- Attention Seeker
- Posts
- The Road to PR Success
The Road to PR Success
A PR Plan involves setting achievable goals, defining specific and measurable objectives with deadlines, creating overall strategies to meet those objectives, and implementing actionable tactics to execute those strategies effectively.
Keren Speck
July 15, 2024
What's in store for this edition:
Road Map to PR Success
A PR Plan
Do you realize you are starting to be a real PR pro now? I’m so excited for you to implement that plan and grow your business through public relations. By putting together goals, objectives, strategies, and tactics - violá - you have a PR Plan.
Goals
Set yourself up for success by making achievable goals. Goals are specific outcomes that we want to see from all of our work.
Examples of goals:
Raise awareness.
Change opinions.
Get people to advocate for you.
Increase customer satisfaction.
Build relationships with your publics.
Objectives
Specific, measurable targets with deadlines that outline the desired outcome and milestones that we have to support our goals. Objectives provide clarity and focus, clear direction for your PR activities.
Examples of objectives:
Increased media mentions from publications, journalists, or influencers by X% in Y months.
Social media engagement increase by X% by Y months.
See X% increase of Website Traffic.
Strategies
This is the overall plan that we create to achieve our goals.
Strategies are how to accomplish the objective, and the direction of tactics guides our approach.
💫 Pro Tip: Use action verbs, like create, develop, target, promote. Don’t use the word “to” - often used in objectives; “by” is used for tactics.
Examples of Strategies:
Create pitches for selected journalists, bloggers, and podcasters.
Use a press release announcing a new product.
Partner with influencers.
Participate in community or industry events.
Develop your relationship with a journalist.
Tactics
What you’d do to meet your objective and execute strategies.
These are specific actionable items. They are the practical things we do to make the plan work. Think tools and techniques. This is where you as a small business owner will thrive. No one has the zeal and passion for your business like you do.
💫 Pro Tip: When writing your tactics you’ll notice you use verbs like implement, utilize, add, contact, or participate. You’ll see you have measurable outcomes. They are often paired with objectives.
Examples of Tactics:
Create a podcast one-sheet and contact 15 podcasters by next Wednesday.
Develop a pitch and supporting materials for journalists by next Friday.
Send a sample of product to a reporter on this specific date.
Have giveaways with discount codes for influencers to launch by this specific date.
Use social media polls to vote on a favorite.
🧩 Puzzle Solved:
Let’s illustrate, think of the goal as the endpoint on the map, objectives as what you want to achieve when you get to the endpoint, strategies as the direction the road takes, and tactics are what you do on the road.
“To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.”
Do this now: Write down your goal, objective, strategies and tactics. Don’t worry if they blend, it is even hard for seasoned professionals to get it correct all the time. Goals should be the easiest to write down. Don’t over think this. Use it as a starting point. Refine it later. Just get it down now!
What goals do I have?
____________________________________What are my objectives?
____________________________________Strategy and Tactics ideas:
____________________________________
Next episode: What is a press release and do I really need one?
Term to Learn
KPI stands for Key Performance Indicator which can be used to measure the success of a PR campaign. In the end, it all comes down to what your goals are. For instance, you can measure media mentions or the prominence of your mentions, an example of earned media. You can also measure the effectiveness of your PR efforts through web or blog traffic.
FAQ
Q: PR people can make a story out of anything, right?
A: There are no magicians here. You can’t conjure up a story out of nothing. That being said, sometimes stories can be re-framed, that is told in a different light.
It’s vital to know whether what you want to communicate is newsworthy or not. It is a waste of money and time if you pitch something with no news value, and it can hurt your relationships with the media.
Not everything is newsworthy, and that’s ok. When you have a story that truly is, it will shine.
Get PR techniques from recent news.
Newsworthy
Are preset questions okay?
Andrea Lawful-Sanders, a Philadelphia radio host who interviewed Joe Biden post-debate, has resigned after acknowledging using preset questions provided by Biden’s campaign.
What does this have to do with you?
First, if we want to learn how to interact with a journalist, you need to understand what things to not ask them.
If, and that’s a big IF, somehow you get to see a preview of an article or interview, don’t ask to change anything, unless it’s a glaring, factual error. (i.e. name misspelling, incorrect time in business, etc.) NEVER, EVER ask to change something just because you don’t like the way you come off, or you don’t like the title of an article.
Secondly, don’t send over preset questions, unless you were asked. You can send over facts and figures, studies, photographs, head shots, pitches, press releases. A journalist will use this information to come up with the questions they want to ask, and tell the story the way they want to. That’s why it is called free press.
💫 Pro Tip: Reporters will love you even more if you share content such as high quality images, videos, graphics, hashtags, product descriptions and links to your owned media. You can provide to them directly or make them available on your website’s newsroom.
✍️ Key PR Takeaway: It can hurt to ask…the wrong questions, since it can hurt the relationships you worked hard to build.
Learn from others.
0% Cool : 100% Cringe
No warm welcome for tourists in Barcelona 🔫
Beware, if your heading to Barcelona you might not be impressed with the welcome.
Thousand of protestors are taking part in a demonstration against tourism in this coastal city, saying that visitors are driving up housing cost.
I can’t help but wonder how uncomfortable I would be if I was a tourist there.
These types of whiny protests are blaming tourists for complex issues that they have no control over, and it is not a good look for the people of Barcelona or the city itself.
✍️ Key PR Takeaway: Hopefully the tourism board, and city officials can bring back the reputation of this country’s culture of hospitality to this city and solve the problems that are causing these protests before their reputation is varnished for good.
Useful PR Resources.
🧰 TOOLKIT
Adobe Firefly - AI Image Generator
I don’t know about you, but I don’t have the time or skills to create amazing graphics or images. Enter Firefly AI Image Generator. While I DON’T recommend using AI to write pitches, emails or press releases, I do like to use it for research and in this case for generating images of sunglasses. 🕶️
Firefly is in the Adobe creative apps lineup, an their myriad of plans can be overwhelming and overpriced for what you need.
For $9.99 a month, the Photography (20GB) plan will give you access to Photoshop on desktop and iPad, Adobe Express, Lightroom, Lightroom Classic, , and 20GB of cloud storage and 100 monthly Firefly credits. These are super powerful tools that help with designing, custom graphics, and more.
The Deal. This 20GB plan offers a lot of value for under $10, but can be a little hard to find… since, strangely it is not listed in the ‘All’ section, rather only under the ‘Photo’ plans. Also available, for double the price, you can get 1TB of storage and 500 Firefly credits.
FYI: These are just my personal recommendations. They aren’t sponsoring me to recommend these products, but I do get credit when people use the link.
Attention Seeker of the Week
Freddles getting ready for the day
Mr. Freddles, a 2.5 year old boy is the king of attention. This Dachshund, when he has a play date, goes straight for the toys of the guest, grabs a toy, runs outside and ignores the friend. Life begins and ends with toys. One track mind, toys first, friendship later. That’s OK, Mr. Freddles, we all still love you!
I want to see your fluffy attention seeker. Send me a picture of your fur baby and let the world see the cuteness!
Until next week, keep your shades on and stay cool.
Your fellow Seeker,
Keren
🕶️
Reply