“Picture yourself in your mind’s eye as having already achieved this goal. See yourself doing the things you’ll be doing when you’ve reached your goal.” - Earl Nightingale

If you think PR is just about sending out press releases and securing media coverage, then you’d be wrong.  It is actually a carefully organised set of communications, with a clear understanding of why each piece of content or interaction matters.  

It's not enough to say that you're going to 'do PR.'

There has to be a reason behind what you do, so that you can then measure how effective a particular activity has been.  So, the very first thing you need to do is to know WHY you want to do PR, why you want to raise your profile, why you want to increase your publicity.  It’s really important to set this out right from the start.  Here are some questions to get you started. 

Do you want to:

• build brand awareness?  

• raise awareness of a new product? 

• improve public perception of your business?  

• become known as ‘the’ expert in your field?

Whatever it is, make sure that you define it at the start and tailor your PR activities to achieve your specific reason.

Types of activity to consider

Once you know your 'why', you can start putting together your PR strategy. Think about the types of PR activities which will help you reach your PR goals.  Do you need to write a press release?  What about social media?  What are you going to post and when? Or perhaps you want to write a blog post to add fresh content to your website and to share on your social channels.  They all have different purposes and you may want to use all three (and other types of communication) to get your message out to your target market.  The most important thing to remember is that when you have worked out your ‘why’, your PR activities and content must all work towards achieving it.

Who are you trying to reach?

It’s all well and good organising your strategy but it’s vital to understand your target audience.  Who do you want to see your content?  If they don’t see it because you’re posting in the wrong places or appearing in the wrong media, what’s the point?  You might be trying to target a few different markets, in which case you need to adjust your messaging to speak to them directly.

Measuring success

Successful PR is often difficult to quantify.  It can take time, so patience is absolutely required, but there are some things you can do.  

For instance, you can measure the amount of positive media coverage you get, the number of new leads or visitors to your website. You can also look at any increase in social media engagement. If you know your 'why' you can track how well you are doing. Of course, all of this is subject to change so don’t be frightened of adjusting your PR activities if something’s not working as well as you had hoped.

What you must remember, though, is that PR is all about building trust in you and your brand and building your reputation.  Having a steady ‘drip-drip’ of content and media is by far the best way of doing this.  You need to keep yourselves front and centre and in the mind’s eye of your target market who will get to know and like you as well as recognise you as reliable and credible.  Think of each piece of content as a stepping stone to your end goal.  

Whatever you do, don’t stop.  Keep going.  PR success doesn’t happen overnight.

If you would like to find out more about getting yourself in the media and increasing your visibility or if you are already doing PR and need specific help with strategy or writing a press release or identifying newsworthy stories, book a 'Pop Up PR' session.

Good luck!