Image by DoktorSpinn via Flickr
We are well into the new yeatr, but have you made plans to make it the best it can be? While many people make lists of New Year’s resolutions to find love, lose weight, or give up a few bad habits, you can make New Year’s resolutions for a healthier company as well. Here are a few ideas for making this year a great year for public relations.
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Get real.
Before you can make an improvement, you need to know exactly what the state of your company’s public relations is. If it is pretty dismal, which is not unusual for a small business, look at why that might be. If you have managed to garner media attention, look at how much of it was positive or negative and which publications and journalists gave you each. Last, look at angles and strategies that successfully earned you positive attention.
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Look at the competition.
Once you have evaluated your own year in public relations, do the same for a few of your closest competitors. What strategies are working for them? What journalists are giving them the positive press? What works for them will likely work just as well for you.
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Consider your brand.
The point of public relations is not merely to increase sales this week, although that is very important. You also need to promote your brand and get it out in the public eye as much as possible. This will help create long term sales and make you a fixture in your community. Further, you should consider your brand when choosing publications for your public relations efforts. You’ll have the best luck when you work with media that are read or viewed by your target audience.
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Take a journalists’ eye view.
Look at your business the way a journalist would. What is interesting and relevant about you? What angles make your story news? What is interesting to readers? If you can present your story so it is ready for the evening news, reporters and other media figures will be more likely to bite.
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Make specific goals.
Once you have a good idea of the public relations ‘market’ for your company, it is time to make goals for the next year. Decide what you are going to do and when. Create a public relations calendar to help you coordinate all of the activities you are planning. Putting your goals in writing and giving them a firm timeline will make it easy for you to see if you are on plan. Your goals should include at least the next six months
Reevaluate and revise. Set a date to examine how well your public relations goals are going. Are you able to keep up with your schedule? Are you getting the results you planned for? Three months is a good interval because you can begin to see the fruits of your efforts, but it is not so long that you have invested a huge amount of time or effort yet.
