Credibility

People are ever more skeptical of advertising. They tend to take advertisements with a grain of salt when it comes to believing the claims. However, people might be inclined to believe what they hear on radio, see on TV, or read in the paper. They come with the belief that if it runs in the news it must be true. This is because publicity is promotion masquerading as editorial, feature, or news.

Repetition

Advertising is repeatable while PR is not. The same advertisement can run repeatedly as many times as you want it. Conversely, with PR, a media source will run a given press release or cover a publicity event only once.

Public Relations Strategies

Below are some effective public relations strategies that will help guide you to success.

1. Know Your Audiences

For your message to reach the impact that you want, you will need to first understand and segment your audiences. Remember that not all audiences are the same. You can reach some through events, others through social media and yet others through networking events. Whatever content you generate should have your audiences in mind.

2. Get Organized

PR is achieved through a planned, sustained set of activities. You will need a calendar to organize your outreach activities. You must also start generating a contact list of media, opinion leaders, personalities, customers and likeminded companies to engage and collaborate with.

3. Think like a reporter

Your press release should be interesting and to the point with a sprinkle of insightful quotes in it. A brief company history at the end can help too and don’t forget to include your contact details.

The goal here is to ensnare the right editor on the right title with an interesting media^[1] release that grabs their attention. The more you can think like a reporter, the better it gets.

4. Do your Research

There are no substitutes for research and careful planning in your PR work. Research is an essential part of public relations management as it allows you to be strategic. This ensures the communication is specifically targeted to audiences who want, need, or care about the information. Study PR campaigns that you would like to take inspiration from. See what the competition is up to and think about outmaneuvering them.