Benefitting from an ETC Community Liaison
When a sensitive project or issue arises, your existing staff may not have the time or public relations experience to bring to the table. Below are five characteristics that make ETC community liaisons important supplements to your staff.
1. Liaisons provide a person dedicated to the public aspects of the project. This allows your staff to focus on the project itself instead of spending their time and resources addressing the public. Our liaisons also serve as a resource themselves should your staff need feedback on how specific aspects of the project may impact the public and how to mitigate these impacts.
2. Liaisons offer dual abilities to both understand complex plans and issues and communicate effectively with the public. ETC has worked with environmental consent decrees and cleanup/settlement agreements. We have worked with stakeholders ranging from governmental agencies to private corporations to individual residents. Our experience allows us to grasp the delicate intricacies of your specific issue as we work with the impacted public.
3. Liaisons are well-versed in community concerns. This allows us to anticipate concerns, proactively address the issues and/or be prepared with course-of-action plans should they come to light. Should unforeseen apprehensions arise, our experience helps us quickly switch gears to reactive/triage mode to help your company stay on good terms with the public. Sometimes our liaisons don’t come onboard to a project until after community concerns have arisen, and our experience allows us to quickly assess the situation and simultaneously put out existing fires while preventing new ones from arising.
4. Liaisons combine design and technical writing skills to deliver fact sheets, brochures, website design/copy, video scripts, etc. Using visual elements, liaisons grab your audience’s attention in today’s information barrage, and then we deliver clear and concise wording to drive home your message.
5. Liaisons deliver consistent messaging as the dedicated single source of information for the public. Changing messages can lead to your company losing the public’s trust, and consistent messaging helps the public have a clearer understanding of your project.