Tag: Communication

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Wrapping Things Up

We have covered a wide array of topics in this blog over the last few months. Anything and everything PR related, we talked about it. From core PR fundamentals to Crisis Communication to PR for many different areas of business and everything in between. Our intention was to educate you and give you a resource that you can look back on whenever you need to, and we hope you will be able to utilize our articles in your future endeavors.

Public Relations is essential to every area of business. It is the frontline of your company. Reaching your audience, branding to them, social media practices, dealing with crisis and legal issues and many more areas; this is the part of the business that everyone will see. That is why it is so important, and we hope that we conveyed that to you through all of our previous blog posts.

PR is for everyone. It is something that everyone should have at least some knowledge in, not only the Marketing and Public Relations majors but also any major that interacts with business or communication. In the ever-changing world of business, you never know what will come up or what you will have to do. Things like knowing who your audience is and what they want will not only help you market to them but also help you understand what they need and want. Being able to stay on brand with your company while interacting online and otherwise is another area that everyone can benefit from.

All of this information is great, but how do these concepts translate over to the real-world? We covered that for you. Case studies of real business problems can only help with your understanding. Case studies of concepts, social media, and crisis situations cover some of the biggest areas of Public Relations and we have that resource for you.

Lastly, thank you to all who have read and interacted with our blogs. We appreciate all of you who use us as a resource. We learned just as much from this as we hope you did. If you have any Public Relations questions or want to read our other blogs, don’t hesitate to check out our Blog Home Page! We covered a multitude of topics and probably have an answer to the questions you have. Thank you again from all the PR Warriors and we hope you learned something; we know we did.

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Sports PR

If you are a sports fan or at least watch an occasional game, you’ll understand what I mean when I say that different sports franchises have very unique fan bases that they cater to. Whether you’re watching a Big 10 conference college football game or a Dodgers-Padres series from Major League Baseball, every fan base contributes a unique atmosphere to each game-day experience. 

The reality is, without their fan bases, sports franchises would not exist. Loyal and die-hard fans will stick by their team through the highs and lows of exhilarating victories and crushing defeats. One question remains to be answered though, how does a fan base react when their team does something that they don’t agree with and how does the franchise respond to their fanbase’s frustration?

My analysis is going to take you overseas to Europe where 12 of the biggest football clubs in European football dealt with somewhat of a crisis. Various clubs from the English Premier League, Spanish La Liga, and the Italian Serie A attempted to form a break away competition called the European Super League to try and take attention away from the UEFA Champions League. Many fans and commentators saw this as an attempt by rich clubs to simply make more money and take attention away from the Champions League, which is regarded as the highest level of competition in European football. The main issue fans had with the proposed Super League is that it would effectively end the principle of qualification every season, which the Champions League was built on. Every season, the Champions League has rearranged groups of clubs based on whoever qualified for that season. The Super League wanted to keep the same teams every season in a very exclusive manner that kills competition for league spots. 

Reaction from the various club’s fan bases was nearly unanimous in condemnation of the idea mainly because the league would attempt to limit competition for qualification, promotion, and relegation, which are all key elements of European football. It only took a matter of two days for plans to completely change course once fans reacted. 

One club after another, each team that was supposedly involved as a “founding member” of the European Super League pulled out of the proposition due to negative backlash from their fan base and the sports world as a whole. Most of the clubs issued some kind of apology statement to their fans to try and fix any ill-will that was being harbored. 

These European clubs realized that their proposed business expansion did not please their fans and decided to respond accordingly by pulling out of the proposed Super League. This story goes to show just how important public relations are in the sports world because one wrong decision can leave a long-lasting wound amongst supporters. Most of these clubs were able to backtrack their decision to join the breakaway league, but some fans may still have a bitter taste in their mouth. 

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The Value of Planning

Project Planning and Delivery: 6 Steps to Get Work Done Faster - Blog | Planview

Warren Buffett, successful business tycoon, once said, “Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” This quote focuses on the value of planning because motivated communicators take the time to strategically plan for themselves and others. Planning is the foundation that helps us project our objectives and achieve our goals. There are many important resources that discuss the value of planning, but we want to focus on Presspage, a strategy and planning resource that has good tips to guide us through the steps of a good plan.

This website is selling a service, but we’re not profiting from sharing it. However, it does have great information for determining the important elements of communication planning. We might not always have to go into grave detail about each of these elements in every plan, but they can help keep us on track to meet our goals. This website goes into detail of each step, in hopes to help you create an organized method of planning.

Why should you care about planning?

When we have a planning process, we’re better equipped to prepare for the future. Planning helps us foresee any calculated mishaps. Of course, we’re going to have to deal with surprises, but we can at least have an action plan if something does go wrong. Planning also teaches us how we can stay on schedule. Just like we have deadlines in school, we’re going to have deadlines in the workplace as well.

We’ll now guide you through the step by step process of planning.

Step 1

The foundation of our plan starts with the situation, which explains exactly why we’re planning in the first place. We wrote this blog in order to inform COM students about the value of Public Relations topics.

Step 2

The next step is understanding our audience, which has the biggest retention for COM students. Whether we’re writing or speaking, we always have to think about our audience. We even planned this blog with a specific audience in mind.

Step 3

Once you’ve figured out the first two elements, you can move on to your goals & objectives. Goals are what you want to accomplish overall, and objectives are specific outcomes that utilize the SMART method – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, & Time-bound. When we planned to promote our blog, one of our goals was to create awareness for Public Relations. Our specific objective would be to get 15-20 engagements on our blog over the semester.

Step 4

We can then use strategies to achieve our objectives and tactics to support the strategies. Essentially, strategies explain why, and tactics explain how. One strategy for our blog promotion was to use print media to attract students to interact with our blog. The specific tactic was to post flyers in buildings on campus.

Step 5

Another element is the calendar/timetable, which details specific tasks and due dates for when we want to achieve the goals and objectives of our plan. Our blog calendar focuses on what each person is doing and when it’s due. Each blog posted was specifically planned.

Step 6

Budgets are another element of plans but depending on the situation they won’t always be necessary. This part of the plan ensures that you have all the required resources for achieving your goals. If we were to have a budget for this blog, it might be focused towards our social media strategies where we would possibly buy paid advertisements.

Step 7

The final element is evaluation. Once we’ve completed our plan, this step will tell us how successful we were in achieving our objectives. At the end of the semester, we intend to evaluate the success of our blog by reflecting the objectives of our plan.

Lasting Thoughts

Overall, it’s important to be aware of the resources we can utilized while planning for assignments, weekend plans, and especially for our futures. If we can understand how to plan well, we are setting ourselves up for success in all aspects of our lives. Thoughtful and well-researched planning strategies are invaluable to our roles as communication professionals.

Next week, we will dive into a case study on the topics of audiences/publics, branding, and planning. This case study will lay out exactly how these three PR topics work well together in any organization.