The best time to build relationships with reporters to help you during a crisis before the crisis. That's why you've heard me stress throughout this course. Always return reporters phone calls, even if it's a story, where you have no interest in being a part of the story, you can always call the reporter be friendly, exchange pleasantries and let the person know, hey, I'm happy to have you call anytime. Appreciate you, including us. Can I go on background a minute and then let them know. We just don't care to be a part of this story.
It's something from six months ago, not the crisis today. But just little things like that where the reporter knows, you treat them with respect. You return phone calls, you're not hiding. If for some reason you can't talk about a story. You at least let the reporter know. You do that.
Then when there is a crisis coming. There's some goodwill there. There's an assumption That they're dealing with straightforward, honest people doesn't guarantee you're going to get great coverage for your crisis. But it does help on the edges. This is also why I'm a big fan of simply doing all interview requests. Just not saying, Oh, this reporter is not 100% gray, we don't love this story.
But something about you and your organization, your industry, just do the interview. Even if the story isn't perfectly glowing, you're building chits you're building relationship with that reporter. So when the day comes, and you need a little bit of the benefit of the doubt, you need a little extra due diligence and someone's thinking about quoting someone attacking you. You'll earn that again, reporter can still write whatever they want. Even if you took them out to lunch every day for the last two years. I'm not advocating that strategy.
But by constantly responding to requests by doing interviews, even when they're not completely positive about you or promoting your latest product or service, you build goodwill. And like any other aspect of your business, it is relationship dependent human beings. That's what makes up the reporter base reporters are human beings. And if you consistently respect them, most of the time in my experience, they will be respectful of you as well that will really help you during a time of crisis.