Building A Strong Foundation For Effective PR
Public relations is like a building that serves as the headquarters of your business’s Positive Public Perception Division. Each floor is a department dedicated to a specific PR strategy. Its offices develop and implement the tactics that make that strategy successful, and help maintain or enhance your positive public perception.
Depending on your needs and budget, your PR HQ could be anything from a downtown high-rise to a two-story tiny house. But regardless of their size or sophistication, all PR efforts should be built on the same, rock-solid foundation we call the pillars of PR.
These key public relations pillars support and empower all PR strategies. They also keep the positive perception of your brand from shifting, degrading or even collapsing right in front of your customers, prospects, suppliers, investors and the media. Not a good look.
The Pillars of PR: Strategic Communication and Relationship Building
Strategic communication is always aligned with your mission and business goals It’s all about sending the right messages to the right people at the right time. That means identifying your key audiences, choosing the best channels to reach them and developing clear, consistent messaging that constantly enhances the public perception of your brand.
Relationship building creates and nurtures positive connections with your brand’s key stakeholders – customers, employees, business partners, investors and the community. Strong relationships build long-term trust, loyalty and advocacy, and create united, supportive allies that stand with your brand through good times and bad.
The Pillars of PR: Media Relations
Media relations focuses on establishing strong, positive, productive relationships with the media. An effective media relations strategy enables you to craft and pitch stories that resonate with media outlets and their audiences – the people you want to reach and influence. By leveraging these relationships, you can secure favorable coverage your brand and enhance its image in the public eye.
Solid media relations with key journalists and editors can amplify your message and reach a wider audience. It can significantly boost your brand’s visibility and credibility, shape public perceptions and drive interest, engagement and trust.
The Pillars of PR: Content Creation and Distribution
The world is completely inundated with “content” – everything from news, videos and podcasts to websites and blogs to countless social media posts and texts to emails, infographics and more. On the web, on the phone, on TV. Everywhere. All the time.
The only chance of reaching your target audience, let alone a broader audience that may want to learn about your brand, is to 1) make your content compelling, relevant and valuable enough to attract and focus their attention, and 2) distribute it on the channels they live on and rely on for credible, meaningful information.
High-quality content that reaches and resonates with your audiences grows your brand awareness, communicates your key messages and core values, builds your reputation and authority in your industry and marketplace, and ultimately helps attract and retain more loyal, long-term customers.
The Pillars of PR: Crisis Management
Whoever said there’s no such thing as bad PR never had to deal with a massive product recall, an environmental disaster, a plant closure, a government investigation or a single, scathing customer review that went viral overnight on social media.
It’s never a matter of if a crisis happens. It’s when. That’s why crisis management is perhaps the most critical of your public relations pillars. It’s a comprehensive strategy with detailed tactics that help you to minimize the internal and external impact of a crisis, and protect, repair and restore your brand’s reputation.
It includes developing crisis communication plans, training spokespeople and creating communications that help you quickly transition from reacting to a crisis to proactively and effectively managing and mitigating it. Effective crisis management relies on:
- Thorough preparation
- A swift, authoritative, strategic response
- Clear communications and actions that reduce potential damage and maintain the confidence and trust of the public, your employees, investors, and partners, and the media.
The importance of crisis management cannot be understated. It’s one of the public relation pillars that can literally save your reputation and your business.
The Pillars of PR: Audience Insights and Analysis
To make sure your messages are laser-focused, locked on target and delivered with maximum impact, you have to know who and where your audience is, and what makes them tick. The thorough research and analysis of audience behaviors, preferences, perceptions and expectations yield invaluable insights that support all other public relations pillars and their distinct strategies and tactics.
The goal is to know your audience better than they know themselves. Using surveys, focus groups, social media monitoring, data analytics and other advanced tools, you can tailor communications that anticipate and satisfy their curiosity, wants and needs. When this is done right, they will respond with deep, accurate insights that allow you to create personalized communications that exceed their expectations and increase engagement, interaction and conversion.
The Pillars of PR: Measurement and Evaluation
Think of measurement and evaluation as GPS for your PR endeavors. It shows you the best way to get from where you are to where you need to be. And it constantly updates your route based on changing conditions, unforeseen roadblocks, detours and even the occasional wrong turn.
Assessing and analyzing the performance of your PR strategies and tactics is the only way to accurately determine how effective they are and demonstrate their value to your business. This involves setting clear objectives for each campaign, tracking relevant, measurable KPIs and analyzing media coverage. These steps let enable you to calculate the return on your PR investment.
Unlike the other public relations pillars, this makes its biggest impact on your bottom line. Continuous evaluation allows you optimize strategies, change tactics, adjust budget allocations to support more successful efforts and ultimately maximize outcomes, including ROI. You always know for sure what’s working, what’s not and why. And you always know the best way to get to where you need to be.
The Pillars of PR: Ethics and Social Responsibility
You might not know it, but this one does more of the heavy lifting than the rest of the public relations pillars. Upholding high ethical standards and demonstrating social responsibility are the essence of a brand’s reputation.
Ethical practices, honesty, transparency and accountability are crucial to building and maintaining the integrity of your brand, as well as the trust of your customers, business partners, the community, and the media. This pillar represents your moral compass, the guiding principles that constantly compel you to do the right thing.
But it’s never enough to simply talk the talk. Your high standards must be clearly evident and operative in every aspect of your business. You must bring your principles to life in society and into the lives of your customers.
Social responsibility initiatives, such as community engagement, environmental sustainability and charitable giving, enhance your brand’s credibility and reputation by demonstrating your commitment to making a positive, meaningful impact. This resonates deeply with today’s socially conscious consumers who, more than ever, consider the values of a brand before considering a purchase.
These seven pillars of PR strategy create a solid foundation for long-term success in a diverse dynamic marketplace and mediascape. We can help you implement a strong PR strategy that builds lasting credibility, builds strong trust relationships, builds and protects your invaluable reputation, and ultimately, builds your bottom line. Contact us, today.
