Paul Lockstone, who is our financial PR guru here in London, asked me what advice I would give to banks and other business struggling with their reputations in these days of financial upheaval.

I offered 7 points which he posted on his blog. I've cross-posted them just below. They appear just below. What have I left out?

(1) Listen. Customers, economists, business leaders, columnists, MPs and others are talking. The financial crisis is the main topic of discussion online right now. Businesses can learn real lessons and gain meaningful insights by listening.

(2) Act. Forget about PR. The best reputation management is doing the right thing.

(3) Build relationships. Identify the people online who, for whatever reason, might be the most important or relevant to your business. Understand that you don’t have to start with everyone. You can begin with a small group and then grow from there. But do start somewhere. Relationships will allow more effective listening and better interaction.

(4) Find your human voice. Real people are being seriously affected by the downturn. Empathy is an important quality.

(5) Get on top of the facts. The Internet is famous for being full of “facts” that aren’t quite factual. No one is a better position to know and communicate the facts about a crisis than those in the middle of it. Create an online presence for the facts. Go the extra mile to get the facts into the discussion as soon as you can. Exceed regulatory reporting requirements as often as possible. Being the owner of your own facts and going beyond basic requirements will make a good start on rebuilding credibility. And, once you have a presence for the facts, it can also become a home for your voice.

(6) Focus on search. Once you’ve created a presence for the facts, make sure that people can find it. During any crisis, stakeholders’ first destination online will be their favorite search engine. A program of search engine marketing - to ensure that searchers find your destination first - is, therefore, essential. Be creative and aggressive about the keywords that are purchased to capture the broadest possible cross section of the interested audience.

(7) Now is Not the Time for Underhanded Behaviour. Remember the Fundamentals of Online Communications: transparency, authenticity, genuineness, conversation, openness, completeness, etc. A crisis is the worst time to play fast and loose by secretly making edits to a Wikipedia page or leaving anonymous comments on a hostile blog. Crisis breeds scrutiny, and undertakings like these won’t survive such scrutiny. They will only make matters worse.