Each quarter investor relations, finance and corporate communications teams devise a company’s quarterly earnings press release. In an era of heightened corporate accountability and transparency, earnings press releases are examined by a range of key stakeholders, including institutional investors, analysts, media, regulators, NGOs, competitors and other audiences.

As earnings season ramps up this fall, here are ten best practices for strengthening your next earnings press release.

1. First and most importantly, use the earnings release as an opportunity to reinforce corporate key messages. Interweave key points about the company’s strategy, competitive differentiators and investment merits throughout the press release.

2. Remember that there’s always more to the story than just the finances. Were there major customer wins, product launches, geographic expansions or strategic partnerships formed during the quarter? Did the company recently file its IPO? Highlight those in the context of how they are driving financial results and supporting the company’s overall strategy.

Financial stakeholders closely evaluate all components of a quarterly earnings release.

3. Make the CEO/chairman’s quote quotable. This sounds easy enough, right? Unfortunately, many press releases miss the mark on this. Carefully consider the tone and word choice, and remember that the quote may be cherry-picked by reporters and utilized in media coverage (especially if the company doesn’t hold a shareholder conference call or conduct media interviews on earnings day).

4. Be transparent about shortcomings and outline how the company is taking actions to correct any issues. Work closely with finance and operations to fine-tune these important and delicate messages.

5. To the extent it’s possible, go easy on the “legalese.” Lawyers will most certainly need to be involved in finalizing the press release, but opt for clear, concise language versus something that reads like a contract.

6. Use bullet points to highlight key themes and financial metrics from the quarter at the beginning of the release. With stakeholders’ limited attention spans, this approach will prominently position your key points in a succinct manner right from the start.

7. Within the parameters of disclosure rules, articulate the company’s vision and plans for the future. Stakeholders want to know where the company is headed and reinforcing this through multiple channels (including earnings releases) builds confidence.

8. Make it a team effort. Work closely with legal, finance and investor relations teams to ensure the press release meets all stakeholder needs while also leveraging each department’s respective areas of expertise.

9. Leave yourself enough time. Start the press release development process early. With so many departments involved in drafting and finalizing the press release, the review process can become unwieldy. You’ll thank yourself later for having additional time.

10. Start fresh every quarter. Always reflect on the process and content of the press release and examine what can be improved next quarter. In many ways, every quarter is a fresh start.

A couple of news stories caught my eye recently. Left unaddressed, the issues they cover spell danger for many companies.

The first is from today’s Wall Street Journal.  The story focuses on a Corporate Executive Board Co. (CEB) study of 4,300 employees exiting 80 companies, most with more than $2 billion in annual revenues. The study indicated that more than 75% of these employees wouldn’t recommend their employer to others — an astonishing number — and, according to the CEB, the highest percentage in at least five years.

The other seemingly-unrelated development is a proposal by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that would have the effect of dramatically accelerating the speed with which labor unions could hold elections.  The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups have expressed concern (and initiated legal action), stating that this change tilts the labor-management dynamic too far in labor’s direction.

So, why should companies be concerned?  Even though support for and membership in labor unions is at historic lows, and many industries have historically been poor or non-existent targets for labor unions, the fact that more and more corporate employees are disgruntled makes them an incredibly-attractive target now.  Couple this with the possibility that the unions may be able to launch an accelerated run on a companies’ workforce, it’s probably only a handful of companies on Fortune’s “Best Place to Work,” “Best Companies for Working Mothers,” and similar lists that can afford to be complacent.

To be sure, during the downturn, many companies had little choice but to put in such steps as pay freezes, hiring freezes, benefits cuts and staff reductions.  But with many companies now sitting on records amounts of cash, the unions can and likely will exploit the dichotomy of “employees who’ve had to sacrifice” with “companies sitting on millions.”

What can prudent companies do?  Of course, it begins with communications — outlining for employees what the company’s business and financial prospects look like and dealing head-on with any cost cutting measures in which employees bore the brunt.  Why did you do what you did and how long do you anticipate leaving these changes in place?  What other expenses (esp. those that didn’t directly affect employees) did you cut?

Do you still communicate top-down only or do you allow for upward and omnidirectional communication?  Are your front-line supervisors adept at communicating? Are you listening to what your employees (and ex-employees) are saying about you on social media?

Beyond that, a prudent review of HR practices is called for.  Are you still benchmarking with competitors to make sure your compensation and benefits practices are in line?  Did you allow your managers to forgo performance reviews?  Do you provide for 360 reviews?

Given the ongoing uncertainty in the economy, some of these steps may seem like luxuries to some companies.  But, with the alternative being the departure of more of your best and brightest, along with the specter of unionization, can you afford not to?

It seems that now more than ever, journalists are shedding their reporter/editor titles and turning to public relations. At Reputation Partners, we have a handful of team members who are former journalists hailing from some of the country’s best journalism schools, including Northwestern University’s Medill School and Boston University’s College of Communications.

We’ve spent time in noisy newsrooms, met production deadlines, attended news conferences and even been on the receiving end of a PR person’s pitch or press release. And, we’re all the better for it.

Certainly, majoring in PR will give you the strong fundamentals necessary to succeed in our business. However, having a journalism degree and/or having spent time as a journalist equips you with a certain skill set that goes far in PR. A recent report on Ragan’s PR Daily offered this assessment on how a journalism background can be a strong asset for PR professionals.

Here’s my take:

It teaches you to meet deadlines. Virtually all careers have deadlines. However, nowhere are deadlines more prevalent than in the fields of journalism and PR.  In a given day, we’re juggling various deadlines for clients, colleagues and publications/news websites. Journalists are taught early in their careers to be efficient, thorough and on deadline, and these skills are vital in PR.

It makes you skeptical (and this is a good thing). When thinking through a media strategy for a particular client issue or situation, we approach it from as many different angles as possible. Journalists are trained to be skeptical and are well-versed at poking holes in corporate news stories. Armed with the knowledge of how reporters think and question, will make your media strategy rock solid.

It hones your writing muscle. According to a 2010 Journalist Survey on Media Relations Practices conducted by Cision, 60 percent of reporters and editors complained that the materials they receive from PR professionals are written like advertising, not journalism. Writing media materials from the perspective of a journalist will ensure your pitches and press releases more concise, informative and, most importantly, newsworthy.

It improves your media relations skills. Trading war stories about nights spent at the city news desk can take you far when building media relationships. One of my colleagues, a former broadcast news producer, was recently working with a seasoned, hard-nosed business reporter on a feature story. Once the reporter learned that my colleague was a former producer and had been “in her shoes,” their interactions became even more productive.

There’s no questions that a journalism background can be a strong asset in public relations. Given the symbiotic relationship between the journalism and PR professions, PR pros have a lot to teach journalists, as well.  Of course, that’s a topic for another day.

There is frequent discussion about effective “crisis PR” – which companies and individuals responded well to a media or reputation crisis and which didn’t (think: BP, Anthony Weiner, etc.).  The timing, tone and message of crisis response is examined and critiqued continuously. You need only do a quick Google search to find endless opinions and debates on crisis response “do’s and don’ts.”

Where the discipline of crisis communications gets far less buzz is crisis prevention. The typical focus is so much on reacting effectively to a media crisis that business leaders (including a surprising number of PR counselors) often short change, if not entirely neglect, the all-important steps that should be taken to prevent an issue from escalating into a PR crisis in the first place. As the old saying goes, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

Several of my colleagues and I presented on this very topic earlier this year at a series of seminars hosted by risk management leader Chartis Inc. (formerly AIG).  We spoke to hundreds of in-house risk managers and insurance brokers about the importance of reputation risk management and how it’s an essential component of enterprise risk management (ERM). It was a terrific invitation by Chartis, particularly because it signaled that the world’s leading risk management experts understand the important role reputation management and PR risk mitigation play in the risk management mix. In other words, the experts at Chartis “get it” and see real value in helping their clients get it too.

So, how should organizations mitigate reputational risk? What can be done to head off seemingly unpredictable threats?

An obvious yet too often overlooked first step is investing in building a positive reputation. This means companies and executives need to (continuously) make deposits of “goodwill,” by proactively engaging media, in addition to employees, communities, customers, advocacy groups well before any issue arises. The absolute worst time to try to make friends is in the midst of a crisis.

Another critical and often neglected step it to track and act on early warning signs, such as spikes in employee turnover, increases in complaints from customers, investors, community groups, etc., unusual or negative activity percolating on social networks/blogs, more aggressive activist attention, etc. In most of the crisis scenarios our team has encountered over the years, we eventually learn that there was indeed a warning sign (if not several) that went ignored.

Savvy organizations also regularly and officially audit reputation risk, looking inside and outside the company to assess and prioritize potential threats, similar to how they examine operational and financial risks. This work, while too seldom completed, is at the heart of truly effective reputation management. Knowing your vulnerabilities is more than half the battle.

So, while there’s no doubt it’s important to hone crisis response skills, it’s equally, if not more important, to commit to mitigating reputational issues before they snowball. An “ounce of prevention” really can make the difference between a manageable issue that’s resolved without incident and a full-blown reputational crisis that can cripple a business.

The Wall Street Journal’s recent piece on the “value of buzz” addressed public relations measurement and the long-standing issue of Ad Value Equivalents, or valuing earned media by comparing it to the cost of an equivalent advertising spot.

Many clients lean on ad equivalencies for public relations campaign measurement. The client may have a very metric-driven culture or simply a desire to quantify the results of their investment in public relations. The problem with this approach is the assumption that the value of an article and the value of ads are equivalent, and that calculating the value in this way gives you an accurate measure of ROI.

Courtesy of Louise Docker

As an advertiser, you have complete control of the ad’s message and its placement. And it’s fair to assume that you’d publicize your company’s positive attributes. In public relations, we publicize our mostly B2B clients’ positive attributes, and we consider placement as well, weighing the sophistication of our clients’ customers, which publications are most likely to influence customer decisions and what type of story would deliver our client’s message in a decision-influencing context.

The message in an article and an ad may wind up being the same, but there are fundamental differences in who is delivering the message and how it is received. The major difference is that a successful PR placement is delivered through a story that carries the implicit, independent endorsement of an outlet, editor and author trusted by the reader. Reducing ROI to an ad value equivalent fails to capture this difference and thus the true value of earned media. What is the alternative then?

Effective measurement of public relations requires clear program objectives as well as research and customer engagement before, during and after an initiative. What are your communications objectives? How aware are customers and potential customers of your messages around these objectives? How well do they understand what you are trying to say? How does their awareness, attitude and understanding change between the start and end of an initiative? It is also important to link PR back to business outcomes. What impact has the initiative had on sales, subscriptions, client engagements and/or enrollment compared to pre-campaign benchmarks?

Are answering these questions and providing a broader view of a campaign’s effectiveness as easy as scratching out some ad equivalency calculations? Certainly not. Companies often cite a lack of time and resources necessary to research and mine data to gauge the effectiveness of a campaign. Also, the results do not yield that desirable apples-to-apples comparison of ad, marketing and PR spend.

However, what this approach lacks in simplicity it makes up for in a truer understanding of program effectiveness and insight into how campaign’s can be improved moving forward.

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to present at the BOMA 2011 International Conference & The Every Building Show at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in Washington, D.C. The topic? Devising and Executing a Social Media Program: A BOMA/Chicago Case Study.

Over the course of two sessions, Edward M. Bury, APR, BOMA/Chicago’s director of marketing and communications, and I shared strategic and tactical advice to commercial real estate executives mulling over the now seemingly “age old” question: can social media work for me and my building/organization/company?

While social media isn’t necessarily appropriate for all industries and companies, it’s at least worth investigating. The following is a step-by-step to getting started. Reputation Partners deployed a similar social media strategy as we helped BOMA/Chicago launch their social networking presence (including the organization’s new blog, The Elevator Speech).

Step 1. Listen
If someone in the marketplace was talking about your company or brand, wouldn’t you want to listen to their conversation? Actively monitoring social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube gives you an opportunity to gauge how your industry, competitors and key stakeholders are utilizing these channels. It’s also key to determining how your company can differentiate its voice amid all the social media chatter.

Step 2. Assess Vehicles
There’s a common misconception that you need to be on every social networking channel to be successful. This is far from accurate. For example, if your target audiences aren’t actively using Twitter, it’s probably not the right vehicle for your company. Consider your overarching communications objectives and how these different vehicles can help you meet these goals. Also consider the staff allocation and support needed to manage these vehicles on a daily basis.

Step 3. Launch and Market
Before you formally launch your social network presence, it’s important to populate the vehicles with content (pictures, video, status updates, etc.) before you officially “go-live.”  This will give new followers an immediate opportunity to view and react to content. Once you’ve launched, it’s equally important to market your social networking presence. Emails, newsletters, website and email signatures, as example, are all effective ways you can spread the word.

Step 4. Engage, Monitor & Track Value
This is the final – and most important – step in the process. There’s one catch: this step never ends.

Engage with your followers and create a dialogue about important developments in your industry. Ask questions. Share opinions.  Interact with people/companies that are both familiar and unfamiliar to you. Build goodwill by congratulating/commending others. Hint: if you’re constantly talking about yourself and your company, you’re probably not engaging enough.

Monitor these sites consistently. They are like small children; never leave them alone unattended for an extended period of time.  Effective monitoring will also aid in both reactive and proactive engagement with others.

As you manage and grow your company’s social networking presence, continually track the value it’s bringing. While quantitative measurement is important, we also make sure to evaluate key items such as: are we engaging with the right influencers? Has this increased awareness about the brand? Is this supporting our overarching communications strategy and goals?

While social media isn’t the solution to all of your corporate communications and marketing needs, it’s an effective tool when used thoughtfully. Based on the turnout at BOMA 2011, we’re encouraged to see that the commercial real estate industry is beginning to embrace the power of social media.

It’s one of the calls most PR people can’t stand getting: a consumer watchdog reporter with a customer complaint about your company’s product or service.

Typically it is a run of the mill complaint: a product doesn’t work, a service didn’t meet expectations, an agreement was violated.  But what is most frustrating is that often the issue stems from the trappings of bureaucracy –the complaint got passed off one too many times and the customer eventually got  mad enough to go to the media (when it could have easily been handled to the customer’s satisfaction internally).  And if you’re extra lucky, the customer is so mad they get the reporter to agree that a story about their complaint is warranted.

So what do you do?  You lord over your customer service department (or other applicable team) until they appropriately (if not generously) fix the situation, communicate the fix and apology to the customer and reporter, and pray this stays a one day story.  Remember, the customer is always right – especially if they go to the media.

Or if you’re like this company, maybe you’ll take a different approach.

The Cliff Notes background: tourist goes snorkeling; tour boat leaves without him; tourist spots another boat, swims to safety; tourist relived to no longer be shark bait but is pretty ticked about the situation; tourist demanded an apology; the apology (and accompanying restaurant gift card) wasn’t found to be acceptable; somewhere down the line, the aggrieved went to the media.

The company response?  The full link to a blog post detailing the situation is here, but I’ll call out this gem for readers here as well:

“The fact that this guy [Ian Cole] talked about this shows that he’s just seeking self-exposure, and wants to be portrayed as a hero, you know, a survivor,” Col Mckenzie said. “There’s no lesson to be learnt from this. He is just making a mountain out of a molehill, and trying to maximize his own self-exposure. It’s just bullshit. He was never in any danger. It was just like being left behind on a beach.

“I mean, his demands were unreasonable. He wanted a written apology. I think his requests were morally reprehensible,” Col Mckenzie said

Alrighty then…

Now we all can admit, from time to time we’ve all dealt with complaints/issues against our company or clients that were bunk.  But to actually go on record, tell the world a guy who was left in the middle of the Great Barrier Reef is “making a mountain out of a molehill” and demanding a written apology was “morally reprehensible?”  Now that is worthy of some kind of award for being perhaps the most tone deaf response ever on record.

At the end of the day, companies are often judged more on their response to adversity than to the actual issue itself. Even if the tourist has ulterior motives, the company just played right into an attorney’s hands (the response fits the description of a company with lax standards, in my opinion).  Moreover, you have to believe this will have a lasting effect on future bookings.  Ever see “Open Water?”  Not exactly the brand image you hope to promulgate via media outlets around the world when you’re in the snorkeling business.

Everybody in crisis PR knows the best day to announce bad news is a Friday or a holiday.  Or is it? The rationale used to be that newspaper readership on Saturdays or holidays was typically the lowest of the week – with readers instead focused on the pressing matters of the weekend (kids, gardening, sports, parties, etc).

Yet with the preponderance of today’s news fed through sources other than newspapers, has this strategy lost its usefulness?  For the most part, I think the answer is “yes.”

Take yesterday’s announcement that Jim Tressel was resigning as head coach of the Ohio State Buckeyes football team.  Announced on a holiday in a not-so-subtle attempt at limiting the discussion (and trying to affect reactions to a pending Sports Illustrated exposé), the airwaves and cyber channels lit up almost instantaneously.  It was topic number one during my husband’s golf outing yesterday morning (they found out just moments after it was announced, thanks to PDAs that never turn off), was thoroughly dissected at the family barbeque later that afternoon and was the lead discussion point among the much-too-loud gossips on today’s morning train commute.

So did the holiday announcement strategy pay off?  Not a bit if you use my mini-focus groups (and the lead stories on nearly every website for the past 24 hours) as evidence.  And that’s not surprising.  Today’s 24/7 news cycle and consumer preferences for mobile media ensures that any major news will reach the masses no matter the day of the week.  In fact, I’d even argue that the timing had the unintended consequence of both driving more interest to the pending SI story (due to drop any day now) and making OSU look worse by trying to hide behind a day reserved for memorializing the men and women who have died for our country.

That being said, there still are times when a Friday announcement may make sense.  For example, a publicly traded company has news that may negatively impact trading once disclosed (e.g., loss of a major customer, delay in a product launch). Assuming you don’t take on a lengthy delay (a harbinger for unwanted leaks), a Friday post-market announcement may allow for potential knee-jerk reactions to be tempered and cooler heads to prevail when trading begins that following Monday.

But simply put, the system can’t be gamed.  Despite it being dismissed again and again (yesterday’s news being the latest case in point), the best strategy is to simply disclose what you know, when you know it (or close to it), own up to the consequences, and get back to the business of moving your company or organization beyond the crisis.

Last month marked two high profile corporate events:  the Arcos Dorados IPO and the Zip Car IPO. Understandably, these complex transaction are managed by a team of bankers, lawyers and company executives steeped in SEC filings and seemingly endless road show meetings in the weeks leading up to the big bell ringing on listing day.

For corporate communicators, an IPO is far more than just the thirty-second rush of the bell ringing. IPO communications presents a key corporate positioning opportunity that has lasting impact on a company’s reputation.

Reputation Partners recently led communications and event planning efforts for Arcos Dorados’ IPO on the New York Stock Exchange. As McDonald’s largest and only franchisee in Latin America, the IPO presented a key opportunity to launch the company onto the global stage and introduce it to a wealth of new stakeholders, including investors, analysts, business/financial media and others.

When executing corporate communications and event planning efforts surrounding a high-profile transaction such as an IPO, corporate communicators should consider the following:

• Collaborate with Legal: We’ve talked in the past about the need for PR and legal teams to work together to ensure that a corporation’s strategic communications and legal needs are met. In the case of an IPO, this is crucial. Get in front of internal and external counsel as soon as possible to talk through the communications strategy and get their buy-in.
• Think BIG When it Comes to Corporate Branding: During the GM IPO, the company made a splash with its simple, yet dynamic display of automobiles outside of the NYSE on listing day. Arcos Dorados enticed NYSE traders with breakfast pastries found only in McDonald’s in Latin America and displayed a dramatic banner on the historic building’s facade. Going public is a once in a lifetime corporate branding and reputation building opportunity. Think big. Make it memorable. Make it your own.
• Media Training is Essential: Even for the most seasoned and media-savvy CEO, media training prior to listing day is key. Ensuring the spokesperson is on message, comfortable in front of the camera and refreshed on media interview techniques will make listing day media relations efforts run smooth – and make certain that a media interview doesn’t go awry.
• Don’t Forget About Employee Communications: While it’s easy to get wrapped up in reaching external stakeholders, communicating with employees about this significant and exciting moment is just as important. Make certain the CEO gets face time with employees on listing day – be it through a live webcast or a prerecorded message. Consider assembling employees together to watch the bell ringing and celebrate together. When listing day comes to a close, employees should feel positive and encouraged about the company’s future.

A corporate communications professional will wear a variety of different hats in the days and weeks leading up to the IPO. Following some of these key guidelines will make certain the event is both successful and memorable.