What exactly are the five key public relations functions?
This article will discuss what are the five key public relations functions as they relate to public relations.
For the purposes of this article, the five key PR functions we’ll discuss are:
Whether you’re a publicist looking to expand your practice or a prospective client interested in learning exactly what a publicity firm or publicist can help you with, it can be very helpful to understand the standard five key functions of public relations.
Generally speaking, a publicity firm or agency is going to focus on just a few of these five. It’s not unusual for a firm to actually only focus on one of the five key functions, for that matter.
By learning about the 5 functions of public relations you may better understand exactly what your need is a prospective client are or understand what you need to improve as a practicing PR professional.
Public relations is a whole communication discipline that seeks to communicate the most important elements of a person, business, brand, or movement.
Something we hear a lot at Promo Panda is how social media is the most effective way to build and maintain relationships with customers, clients, and communities.
While social media is a great way to communicate your ideal message to a target audience, the reality is that it’s actually just one way of doing so. Something many professionals overlook is that there are other fantastic (and in some cases, imperative) means of improving their communications.
By all means, yes, keep track of all relevant social media platforms in order to communicate directly with your audience and maintain relationships.
You need to continuously adapt, learn, grow and improve your ability to communicate on social media, too.
General PR is very straightforward – once you’ve identified your audience, always be aware of how you interact with them.
Whether your channel of communication is primarily online, over the phone, over lunch, at events, or even through e-mail, simple awareness that every message and conversation counts will allow you to ensure consistency in your messaging.
The key with general public relations is to avoid overthinking it – whether you’re a Fortune 500 company or a local small business, you’re going to have systems in place to communicate with your customers.
Simple awareness can transform your preferred lines of communication into effective messaging and branding tools.
At Promo Panda, we firmly believe that one of the most effective ways to build relationships is by getting personal with ‘the media.’
Developing personal connections with media professionals who may be interested in your story is key to getting your story told!
Establishing and maintaining relationships with both local and national media is also vital to your business and brand image and to the overall success of your organization.
Communicating with the media is essential in order to get your voice and story heard, and to drive local and national coverage and engagement.
But why exactly is this the case?
There’s a reason why earned media is one of the fastest-growing kinds of marketing. Consumers are often tuning out commercials or sponsored media, or having technologies to stop them.
They also trust earned media messaging much more than brand advertising or owned media.
As you may recall, earned media is simply word-of-mouth marketing.
Customers, your audience, or industry influencers may all provide feedback. If you aren’t using earned media in your marketing plan right now, here are some stats to back up this claim:
What do these stats tell us?
Marketing tactics like advertising are great, as is influencer marketing on all the major social platforms. But there is still lots of power in every day “word-of-mouth” discussions.
Getting a journalist or blogger to tell your story in a publication that’s relevant to your target audience is about as close to digital word-of-mouth marketing that you can get.
Digital writers and journalists can be the inception point for on-brand messaging.
Since even short writeups can make the rounds on social media AND be easily visible in search engines, earned media and the relationships you need to get it should never be overlooked!
Executive engagement is defined as the degree of enthusiasm and satisfaction with a public relations firm’s work that stems from the engagement of the public relations agency’s senior management.
We spend a large amount of time at the PR agency developing and planning work with our clients.
This should lead to a good working relationship with the client, resulting in a level of understanding and flexibility in the work that needs to be done.
However, if we do not do our best to develop a healthy and happy working relationship with the client and the senior executives at the client organization, it can be very challenging for us to build effective public relations campaigns.
Many PR firms are keen to work with clients to educate the market on a corporate or client’s business.
One way to build trust and confidence with the CEO of the organization and with the CEO’s key advisors, is to become an advisor to their CEO, because we can potentially have the opportunity to help the CEO think about their strategy, thinking, and issues.
Working directly with senior management is extremely valuable in building and maintaining a strong relationship with the CEO and his or her key advisors.
As I have discussed in other articles, we need to be aware of what the CEO expects from our company and how we should act to meet that expectation.
We should keep in mind that the PR strategy that a client approves will be in the best interest of the CEO and key advisors.
A CEO and their advisors may have very different ideas about what they want, or the way they want their business to be perceived in the market, but if we do not do a good job managing the client’s expectations and the PR strategy, it is likely that the client will not be happy with our work.
At the very least, this will be a distraction from our top priority of improving the client’s relationship with the public, and the business itself.
What is SEO and why is it important? Let me explain.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is an important aspect of online marketing which has a direct impact on a business’s brand recognition and revenue.
SEO is SO important, in fact, that we’ve built an entire business that helps thousands of people improve searchability for themselves and their businesses.
By promoting a business online, SEO helps raise a company’s visibility in the online market and helps it get more targeted and appropriate traffic to its website.
The underlying concept of SEO is the idea that a business should strive to rank in the top positions in Google when someone searches for relevant keywords. Google has a ranked system in place which ranks the websites on the basis of a set of different attributes. The main premise is that if a business advertises on a certain search engine then the business will rank higher than other companies.
According to statistics, around 90 percent of searches are made on Google which is a strong argument for the importance of SEO in any business’s online marketing strategy. There is, of course, a lot more to it than that, but the numbers alone are really worth considering.
SEO is a powerful marketing tool that boosts your business’s online visibility, improves web traffic and rankings, and increases traffic to your website. The organic search traffic to a business’s website is mainly generated through a single, keyword search that is followed by a page being returned by the search engine that displays the webpage, keywords included.
By targeting the keywords in the page that you want to show to the search engine crawlers, the search engine will attempt to pull in pages with similar content from different domains. The more pages you show to the search engine the higher chance you have of ranking higher in the search engine’s results.
If you want your website to rank high in Google and generate more traffic, it’s vital that you apply some smart SEO techniques to your website. For instance, by placing an appropriate meta tag on the page, the page will be crawled by the search engine.
This makes your website visible to anyone using a search engine. Considering that there are billions of search engine queries daily, you’re bound to get a piece of the pie!
It is important that the experts hired by public relations firms are well-trained and educated in the field of communications. I have a great deal of respect for community relations analysts and they make up an important group within the greater public relations industry.
Your company should have a clear purpose and mission statement and know what it wants to achieve in its relationship with the local community.
Local community relations companies often possess a vast knowledge of the community.
This is especially true when they engage a relationship with a municipal government, school district, non-profit agency, or local organization.
These public relations firms have taken the time to learn about the area they serve and are knowledgeable on the local issues and concerns facing the community.
They will often know where to direct your employees when they are engaged with public relations in the community.
A Community Relations Analyst will also know how to work within their specific audience.
When engaged with a municipal government or a school district, the municipal government’s people will understand the needs of the community and will make recommendations to the school district on how to best serve the community.
This article will discuss what is Leading Corporate Social Responsibility in public relations as it relates to public relations practitioners.
It will explore how corporate social responsibility has evolved over time in public relations to align with companies’ missions, vision, values, and overall corporate goals.
The main focus will be on the kinds of activities that different companies engage in and the types of PR strategies they engage in to advance their CSR goals.
It’s important for public relations professionals to be involved in the creation of organizations’ CSR goals, but what exactly does CSR mean to these professionals? It is one of the most well-known and oft-asked questions from PR professionals.
People often consider how companies approach CSR to be, “What is the purpose?” (both corporate and non-profit). CSR is a combination of social responsibility and corporate responsibility.
These two concepts are often confused and are not mutually exclusive. However, to define these terms, it’s important to know why companies do what they do.
First and foremost, CSR is a responsibility of all companies.
For companies that are not directly involved in the production of goods and services, then CSR is a responsibility of the organizations that they represent.
As a result, many companies approach CSR with the needs of their stakeholders (customers, shareholders, employees, and the general public) in mind.
These stakeholders have demands that are often not easily satisfied by the company’s existing business strategy.
There are two primary concepts to CSR: the CSR movement and Corporate Social Responsibility. CSR movement refers to the movement of companies towards proactive corporate responsibility.
Corporations are using their expertise to address social issues that are both large and small, and are also using their financial resources to improve lives.
For example, using its investment to improve services and expand opportunities for low-income students, such as providing students with the funds to apply for and pay for
As a public relations professional, you should be very engaged with your clients and the public in general. To be a good PR professional, you have to be highly aware of all aspects of your customer’s lives and tailor your communications to your customer’s needs.
As a PR professional, you should also be completely engaged with yourself as an individual. It is not enough to merely represent the public in which you work, but to also have a life of your own.
For PR professionals, that means personal and spiritual self-improvement, because you will be using your PR skills on behalf of others.
Are you looking for a good public relations company in Hong Kong? You may want to consider these top rated public relations agencies in Hong Kong.
Personal engagement is taking the time to really get to know your customer. You do this through reading your client’s blogs and other information about them.
You then use this information to offer your marketing communications which are tailored to your client. This personal interaction also means becoming part of your client’s circle of friends and family.
The more active you are in social media, the more you will be engaged.
As a PR professional, you will not only need to create and edit your client’s communications, you will also need to maintain a wide network of friends and family to share their information with.
