Week 6: Strategies to Proactively Manage Activity

Public Relations Strategy

According to the reading, strategy is a key concept within the public relations field.

So, to start off, what is strategy? Oxford dictionary defines strategy as a plan designed to achieve a particular long-term aim / the art of planning and directing military activity in a war or battle.

And so, what is public relations? “Public Relations is about reputation – the result of what you do, what you say and what others say about you. PR is the discipline which looks after reputation, with the aim of earning understanding and support and influencing opinion and behaviour.” “It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organization and its publics.”

Strategic planning is crucial in public relations sector because of a few factors.

Firstly, it is too complement the overall business plan of an organization and then, identify ways in which Public relations can help achieve an organization's goals and objectives. Next is to focus and manage all the communications of an organization and also to o ensure maximum benefit from all public relations activities. It can also help educate those within an organisation about the value of Public Relations. So in this case, public relations is more than simply producing publicity material. An organization is only as strong as its reputation. The public relations function is to manage that reputation.

After doing some research, I learned that a good and useful Public Relations Strategy should answer a few questions, for instance: Where are we now?, Where do we want to be?, To whom are we talking (audiences)?, What do we want them to do?, Why do we want them to do it?, What are we going to say to them (messages)?, Where are we going to reach them?, When are we going to reach them?, Which techniques (methods) are we going to use?, How much are we going to spend?, What if there are unforeseen problems?, How did we do?.

I would like to highlight a few interesting parts - Firstly, it would be audiences! From my point of view, I realized that a public relations' practitioner's objective is nearly always about influencing someone to do something. Therefore, it makes sense to identify target audiences as it is a vital part of a strategy (if the people I'm talking too ain't the right person, I might as well forget it, right?). So, next up is to identify the smallest possible groupings of individuals for maximum effect. Now, having identified the audiences, they should be prioritized.

Next interesting part would be the timing part! Research shows that timing is very important because it link specific public relations activities to fixed events in an organization's corporate calendar and it makes no sense in issuing a news release days after an event.

For the part on unforeseen circumstances, I feel that potential problems should be identified and worked on. It is better to be safe than sorry and in this case, contingency planning is crucial! Developing a good and comprehensive strategy is vital as it leads to the success / failure of a designated campaign. Whao, seems like there really is quite a lot to do for a detailed public relations strategic plan!