8 Principles of Effective Public Relations

Outside of your marketing efforts, public relations (PR) can be a great method for building your brand awareness with both the general public as well as targeted audiences. The first step in the process is to make sure you create a PR plan, but once that’s been drafted, it’s time to make sure your plan is effective. An effective PR plan will help your company manage the perceptions of its brand and corporate image while educating the public and the media about your company’s value.

Here are eight principles that you can incorporate to make sure your business’ PR plan is effective and successful.

1. Ethics

The central function of PR is to establish trust between your brand and your audience. Without trust, a brand’s image and reputation can deteriorate quickly. As a business, it is not enough to put up a poster about values or a mission statement on a wall and call it a day. Implementing those values and living by them speaks volumes about a brand and how it perceives its relationships with stakeholders.

To maintain that trust, educate your audience using compelling ideas and stories that will generate interest instead of sensational news or overstated facts. Trying to manipulate the public or fool reporters will only damage your reputation with media outlets, which can extend far beyond your local newspaper or magazine. Integrity is at the heart of good PR. Tell the truth and avoid evasiveness to maintain credibility in the eye of the media and your target audience. 

2. Communications

Writing is fundamental to public relations, and it’s arguably one of the most important skills in the profession. It would be very difficult (if not impossible) for the media to cover company news and developments if they lacked content to feed their press coverage.

Although PR professionals don’t necessarily need to be creative writers, they must be able to write clearly and concisely without corporate jargon. Any PR communications must be able to answer the “Five W’s” (who, what, where, when and why) and capture the attention of busy and often harried reporters.

Additionally, being able to listen closely and speak articulately are essential, since PR professionals often act as the eyes, ears and voices of their organizations. Interpersonal communication skills come in handy when managing public relations, whether it’s keeping media informed or following up on breaking news stories. It’s also important to know how and when to brief journalists, as well as how often to follow up, as both help increase the chances of your company being mentioned in the media.

3. Research

Once you’ve developed content that relates to current trends, case studies and industry studies, ensure your content’s accuracy by fact-checking it. It’s always helpful to have others review your content to make sure that quotes and statistics are attributed accurately and make sense within the context of the piece. Your proofreading should include a check for spelling and grammatical errors, as well as making sure the text adheres to your corporate style guide.

Because reporters often receive hundreds of pitches from organizations every day, they likely won’t have the time or patience to research whether you quoted someone correctly. But there are exceptions, and some will check your facts, so make sure that your pitch includes accurate information. Moreover, give your most current contact information to reporters so they can easily reach you if they have questions or need clarification.

4. Media and Investor Relations

A significant part of PR is building and maintaining strong relationships with third-party influencers. These include groups that cater to your target audience or handle incoming media requests for their respective clients. Investor relations (IR) groups have similar responsibilities to media relations (MR) groups, except IR professionals focus on maintaining positive relationships with entities, shareholders and investors who have a stake in the company’s financial stability.

Whether your company sells gardening tools or computer software, having a good understanding of third-party influencers in your industry will place you on the path to building relationships with national and local publications that write about your sector.

5. Promotion

Press releases, business memos, blog posts, fact sheets, speeches and interview guidelines as well as website and social media content are all promotional tools used to generate positive publicity. Content is still “king,” and without it, PR specialists would likely find it challenging to effectively promote their company’s products and services.

Besides print and digital content, consider additional methods for attracting press coverage, like speaking engagements at trade shows or exhibiting at conferences and other events. Often, journalists will interview executives, analysts and other industry experts for quotes about current trends, new products and services, or leadership transitions.

6. Crisis Management

Unfortunately, many companies find themselves ill-prepared to deal with negative publicity. Such publicity can result from an environmental disaster, product recall, white-collar crime or other public scandal. Before launching a PR campaign, create a document that will outline processes in the event of an unexpected crisis. When developing yourcrisis management template, be sure it answers the following questions:

•           Under what conditions, factors, context, etc. are we operating the PR campaign?

•           Which officer is explicitly authorized to speak on behalf of the company?

•           What are some of the issues that could transform into a crisis?

•           What does failure look like? Will the brand be able to bounce back quickly, or will recovery be slow and painful?

Companies that answer these questions ahead of time can effectively minimize the damage of a PR campaign gone wrong while salvaging their brand image and bottom line.

7. Patience and Timing

While the distribution of a press release can be planned weeks ahead of time, PR professionals must also be prepared to draft press releases at a moment’s notice in the event of breaking news, corporate scandals and emergencies.

PR is meant to spur the independent creation of content without paying for it. This is known as “earned media” and differs from “paidmedia,” which is publicity gained through paid advertising. Since it takes time to develop relationships based on mutual trust, building valuable relationships with reporters can take time. Companies usually have little control over whether a media outlet, blogger or other news station will report their story.

To increase your chances of publishing a story that will be newsworthy, coordinate the timing of press releases with new product announcements and other major company developments. Do this well in advance, and coordinate with your marketing team to ensure the timing works with your PR campaign’s objectives.

8. Evaluation and Monitoring

Before you move on to the next PR campaign, you need to know if the last campaign was both money and time well-spent. Brand and reputational mentions (i.e. the number of times your company and product’s name show up in media publications) is one way to determine whether your PR efforts were a worthwhile investment. Conversely, figuring out if your company is getting negative press or being mistaken for another organization will signal a need to react and address the issue quickly.

Furthermore, determine if your PR activities are creating measurable changes in public attitudes, opinions and company sales. Determine what the return on investment from your PR efforts is. Have you successfully resolved any new issues that have come up? Is your company logo more easily recognized and your products better known? Establishingmetrics to measure your campaign’s success will help guide you when deciding where to spend future PR dollars.