If you look at the recession as a crisis, there are many steps PR can take now to rebound. The first is to invest in recovery opportunities—before your competition does, says crisis expert and communication consultant Jon Harmon.

Another is to invest in communications. Specifically, internal communications: "Internal communications are extremely important in difficult times and in times of change," Harmon says. "Communicating optimism is hugely important for getting employees in the company to buy in to the strategy and work at full capacity. Management and leaders in business should be communicating frequently and candidly. That means listening as well as talking."

Harmon spent 23 years at Ford Motor Company in virtually every aspect of public relations. As head of public relations for Ford Truck, he was thrust into defending the Ford Explorer throughout the Ford-Firestone tire crisis.

Now, he's written a book on his experiences during the crisis. The book, "Feeding Frenzy," offers an insider's look into the crisis. Below, Harmon answers questions on the crisis and the book, and offers his tips for managing reputation in recession and in the new media landscape:

How should companies be positioning for recovery?

I think that companies have been very conservative and have been in hunker-down mode for the last few years. They've been reluctant to invest in their businesses and are worried about getting costs under control and getting through it. And that's reflected in their communications. They're watching their budgets, and some companies see communications as a sinkhole.

But at some point, you're going to get your costs under control. My advice is to start thinking about the upside before your competition does. Think about how the industry will look and how you will gain market share over the competition. The first people who start looking at the horizon—as opposed to at their feet—will have the advantage.

You still want to stay as lean as you can. But this idea of saying "no" to opportunities in the name of cost cutting will not serve companies well.

One thing you should look at in particular is internal communications. Employees are worried and insecure—and they need to hear from senior management.

Why write a book about the Ford-Firestone crisis?

During the crisis, we knew we were living history. It's a huge, rich case study with so many aspects—and we felt good about how we handled it.

I have a few crisis books in my library and I looked into a lot of others. But I couldn't find any books about a single crisis, taking you from the beginning to the end of the crisis. There are many how-to manuals. There are books taking you through preparation for crisis. And there are books on steps you can take to become a crisis expert. However, you can't become a crisis expert from reading one book. I didn't want to write another book like that.

I thought it would be useful to look at one, in-depth, epic crisis in all its facets to give the reader the feeling that he or she lived through the crisis. I wanted to put the reader in the driver's seat of the Ford crisis team. That way, it's a lot more fun. It's like a novel, with characters and a narrative story—a beginning, middle and end.

Who is the target audience for this book?

There are two audiences. One, for sure, is comprised of PR professionals, students and people interested in PR. Anyone who has aspirations in PR should know about crisis.

But I also have a broader audience in mind: those interested in crisis management from a business perspective. Harold Burson, in fact, called the book "must reading for CEOs."

This more general business audience includes business managers and people in operations—because they must understand crises. They can't just delegate a crisis to PR people to clean up.

This book is about a business story and is relevant to a business audience—especially to those in the automotive industry. This was one of the biggest business stories of the decade, and the book sheds new light on the crisis beyond the communications perspective.

You mention that this was the first big crisis of the 21st century, and you talk about new ingredients in corporate communications like "media-savvy adversaries" and "instant media with immediate deadlines." What specifically was new about the crisis?

This crisis had several new angles, especially compared to the Tylenol and Exxon crises, which have been studied to death. The 24/7 news cycle is certainly new. But what's also very new is the idea of the media-savvy adversary. This includes plaintiff attorneys, such as Tab Turner, the trial lawyer who had a big inventory of cases against Ford and Firestone. He had a lot to gain from putting pressure on these companies. He was looking to extract bigger and bigger settlements, and was one of the first plaintiff attorneys to perfect the game of driving a news cycle, day-in and day-out, with a drip, drip, drip of new accusations, leaks of "incriminating" memos and the building of an ongoing conspiracy story against Ford—that Ford had deliberately built an unsafe vehicle. We knew it wasn't true and that we had to combat these accusations.

To do that, we had to know the whole story about the vehicle, including things like engineering and performance. I had to know that stuff better than my adversaries—and I had to explain it to journalists covering the crisis.

Also, websites were just starting to get popular. There were not really blogs yet, but there were online groups supporting the trial attorneys, such as SafetyForum.com. These sites deal with consumer safety, but they're also trial attorney support groups. This was the beginning of the adversary network, and it puts enormous pressure on companies.

I call it a "media feeding frenzy," and today's manifestation would be known as a blog storm: tremendous pressure through the mass media.

How has crisis communications changed since the Ford-Firestone crisis?

A lot of the things we dealt with have become magnified today. For example, we dealt with four separate congressional hearings in six months. Today, congressional hearings are a common way to get called on the carpet—which further inflames the media.

Back then, staffers from the congressman's office would go to the company and interview the various people and ask for information. They would get all the accusations from plaintiff attorneys and safety groups and come to us asking, "What do you say to these accusations?"

That would put the defendants onstage to ridicule and embarrass them. That's the point of a congressional hearing: to embarrass people who the congressman thinks deserves that treatment because they've endangered the public or done something. It's not as much about fact finding as it is about holding a public execution.

What's different today is that, with social media, there are so many viral means for congressional investigators to gather information. That whole process is magnified. Everyone is learning how to use these tools—including your adversaries. Social media can be used for you and against you.

It magnifies the idea that you have to sharpen your key messages and keep them very short to resonate with people. Twitter is a good mechanism to help you build that discipline: It's a very short medium to get your message across.

The problem is that it's a lot easier to accuse someone in a very few words than it is to defend yourself—especially with complicated issues. The question becomes: How do you defend your company in 30 words or less? You have to articulate a theme and then reinforce it.

Another thing we learned is that you have to find good visuals—because that's where the emotional weight is, whether it's a news story or something posted online. If there's an interview with a paraplegic victim, or a video of a smashed up vehicle, the emotional weight is with the accuser.

You have to figure out: What visuals will tell your company's story in ways that support your factual arguments and provide emotion? In PR, we make a mistake if we forget about the emotional side. We try to be factual—but that can come across as uncaring.

Is the Twitter-fication of the news media good, or harmful?

It has its positive and negative sides. There are fewer and fewer professional editors that are fact-checking and making an attempt at balance. From the beginning of mass media, people have complained about bias. But at least there was someone whose job was to make it balanced. That goes away with social media.

When someone holds a grudge, that amps up the volume for inaccuracy. There aren't good checks in place, and that can lead to a lot of untruths.

However, it's fantastic that in Iran—with fraudulent elections and the mass media barred—there were so many people there with cell phones and Tweets. Social media has proven to be fantastic as a means of overcoming tyranny and oppression in markets like that.

But it's also a means for people looking to manipulate a story.

Give us a little taste of the book: What were the biggest lessons learned in the crisis?

• You have to know your issue better than your adversaries. This often means understanding all the technical issues. As a PR professional, it always bugs me when I hear a colleague say, "I went to a liberal arts college, and I don't do math." Get over it. You have to be able to do math and statistics. Get some help with it. We have to understand our business, products and how the product is performing in the market. And not just all the marketing and good stuff about it—but what are the critics saying? Understand what your customers are saying in the market, but don't just read your own marketing brochures. You also have to understand what your competition and critics are saying.

• Make sure your key messages are very tight—with no jargon. Find that balance between being factual and rational yet showing respect and empathy for people who may have been hurt by the crisis. Don't lose sight of the victims.

• There are sections of book dealing with different things, and one is congressional circus acts. The book gives you a glimpse into how we prepared our executives, dealt with trouble from congressional staffers and how it played out.

• We always say that we should show, not tell, in our writing. As communicators, we are story tellers—and we should also show, not tell.

• Media by nature are compelled to simplify. When your crisis involves a lot of issues and plays out over many news cycles, it plays out in the media. But if you're talking to a TV journalist and they're doing a two-minute piece, you might get one sound bite. You get eight seconds—and it's hard to defend all the accusations in eight seconds.

But you have to play by their rules. Find the best sound bite to get your main point across in a very strong, tight, powerful message in the amount of time you have. Then, tell the journalist off camera that you want them to take the time to understand the issue and what's going on. Explain the larger issues at work and demand that they look at the story in a balanced way. Appeal to their professionalism. They want to think they're striving for balance: Call them on it. Help them understand your side.

How has media relations in general changed, and what are you top tips for PR in the new media—and in recession?

What's really changed in the last few years is the decline of the newsroom. There are fewer working journalists out there. Every news organization has been through big cuts. But they're covering just as much of the waterfront. This means that you're dealing with generalists and people who know less and less about your industry. You may have to educate them about the basics. Be patient, find out how much they know and what they need to know. Make sure they're not overlooking some things you consider obvious but they may not consider.

What final advice would you offer on crisis?

We don't know what the next crisis will be, but we do know that it's coming. So pay attention to how others are handling crises. Watch the news closely and envision yourself in the crisis. Imagine that you're Robert Gibbs, and ask, how would I handle that? As PR professionals, we should be students of the news, instead of just consumers.