Things To Know About Public Relations

 Things To Know About Public Relations

Do you know what public relations are and what people in public relations do? PR persuades, and the PR person works with your brand to convince an audience to further your idea, purchase your product, support your brand, enhance your reputation. 

PR people help create narratives to advance an agenda.  You can use PR to protect, enhance or build reputations through the media, social media, or self-produced communications.

Tools used to bring about the desired outcome include writing and distributing press releases; pitches sent to journalists in the hopes of getting your firm/business quoted. Another tool in the toolbelt is Creating and editing the firm’s messaging for public outreach and media relations. Content creation is an easy and quick way to gain recognition, and this can be done through writing articles, blogging, and being quoted by third-party outlets.

Your PR person may also be the go-to person in a crisis for messaging, block n tackle, social media, and other crisis public strategies.

What is news?

This is an important point. For law firms and other professional services, creating a story is the most common form of PR. The is firms looking to make the news want to promote an expert or point of view. Some of the methods they use to do this include bylined articles written for trade, legal, or business outlet publication, writing an Op-Ed about a controversial topic, using social media, blogging, tweeting and push out photos, videos, etc., content marketing on your website, and more.

 

Can social media replace traditional media? 

No. Social media can augment PR efforts and serve as an amplifier. However, social media is a very effective amplifier. With the rise of TikTok and the micro-influencer, people trust the positive and negative reviews coming from real people in real-time. TikTok has the power to sell out a product in a matter of minutes if a video goes viral about it and creates a frenzy around a brand or business. On the other hand, the micro-influencer is a small influencer whose engagement rate is high and whose opinion is trusted. Although these marketing strategies can be effective, they are much less valuable without the support of PR efforts.

Can you measure PR?

To some degree, but there is no exact science. You can create a model, spreadsheets, and estimates, but this is an emotionally charged subject in the PR industry.


Siena DiBene is a student at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo and an Intern at Elizabeth Lampert PR.