How to Do Public Relations: A Beginner's Guide
The key to continued business success goes beyond earning a profit, it hinges on establishing and maintaining a positive reputation and managing strong communication with your audience. Public relations is managing communication and it's an art form and getting it right could make or break your business.
Understanding Public Relations
Most people think of public relations as cleaning up after an emergency. The reality is much different. PR is all about managing reputation and building relationships, and that work must be done whether there's an emergency or not. Ultimately, PR teams are charged with stakeholder relations, whether it's the investors, the media, employees, customers, or the community at large. So, it's far more than just handling publicity, it's about crafting a narrative around a brand and enforcing that reputation. In some cases, handling damage control if that reputation comes under fire.
How To Do Public Relations: Key Components of a PR Strategy
The key to creating a solid PR strategy is identifying your target audience because you can't craft a message until you know who you want to reach. PR relies on clear objectives, so defining what you want to achieve is key, whether it's managing a crisis or increasing awareness around your brand. From there, you can develop your key messages because you can't communicate until you know what you're trying to communicate. Once all the pieces of the puzzle are in place, you need to select the right channels to reach your target audience. Are you spreading the word via traditional media, an in-person event, or via social media?
Essential PR Skills
If you're thinking about PR or wondering what skills are necessary to make it work, there are a few to focus on. The first is strong writing skills. PR professionals have to write articles, craft press releases, and work on other written materials. As such, communication skills are a must. There is an element of building strong relationships with members of the media so that you can pitch positive stories to relevant journalists and media relations are an important part of handling media inquiries quickly and efficiently.
Many of these skills — like writing, communication, media strategy, and crisis response — are covered in a Bachelor of Communications, which can provide a solid foundation for entering the industry with confidence.
All those skills will stand you in good stead when a crisis does roll around because while there is much more to PR than crisis management, crisis communication and management are essential PR skills. It's a key part of protecting the brand's reputation and dealing with negative situations and stories.
Basic PR Tools and Techniques
PR professionals are in charge of writing press releases to announce news and events, whether it's for media outreach, public image, or brand messaging. It's also up to the PR team to create media kits to inform journalists to ensure correct media coverage. Social media marketing is a key part of the PR strategy, allowing brands to build a strong online presence to engage with the audience. Events are another basic tool PR teams use to organise strategic communications and reputation management.
The PR team is in charge of analysing target audiences to perfectly craft communications to maximise audience engagement, raising brand awareness, managing collaborations, handling influencer partnerships, monitoring and briefing the media, holding press conferences, and dealing with internal PR needs.
Measuring PR Effectiveness
Your brand reputation is only as strong as your PR effectiveness and there are several methods to track results. In addition to website traffic, you can also gauge the effectiveness of your PR strategy by looking at your social media analytics and how the media covers the brand. You can also look at conversion rates, backlinks, and audience reach, and analyse sentiment to get a clear indication of how successful your campaign has been. What's your click-through rate? How many impressions are you receiving? What about your share of voice? Are you meeting the short-term, mid-term, and long-term metrics?
It isn't sufficient to set a strategy and let it run its course, it requires constant evaluation and if the strategy isn't sufficient, it should be tweaked. It's an ongoing process, even if you're at the top of the industry.
Ethical Considerations in PR
Whether you're handling content creation, communication channels, or corporate communications, businesses have a corporate social responsibility to behave honestly, transparently, and ethically. What does that look like? In addition to honesty and transparency, handling things confidentially, behaving fairly, being responsible with media relations, legal compliance, and respect for stakeholders.
Final Thoughts
The key to creating an effective public relations strategy starts with gaining a profound understanding of your audience and clearly defining your goals. The PR team is in charge of crafting compelling messages and managing media relations while monitoring the effectiveness of the strategy. The only way to succeed in business is with a sound PR strategy and that means embracing technology to leverage every platform possible and staying agile to make tweaks to your strategy when necessary. It comes down to publicity, public perception, promotion, and persuasion.
You can learn more about the four Ps of PR by enrolling in a media and public relations course. Not only can you develop your skills, but you can enhance your curriculum vitae and level up your career.