It’s a fast moving sector and we know that for many in-house marketers and PR professionals, staying on top of the latest techniques and trends can be tricky.
To help out you busy executives, we’ve pulled together some quick fire and easy to implement tips to keep your PR flying high and ensuring you’re getting the right message to the right people at the right time.
1. DITCH AVE
Hang your head in shame if you or your agency still measure your Public Relations success on a perceived value of the media coverage you’ve achieved, based on the advertising value of single column centimetres!
The CIPR and PR Week finally both outlawed the use of this metric in their Awards schemes a couple of years ago and so should you.
Think instead about what the activity is actually setting out to achieve and don’t be wooly. A campaign just designed to ‘increase awareness’ is not strategically robust and wont impress the C Suite.
Although not perfect, you will need to work at them to ensure they’re relevant and credible, the PR measurement toolkit from AMEC is a good starting point to rethink your PR measurement.
2. DON’T RUSH TO TACTICS
Even the most experienced communications professionals can slip on this potential banana skin. You soak up a brief or think about what the objectives of a business issue are and instinctively you start to think of solutions that you know would work. Or you think they would. More than likely these are tactical and may not fit into the overall business vision or communications strategy.
Take adequate time to plan and commit 10% of your overall budget to research – if you don’t know what your stakeholders currently think, how can you measure the REAL impact your campaign has achieved?
Ask yourself Why? three times before committing to any ideas.
ps if you need to know the INGENIOUS way to peel a banana, watch this:
3. AVOID SILOS
There’s nothing more frustrating than PR being the afterthought of a campaign be it marketing or customer relations. The impact of a brand’s reputation washes right down to the bottom line and your PR team will be able to add significant strategic counsel to your planning that may shape your thinking in a different direction.
Only bringing them in at the eleventh hour to ‘amplify our advertising’ or earn us some ‘free advertising space’ diminishes your efforts and devalues the impact great PR could be having for your business.
Agree a working formula that established the best ways of sharing information without being cumbersome to ensure the business is polishing all the tools in its kit.
4. SET THE RULES FOR ‘ALWAYS ON’ COMMS
We all know that two things have radically changed our jobs forever. The rise and rise of the smartphone and the omnipresence of social media.
Where once we sought out the news..
Now it comes to us. And citizen journalists are creating the news as it happens.
Set up your protocols now about who’s listening and responding out of hours to your brand conversations. Don’t leave it until the next day or it could be too late. PR professionals used to talk about having two hours before an issue turned into a crisis. In today’s world, that can be as little as twenty minutes!
5. USE DASHBOARDS
Feel like you’re slowly drowning in data and struggling to make any sense of the innumerable pieces of information at your fingertips?
We know the feeling but help is at hand.
Make life easy and dashboard the key information you need on a daily or weekly basis. Most of the tools you’re using – or should be using (see our guide to PR tools and content marketing tools) – have handy API access so you can automate pulling out the relevant information and put it all into one easy to use platform.
Have your own customised platform built or simply use an off the shelf product such as https://ducksboard.com/, you’ll never look back
6. CONDUCT AN AUDIT, NOW
When did you last check that your brand messages were in alignment to your current business vision and plan?
Are you sending mixed message to your customers on your own media platforms?
With so many new channels spotting up it can feel like a never ending job to keep them upto date.
Having three company wide agreed overarching key messages will give you clarity and consistency.
Then, keeping a master database of the ‘owned’ channels you use will help you to keep a track on those used less frequently to check they’re on track.
Run some analysis of your content by producing a word cloud to visualise the stories you’ve been telling. Do these match your key messages? Are they on brand? If not, fix it fast!
7. TRY SOMETHING NEW
You know the adage, “if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.??? so mix it up a little.
We can all be guilty of falling into a rut occasionally so challenge yourself to shake things up a little.
From approaching your daily To Do list from a new angle, to stepping outside of your comfort zone to taking on a new responsibility or coming up with some fresh ideas for your work.
Just commit to putting aside any Red Light thinking that may hold you back.
You’ll be liberated and it may just transform your working routine or even your next campaign.
Let us know what tips you’d like to share to help keep PR’s focused, on track and achieving amazing results by commenting below.
If you need any advice on implementing these ideas, why not call Rick or Jane on 0161 839 1986?
