Managers: Paying for PR-Lite?

As a business, non-profit or association manager, your public relations expenditure may give you names in newspaper or product plugs on radio. But what about key stakeholder behavior change – kind that leads directly to achieving your managerial objectives?

Since that’s public relations’ strongest suit, shouldn’t you be getting that first, THEN incremental publicity exposure? Especially when persuading those important outside folks to your way of thinking can move many of them to take actions that help you achieve your department, division or subsidiary objectives?

Bounce this notion off public relations team assigned to your unit: people act on their own perception of facts before them, which leads to predictable behaviors about which something can be done. When we create, change or reinforce that opinion by reaching, persuading and moving-to-desired- action very people whose behaviors affect organization most, public relations mission is accomplished.

If they buy into it, you’ll have a simple blueprint that gets everyone working towards same external audience behaviors insuring that your public relations effort stays on track.

Consider possible payoffs: customers starting to make repeat purchases; community leaders beginning to seek you out; welcome bounces in show room visits; membership applications on rise; prospects starting to do business with you; fresh proposals for strategic alliances and joint ventures; higher employee retention rates, capital givers or specifying sources beginning to look your way, and even politicians and legislators starting to view you as a key member of business, non-profit or association communities

But, like everything else, there’s no free lunch in PR either, and work looks like this. You need to find out who among your important outside audiences is behaving in ways that help or hinder achievement of your objectives. And then, list them according to how severely their behaviors affect your organization.

Of course it’s unlikely that you have facts and figures you need to pull this off because you aren’t real certain just how most members of that key outside audience perceive your organization.

There’s also a good chance you don’t have budget to accommodate expensive professional survey work. So you and your PR colleagues (they should be quite familiar with perception and behavior matters) must monitor those perceptions yourself.

If you need proof, look no further than "Melissa" and "I love you," two email viruses that paralyzed computer systems around world as recently as 1999 and 2000. Another virus named "Nimda" infected approximately 2.2 million computers in about a 24 hour period.

There are now estimates of over 58,000 different known computer viruses currently in circulation. The risk of damage to your small business computer system is increasing.

What different types of computer attacks do you need to be concerned about now?

~ Virus: A malicious code that alters data on a computer and harasses user by deleting data or altering operating system files, especially boot files.

~ Trojan Horse: A program that is not what it seems to be. A popular version pretends to be and anti-virus fix and instead delivers a virus.

~ Worm: A virus that is self-replicating, most often through email

~ Zombie: A dormant Trojan that is placed on a computer then waits for a command to do its damage.

So what to do?

1. Regularly backup everything that is of value that you have stored on your computer. A small business's biggest safeguard could simply be backing up your data. Some of today's viruses are so powerful, anti-virus software cannot clean infected files; software can only delete infected files.

2. Use anti-virus software. Check for updates regularly. Scan all files on your computer periodically.

3. Your Internet connection needs a firewall (a protective software layer that sits between your computer and outside world).

Approximately 10 % of U.S. Internet users have fast cable modems or high-speed phone-based digital subscriber lines. The "always on" nature of these high-speed connections creates an open door for these computer attacks. Firewalls are essential for those connecting to Internet with high-speed connections.

Even dial-up connections may be at risk, so install a firewall. Your firewall will act as your safe gatekeeper between your computer system and Internet hackers.

Note that anti-virus software won't detect hacker intrusions but your firewall will. Your firewall won't detect viruses but your anti-virus software will -- so install both anti-virus and firewall software on your system.