What is Public Relations? A lot of the time many PR professionals get the core principles PR terrible wrong. At its core public relations is all about crafting the perfect story. Creating compelling stories for businesses and ensuring the businesses are able to relay values in the best way. The PR agency’s job is to convince the audience the story they have put forward is authentic and relatable. It is strategy communication between businesses and the public. In order to execute the principles of PR, you need to understand what is public relations all about. Firstly, it’s about creating a relationship between businesses and their audience by crafting the perfect story. It’s all about communication and how to strategically get a message across.
Protect the clients image.
A good PR professional will critically assess a company or brand in order to effectively tell their story. Your job as a PR professional is to protect the image of the brand or company you’re working with. Almost as if you are protecting the reputation of a friend. That is why it is good to create and maintain a good relationship with your clients. That way you can protect them to the best of your abilities.
Asses the values of the client.
As mentioned before you need to critically assess the organization you’re working with so you can tailor your story to suit the values of the organization. If this business is receiving bad media you can then assess what the best way to remedy this would be. You must shape the way the media and the public view the business, brand or organization. There are tools to help you shape your narrative which are press releases, events such as launches, market research and social media. These tools will help you effectively shape your narrative and send the right message across.
The difference between PR and advertising.
As a PR professional you must know the difference between public relations and advertising. This is very important because you cannot create or shape a narrative if you don;t understand your job description. Advertising consists of the promotion of products or service rather than focusing on the image of the organization, brand or business. Another difference is the price of PR largely differs from that of advertising. PR is undertaken with the assumption of it being maintained over a monthly retainer whereas advertising undertaken as a once of promotion.
Advertising is substantially more expensive than PR, and advertising needs to be done multiple times in order to influence consumers. Also advertising firms would be more inclined to sell you more ads so it would be in their best interest to tell businesses what they want to hear. PR agencies deal more with crises and media image so it’s their job to tell you the objective truth in order to do their job effectively.
Interpreting news.
It is also important for businesses to understand the importance of the news and how to interpret it before taking on an agency. It is important for them to understand the limitations that come with public relations. This means that agencies cannot get the organizations of the front cover of major publications with press material that isn’t newsworthy. Agencies are required to reach out to bloggers, journalists and editors with material that is considered newsworthy. Businesses should understand that it is up to the journalist, bloggers and editors to publish this material. So it is important to have realistic expectations when it comes to the PR agency. Lastly, in the world of public relation social media will not replace traditional media outlets simply because social media is not as credible or reputable as major news publications.