Public Relations Beyond Media Coverage
Public relations is more than parties, press releases, golf tournaments, and tea at the country club. It’s also more than just earning media coverage.
Great PR professionals have continuously developed and leveraged ways to communicate directly with their critical audiences without depending on the news media and earned media coverage. Modern-era PR professionals are fortunate to have powerful tools like email, websites, and social media. In the past, they relied on newsletters and other channels and tools for direct-to-consumer and industry communications.
But limiting your public relations strategy and tactics to earned media coverage is risky because you’re limiting your corporate communications and visibility to external forces like newsroom decision-makers. If you’re restricting your PR strategy to strictly earned media, perhaps you should think more expansively about other ways to reach your audience.
PR, therefore, is a holistic suite of different strategies working together to create and maintain the best possible image of your brand and reputation with critical audiences. Expert PR firms specialize in helping organizations build a strong brand and great reputation by helping them earn awards and speaking opportunities, navigate crises, develop social media engagement and a community of followers, and much more.
Is PR more than just media coverage?
In short, yes, PR is more than just media coverage. While news media coverage is a valuable aspect of PR, it is just one of many tactics used to build and maintain relationships between a brand and its audience.
PR involves actively managing the communication and reputation of your organization. Core efforts should include:
Developing and executing strategies to enhance the image of the organization.
Proactively managing crises.
Building relationships with stakeholders.
Creating messaging that resonates with the target audience.
Media coverage is one of many ways PR professionals can choose to communicate with their audience. Other methods include events, sponsorships, community donations, influencer marketing, government relations, and more.
Overall, PR is a strategic communication function that aims to build and maintain mutually-beneficial relationships between the organization and its audience — media coverage is just one small part of that process.
We recently wrote about PR being more than media coverage: 10 PR Strategies Your Organization May Be Overlooking. PR strategies and tactics like those above can help your brand increase visibility, improve understanding of products or services, build trust among critical audiences, and increase engagement.
Creating a holistic, data-driven PR strategy
When combined with other tactics like earned media coverage, the arsenal that is modern PR can magnify your brand among an ocean of competitors. By relying on data-driven insights, you’ll gain greater returns with the right message to the right audience at the right time for maximum impact.
Jason Mudd
Source: Bizjournals
