you could, you know, spin it so that it was positive. Right? And you wanted to do that. You didn't have to do that in all 50, but you had to do it in at least I'd say about 20% of it. You needed to actual comment on the words that you were showing up for negatively. Now it's a little bit heftier. And I think, Tom, we probably need to explain how AI is working to understand the difference. So search engine ranking was based on relevance and authority. So Relevance meant if I typed in, I was looking for your company's name and I was looking for any fraud alert or any fraud and fraudulent information or crime or history or anything like that, it wants to give me what I'm looking for. It wants to bring that to the top because that's actually the relevant terms. So it's looking for that phrase, but it also is looking for that phrase in the most current information because that's also what it relevance means. It's more current than something that would be two years old or a year old or even three months old. And it wants it from some authoritative sources and that the most authoritative source is not your own voice, right? It's not your own website. So when a company tries to put out a statement or a press release on their website and it's not enough, it needs to come from some third party that has an authority. That's why the crisis PR firms will send you on a interview tour, right? Get you interviewed by the local newspaper, the local radio station, the local TV station, right? You want to try to get that so that that happens for you in your industry or in your locality, which is also relevance factors for Google. That's how it used to work. Anything you want to add, Tom?

No, I mean, I think you really nailed it. I mean, all those factors, the chronological order of posts which you mentioned, the timeliness, the most current of it, was a much bigger factor than it is in the world of AI search today. And as these tools are getting so rapidly and widely adopted, it is truly changing the game. And it means the tactics for dealing with this have changed. But you can still, the good news is for all you podcasters out there or all you people wanting to be a guest on more podcasts, going on podcasts and getting that content published out there is still an excellent way to do it, but your strategy has to adjust a little, right?

And that's why most PR firms would send you on radio interviews, TV interviews, those kinds of things, because they know that voice matters, right? So that they know when you're getting a human interview, it's getting a higher authority ranking because someone didn't write that. It's not spin, right? Or it's not AI written, so they have more confidence in the truth of it. In a voice model, maybe it's true, maybe it's not, but that's the belief system and that's the authoritative ranking of those things. So we still want to have those. That's critically important to it. But if it doesn't end up if like the radio station or the TV station isn't publishing that in any kind of written format, it's actually not necessarily going into the large language model and it's not helping you in the AI search. And that's the real crux of the issue here is you have to understand whether or not you're going into something that is going to end up in the large language model. So keep this in mind. Let's say I had a really big problem in my business and I went to go be interviewed by the New York Times. The New York Times is highly authoritative, right? However, the New York Times refuses to participate in the large language model because their information is copyrighted. So they don't allow the large language model, the AI, to search it and utilize it to inform its decisions. So there is no way my information is and anything that I've done to combat that is going to end up in the large language model. So I want to do that because from a human perspective, somebody might weigh that New York Times as being critically important. Wall Street Journal, whatever newspapers you guys read, I'm from outside New York, so New York Times was it in my family. But whatever that nice authoritative paper in your industry and your niche or in the overall marketplace based on the people you want to do, you need to have that perceived value of that somewhere. But you also have to have something that's going to end up in the large language model. So you have to understand what is being scraped and utilized that you can use to your advantage. And that's really where we get really critically choosing, picking and choosing the types of interviews and the types of things that we are utilizing. So a publication may no longer be, I'm going to say that because there are some that are participating, but a publication may no longer be the best option to combat this in an AI search world.

So what would be the best things to be in for that AI search world, Tracy? To be in alignment with it.

So here's where what we recommend to our podcasters is critical that it is in video, audio and the written word blog on a website that is open somewhere. And that means that if you have to log in to a membership, which you do in New York Times, right, you have to log in to be able to read the articles. It's the subscriber based model. I guarantee you it's not publicly information unless you've read some article that says the New York Times has made an agreement with OpenAI, right? Like so until there's an agreement in place for that particular publication or they announce it on their website, right, as you subscribe in, that all of their information is available and a part of an AI model. You don't want to utilize that as your only source of interviews or articles or anything to combat your negative press. You need to have something that is open so that the AI will be scraping it. The next part of what you need to do is making sure. So like I said, video, audio and blog, because we do want all of those because they are being scraped separately. So YouTube is being utilized. There are lots of audio channels that are being utilized and it is public information and is being scraped by a lot of AI. No guarantees it's going to happen and it's going to get in the system, but it's more likely to. But I can guarantee you if you've got an open blog, it is being scraped and you'll be able. It'll end up in a large language model somewhere. But the next step is you have to have people commenting on it on places like Reddit and x, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn. You need people commenting and linking back to that article and source because those conversations are being scraped. And if you have more conversations going on on that side, saying, oh my gosh, I read this article about this fraud thing that happened to such and such real estate company and it's not true. Like, you know, or they appealed and they won their court case, right? Anything like that that you can do where their conversation is, spinning it to giving most relevant current information, the things that are relevant and linking to that source data and information that is going to be essential in creating that. So not only do you have to get the articles and the information planted and put out there, seeded out there, you have to get it growing, you have to water it with conversation. And the more authoritative that conversation, the better off it is. So if you're trying to combat real estate fraud, right, or real estate complaints, because can't guarantee you a lot of those lawsuits and everything end up with a bunch of complaints that happen, right? We've seen this happen to clients before, right? Tons of complaints that happen. They have no actual legal merit. There's no legal filings. There's none of those things that an AI would search. Now if there is, you definitely want to refer to those. So if you had the case was dismissed or it was overturned on appeal, you absolutely need to connect that to whatever conversation, article, whatever that is, because that's a government or public document and that is definitely in the large language model. So connecting that up and making sure it comes to the top and people know about that. The AI needs to know about that. So making those connections are happening. But if the next thing you're doing is that you get somebody who's in the real estate niche who converses a lot, influences a lot of people in the real estate niche, and, and they're conversing with you about you on Reddit or X or Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn, then you're going to raise that value of your information higher in the AI model. So proliferation still matters. The more you do still matters, because the AI will take quantity over quality every time they think if it's being said enough, it must be true, right or wrong.

There's good and bad about that, but yeah, but it is true quantity. So the more episodes you record record about it, the more podcasts you go on to record episodes about it, the better off you're going to be. It's much easier to speak your way to audio and video content very quickly than it is to type it and hope to get someone to publish articles here and there, right?

Absolutely. It's a lot harder to get articles published nowadays and it's less valuable if they're closed into subscriber bases. So it's not actually doing any good anyway. So these are the things that we really have to look at is looking at sort of the authority value of the conversation that's happening rather than the authority value of the main piece of content. But anything that is authoritative, such as a government document or anything that is open, like a podcast episodes, you know, if you've got a blog on all your podcasts, that host is the host you want to go to and be interviewed by. Right. You want to go in there and have a conversation with them. But even if they don't have their own show and you've got a real estate influencer, having them converse with you on your show and then having them publish comments about the conversation, that would be really good as well. So those types of things still make the connection between someone more authoritative and you. And so it has a perceived value in the large language model, but it has a perceived value in the marketplace as well. So it's good for you either way. Anything else, Tom, that we should really talk about in this? I mean, I think getting a good team together is also essential.

A good team, absolutely. Because it's a lot of work to do all this yourself. Right.

It's almost impossible. That's what I hear from the people who are trying to do this on a DIY situation. Doing it yourself here is just not possible in today's world. Normally I would just say, hey, go see a crisis PR expert. Cheryl Snap Connor, one of my favorite people and one of the best Experts in Crisis PR. She writes a great newsletter and blog in LinkedIn all the time about it. Snapkoner PR. She's just amazing. Cheryl Snapp is just amazing and she knows a ton about how to do this at a micro level. But in addition to the great things that she does, you also need to bring in either a podcast booking expert, because you need somebody who can really look at the right types of podcasts. And if they're doing it in this blanket format where they just sending out like as many invitations to as many people as possible, they're just subbing it out to some assistant or some bot. Don't do it. Use someone who actually is creating a relationship and do spend more money on that. Tom, who do we recommend? Who have we done a lot of business with? What's the group out of Rhode island that do such a great job for podcast booking?

Oh, Interview connections.

Interview connections. That's the one I was trying to think of. Yeah, Interview connections over there, Jessica is just amazing. Like, it's just so good over there. They do great job. Do someone who has relationships and connections, they're not just phoning it in, sending out mass emails. You could do that yourself and it will be just as it will be unsuccessful at the end of the day for what you need to do in this kind of intense situation and need. So get yourself a podcast booking agent, get yourself a PR firm and then get yourself someone who can advise you on the AI side of things, really looking at and evaluating all the options of what the PR firm and the guest booking service brings. You look at both of those together and critically look at them from an AI perspective and then choosing your time wisely, because if you're going to have to do 40 to 50 interviews, like math, all at once, make sure you're doing the ones that are going to matter at the end of the day because that is going to be an intense period of time for you. And you may have to talk about something uncomfortable that you don't want to talk about. So you might as well do it with effective sources. And then the most important thing I think we need to stress, Tom, is that the sooner you do it, the better. The longer you wait to fix something negative, the harder it is to fix.

No question, you're just delaying. Actually, you're either going to lengthen the amount of pain that you're feeling from this crisis PR situation. And the sooner you get started putting out more positive content, telling your story instead of letting other people sort of tell your story for you and, you know, cast you in a certain way, the sooner you're going to get to where you need to be to recover from whatever this, you know, crisis is. So, yeah, just get out there and start doing it. And even though as you go along, you may find better shows to be on, better ways to do it, ways to be more efficient at it, whatever. Make improvements as you go, but don't sit in this area of permanent potential trying to get it perfect before you get started. Just get started. Then you'll make improvements as you go.

Absolutely. The more content and the more relevant. And soon you put that out to the original negative event, if it was an event. The sooner you do that, the better. The longer you wait, the harder it is.

Unfortunately, you've got to step through the crap. You've got to do it. You got to go into it, step into it, dive headfirst into it. It's going to be painful, but that's how you have to do this and to get through it in this modern tech world. You really do.

Yeah. The last piece I want to leave you all with is that if you are in some kind of legal trouble or potential legal trouble, you must have a legal expert on your team, because the last thing you want is for you to say something that harms an appeal or harms your ability or then gets you into hot water and makes it so that you do get indicted or something like that. Right. So we make sure that if you're in that kind of situation, that this isn't just some bad review on your company, that you are protecting yourself and you have a legal representation on your team.

Yeah, that's sort of the. Don't sue Tom and Tracy for this advice. We're not lawyers, but we certainly have a lot of experience and you don't need to be a lawyer necessarily to do this. But we're letting you know if you're treading in areas where you might have some legal jeopardy. Depending on what you say, you better consult an attorney and make sure you understand what you can or what you should or shouldn't say according to your attorney's opinion. Really?

Yeah, I know that Cheryl does that. Like, she always makes sure that there's a legal representation on the team when they have those situations, because it is like they can't go out and publish articles and jeopardize Your future. So the future of your business. Right. So that's it. That's all we got today on this subject. I think that it's critically important that we really make sure we never know when something like this is going to happen in our business. So us putting this out there for you, this is a reference for whenever it happens. And I really hope that it doesn't happen to you. But I have to say that I've seen it happen to too many people, too many good businesses. You know, you get a massive complaint and it takes down your business. You get a disgruntled employee. That is the number one thing Cheryl Snap always says, the disgruntled employee and a family member, those two people will ruin your business. It's pretty sad, but that's what will happen. Somebody you trust will take it down.

Wow. Yeah.

Most of the problems that come from that come from those two sources. Disgruntled, obviously. Client or something. Investor. Client. That will be the third one, but typically they.

Or disgruntled employee, I think, too, if you have employees.

Yeah, disgruntled employee, family member. Like, usually it's like a divorce dispute or something, things like that. And then the third is a client or customer or whatever it is. Investor. If you were in that kind of business, I mean, look, Elizabeth Holmes got taken down by a bunch of investors who complained. We know someone personally who that happened to as well and is in jail right now. And honestly, when you're in jail, that's actually the perfect time to have your team working for you. You can't do the interviews, but that doesn't mean your team can't be planning for the minute you walk out of that door.

Right. Yeah.

So, anyway, well, I hope this doesn't happen to all of you, but if it does, here's our podcast playbook for managing the PR crisis and coming out stronger.

I agree. And you know, even if this doesn't happen to you, as a podcast host, if you have a type of podcast that could help amplify a message for someone who is in some sort of crisis like that, that's somebody you can target for guests, too. Those are people you can look for in the media and reach out to them. But anyway, lots to think about, lots you can do.

All right, thanks, everyone for being here. I'm Tracy Hazzard, along with my co host, Tom Hazzard, and we'll be back next time with another feature brand.

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