What is PR?

I often get asked, ‘What is PR and how can it help my company?”

We all rely on our reputation in business to grow and profit.  Your customers, clients, new clients, employees, directors, investors, journalists are all interested in your companies reputation.

Focussing on your company’s reputation, assessing how you communicate your vision and carrying out activities to build a positive reputation can gives you a competitive edge.  If you aspire to be the best you should be sharing your story with your team, those invested in your company, your customers and the wider world.

I am interested in discovering your story.  What is the message you want to share?  Who you want to engage with and why you want to talk to them.

You can quickly share your story with the wider world in this digital age.  If you say nothing what opportunities are you missing?  Buying habits are changing and we all use our computers and mobiles to research products and companies.

Your story should be easy to find, easy to understand, have value and be people focused.  People buy from people.  What makes a story interesting are real people and how they make up the company or create the product or deal with adversity.

Strategy – What to do
I will discuss your vision and who you are targeting with your story.  Your story is written to meet the needs of each of your targets.  We then discuss the best way to get your message out there.  A public relations plan makes sure you communicate your vision to the right targets at the right time.

Tactics – How to it
Your story can be shared in a number of ways.  We decide which communications tools will be the best for your company.  I work with the media, social media engagement, print and image.  For more information please look at the ‘Services’ section of my website.

Measurability – How did we do
It is important that within the strategy the goals are mapped out and the outcomes are measured. We could look at target media hit, message output, awareness building, web traffic or PR reach.  When building reputation the goal is always business growth.  So a good measure of your story’s effectiveness is the enquiries and leads from each of your targets.

For more information on PR Measurability go to our ‘Measuring outcome is essential‘ page.

I will be asking folks today what they think PR is and posting comments here.
What do you think PR is?