An Introduction to Public Relations
“Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics” PR definition according to the Public Relations Society of America. The field of public relations (PR) is a broad area of work which is inviting to both communication and business majors alike. In this post, we are going to delve into the field of public relations and give a summary of the field.
The purpose of public relations (PR) is to help companies and organizations build their relationships to shape the way the public perceives them. Perception is key in the field of business because it builds a company’s credibility and reputation. Without both credibility and reputation, cannot be successful.
Reputation
Let’s start with reputation. For a company to know how to create a good reputation, they must first know who their publics are. A company’s publics can be a variety of investors, employees, partners, and other kinds of stakeholders. These publics need to see a company’s/brands positive image whether that is success, honest, ethical, or relevant. Once it is known who the public is, a company can cater the communication to them in a specific way.
Credibility
Credibility, as mentioned before is important for a company, organization, and brand. People tend to trust messages that come from a third party who is trustworthy. If a company builds its credibility to the point that a third party spreads the word about its credibility, this will be more effective than their own advertised content. Here is an example, let’s say that there is a donut shop trying to grow as a business. It would be more appealing to new customers for a third party (like a reviewer or customer) post or spread the positive words about the shop than them seeing the shop selling itself alone.
What the field of PR is like
Now that we have established the fundamentals of a company regarding public relations, here is what is it like to work the field of PR. There is a lot of writing in PR for things like: speeches, news/press releases, scripts, social media content, and fact sheets and much more. PR involves a lot of research which could contain sharing data, identifying trends and calculating numbers.
Next, one would have to be creative. Creativity is an important skill to possess because it helps a company create new ways to advertise their products or brand. The creative mind can also build new ways to grow a company, its messages, and ways in researching.
Finally, for you to be a PR professional, they need to know and use business practices. They must know the practices of marketing, finance, accounting, and business laws. This knowledge helps those in the field of PR to be able to work with others in related fields.
Overall, we can see how broad the field of public relations are by seeing all the knowledge, skills, and experiences. Public relations is best summarized like an engine, it may seem like one big piece of metal but once you open it up, you will see that there are a lot of parts to make it an engine.
Next week, we will delve into some bad examples of public relations. This is not only to show you that these examples are bad but to show you why there are bad.