So what’s your businesses’ community relations quotient?

Do you engender understanding, trust and support?

Does the public know or care what you do?

Do they even know you?

Community relations (outreach) is a core initiative at Lawton Gallagher Group. In sum, we help put your best business “face” forward in an effort to nurture a positive, cooperative relationship between business and other institutions and the public.

Prior to the Internet, time was on the side of community relations’ professionals.

With the rise of social media and hyperconnectivity, that dynamic has changed. This transition now requires firms like ours to learn a new set of skills and tactics to develop communication strategies that will resonate today. Tomorrow is too late.

Social networks, wikis and blogs accelerate the spread of information while greatly magnifying its reach and impact.

New communities gather around a single issue and are often led by different people at different times.

In Traverse City downtown building heights is the issue of the day.

Add to that the removal of Boardman River Dams, low-income housing, the latest debate of the county or city commission, and there’s never a shortage of social media traffic to share information or urge action.

As a friend puts it:  “In Traverse City no good deed goes unchallenged …”

Like communities everywhere, we’re a varied collection of intentions and membership. A community relations initiative will range in tone from friendly and collaborative to in-your-face aggressive.

Discerning which is which and developing and implementing a strategy of engagement is what we do.