How Can Tiger Woods Restore His Reputation?

by coach

Tiger Woods

photo credit: Keith Allison

Warning. This post contains nudity, violence and coarse language. Reader discretion is advised.

Just kidding, but if you were following the tabloids papers and blogs, you’d wonder about Tiger’s terrible fall from grace and why he hasn’t gotten back up fast.

When we last left Tiger, he had a black eye, a damaged SUV, mistresses popping up out of the rough and a press conference that was seriously out of bounds. On top of that, his golf game has seriously sucked.

One so-called “expert” suggested Tiger was doing just fine in late 2009. Wrong! Crisis management experts chimed in around the country after his Feb 2010 press conference. “Apologize publicly as soon as possible,” they had said. “Take control of the messaging,” they’d advised. “Get ahead of the issue,” they had counseled. It was probably too late by that time.

The problem was, there was too much bad news still to come and Tiger and his advisers knew it.

So did he handle the crisis appropriately? Not so much. What should you do when you know there is much more bad news to come? Hide, like Al Gore? Most importantly, why hasn’t Tiger started to rehabilitate his reputation?

Here are five reputation management strategies he should be using:

  1. Develop a PR strategy: Hire some PR professionals, put together a solid strategy and take their advice! Don’t leave things to chance.
  2. Get media training: Improve how he interacts with fans, sports media, communities.
  3. Interact: Find opportunities to interact genuinely with fans. Be more approachable. Show you have a warm side.
  4. Influence: Use his profile to find a professional golf cause he can support, contribute back to the game of golf and attract positive attention.
  5. Do good: Pick one or two charities; commit to helping them; make a difference to several causes that show he does care about things other than money.

He is going to be subject to extreme scrutiny again when he either resolves things or finally splits up with his wife. He needs to be prepared. And, he needs to have made some positive deposits to the “bank of good will.”

One final bit of PR counsel? Just do it: Tiger doesn’t have to win to be a winner.

Can he now begin the long par five back to stardom and credibility in 2010? That remains to be seen but with a focus on managing his reputation, he has a chance. Of course, winning a major tournament will help too.

We’ve got lots more Crisis Management resources in The PR Coach PR Library including crisis planning, crisis communications tips, online crisis management and more.

And the PR Job Board and Public Relations Bookstore are always open too.

Now, here are today’s Friday PR Picks – a useful list of the best PR and social media picks from the past few weeks.

Friday PR Picks

Public Relations
10 Tips for Successful Sound Bites
[BurrellesLuce]
Communications Audit: Why and How to Do It [2M Communications Ink]
Crisis PR: Three Core Principles and Planning Checklist to Guide Your Actions [Gable PR]
How to Manage Your Own PR [Inc.]
Public Relations: Shades of Grey Get Results [The PR Coach]
The Hybrid Theory Manifesto: The Future of Marketing, Advertising, and Communications Part III [Brian Solis]
The Undergraduate’s Guide to Landing a Job in PR [Journalistics]
What Makes Effective IR Sites? Part 21: Annual Reports – Give Readers a Choice in How to Access Them [Corporate Eye]
Writing Stronger Leads: Six Variations for Story Openers [Marketing, Inc]

Social Media
11 Steps to Building an Effective Blogger Outreach List
[Communications Conversations]
Content Marketing on SlideShare [Conversation Agent]
Employers Scour Web for Details on Applicants [Newsday.com]
Extreme DIY Social Media Media Blogger Relations Training For PR/Ad Agencies [Diva Marketing Blog]
Top 10 Tips for Creative Blog Writing [Writing for the Web
Twitter Time Savers: Tweet Success in Just 20 Mins a Day
[Grow]

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Creative Commons License photo credit: Keith Allison

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