How do I start doing public relations for my business or organization?

  • First is to get clear on what you want to accomplish
  • Next you’ll need to develop a plan to get from where you are to where you want to be
  • You’ll need to keep your content current
  • It’s very important to go back and evaluate what you’ve implemented

Public Relations has so many streams that it can feel overwhelming when trying to figure out what to do first.

To get off to a good start, I like to refer people to what Simon Sinek says, which is: start with the why.

Why do you do what you do? Write it down, clarify it, and develop it into the foundation of your communications agenda. By extension, you’re working out who you’re serving and what you want to bring to them.

Then, you want to look at what your business or organisation is doing, or how you go about solving the problems your clients face in the marketplace. These are your steps, programs, services, products, or offers, and they’re what you’re going to be talking about. Each of them has a story, a start, a process, and a goal. You want to weave this into your content plan.

Next you’ll look at what content categories you want to focus on. For example, you might choose to have client successes, innovations, business successes, and goodwill, as content categories. These will guide you in creating your PR pieces, which we call assets.

On to the content creation part of the process… Here, you’re building out the pieces of content that you’re going to be putting out to your audience. These can include thought leadership, press releases, paid adverts, social media posts, newsletters and blogs. Remember, keep to the categories that you’ve identified before to avoid overwhelm or mission drift.

All your assets then need to be reflected in one place: Your PR Plan

Or you can call it your content calendar, depending on which media you’re more focused on. This document needs to be a living picture of what you’re planning to do, what you’ve done, as well as what has worked and what hasn’t.

Now all that’s left to do is implement and evaluate weekly.

If you want to learn more, send an inquiry to media@abpr.co.za or by completing the contact form on this website.

Happy PR

 

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

×