Public relations is about getting the right publicity for your brand and creating and maintaining positive relationships. However, without clear strategies within your PR plan, you will not have the proper groundwork to effectively support the company’s goals.

PR Strategies can be broad. They refer back to the overarching concepts needed to reach your objective. Without outlined strategies, your PR plan won’t have any structure, and your actionable items will become a chaotic mess with no clear indication of how the tactics will help you reach your goals. A few areas where PR strategy comes into play include identifying stakeholders, nurturing and leveraging relationships, and setting and reaching measurable goals. Let’s dive in!

Identify Key Stakeholders Through Strategic Planning

Stakeholders include all the individuals, groups and organizations with a vested interest in the business. Identifying internal and external stakeholders, their interests and influence helps the team better determine a strategy that best aligns the company goals with stakeholder priorities.

(photo credit: techtarget)

When identifying stakeholders, you’ll quickly find that you can’t please everyone, but you can meet the needs of your key stakeholders. Here are a few questions to help identify the relationships that matter most to help narrow down your list.

1. Do they have a fundamental impact on your organization’s performance?
2. What do you want from them?
3. Do you want the relationship to grow?
4. Can you exist without them or can they be easily replaced?
5. Have they already been identified through another group or organization?

After going through these questions, narrow all your stakeholders to single out the few that matter most to your organization or campaign. You can then focus your public relations efforts on cultivating and maintaining these relationships.

Using Strategy to Nurture and Leverage Relationships

Public relations is about the nurturing and leveraging of relationships. If you want to get featured in an article, land an interview or get customers to spread the word, you need to do more than cold call/email the individual, group or organization.

Rapport needs to be built with the media before asking for favors. While you can and probably still will reach out to those who don’t know who you are, it’s far more likely that those you already have a relationship with will get back to you first.. Building and maintaining relationships can be overwhelming. However, after implementing a few relationship-nurturing strategies, you can easily make it part of your daily routine.

Intentional Networking

The first step to making networking less overwhelming is to be intentional about it. Focus on keeping in touch with a small group of people likely to add value to your development and future opportunities.

Use Technology To Your Advantage

These days just about everyone is on social. Liking or commenting on a recent post may be enough to put you on their radar. You can also send a quick message to them either via email or their preferred social platform to check in on them and let them know you’re still there.

Add Value to Your Network Community

People are far more responsive and willing to rub shoulders with those who have helped or provided value to them. If something comes across your desk that might benefit one of your contacts, pass it along.

Reaching Goals Through PR Strategy

Once you have determined your key stakeholders and nurtured these relationships, it’s time to use PR strategy to help reach your goals. Typically a public relations plan includes strategies to help manage, shape and maintain your public perception and image through positive relationships, enhanced credibility, and managed reputation.

Some PR strategies typically employed in goal planning include:

1. Goal Setting
2. Audience Identification
3. Message Development
4. Media Relations
5. Content Creation
6. Crisis Management
7. Monitoring and Mesurement
8. Adaptation and Improvement

While all of these strategies are important, which ones to use and how best to implement them depends on the goals of your campaign. Before diving head first into a new public relations plan review your past PR efforts and determine what worked and what went unaddressed and develop a plan that meets these needs so you can avoid repeating past mistakes and keep moving forward with processes you know work.

If you feel stuck building out your PR plan, Avista PR can help. Our team of experienced professionals can help you determine the best course of action to surpass your goals.

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