Developing a PR Strategy

It may seem that working on your company’s PR can be a time-consuming activity, however establishing a PR strategy from the outset could help you to reduce the associated workload to a mere 30 minutes a week. We do suggest however that your PR strategy is reviewed quarterly, which will take a little longer than 30 minutes, to ensure that it remains relevant and effective.

Your strategy will need to cover the following:

Firstly you need to focus on your plan, think about what calendar events, product launches or planned advertising should be taking place in your business over the next three months. Also if there are certain relevant publications for your business (perhaps local or industry related) check their website for a media pack or content plan; it may help you understand the topics they have planned for the following quarter and it usually includes their deadlines, which will also help with the planning of your PR strategy.

You then need to consider your associated responses to the events that appear on your plan, this will of course include your well thought out press releases. Remember however that journalists are wary of any businesses that supply press releases too often, thinking it will generate free advertising for their company. It is recommended that most businesses should plan a press release at least every three months but it is extremely important that your press release is deemed as ‘newsworthy’ by any publications that you approach. Planning your responses weeks, or months, ahead means that the time you then spend contacting journalists can be completed in a few quick clicks. Once a press release is distributed, it is important to also follow-up with social media posts and blogs on your website covering your story. You can add this to your plan or use a scheduling tool to complete them in advance.

Even though there are some PR events that cannot be planned for, for example releasing comments or press releases that relate to trending news, it should still be an area of PR that appears in your strategy. It is understandable that you do not want to spend your precious time constantly watching the news to keep up-to-date but there are certain industry tools that can be used free of charge to make sure you do not miss anything relevant. As part of your strategy, ensure you have activated these tools and briefly check them often. Firstly, ensure you have Google Alerts in place for key words that relate to your sector, product or business. It is also important to follow relevant journalists on social media, particularly Twitter, where you can quickly respond to events and make comments on behalf of your company. The objective would be to catch the journalist’s attention and get your business name into print.

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