Strategic public relations is highly valuable as one of the main problems with PR practitioners is that they do not understand business.
The main point I picked up from the chapter is the importance of the 5 stages of the strategic process which are as follows:
The first parts of building the framework for your strategic plan is your vision and mission statements as they define what you are doing and where you are going. The vision statement is used to describe the future state of the organisation at a selected time. ‘Gap analysis’ is used to compare this to the current position of the organisation. The mission statement is then used to close the gap between the unsatisfactory present and the more perfect future. A public relations vision and mission statement is then created which is directly applicable to the PR aims and objectives of the organisation.
KPI’s are key performance indicators and are measureable indicators of the organisations progress towards achievement what they set out to do in their mission statement. KPI’s may only be suitable for more quantifiable areas of public relations and other more qualitative evaluation techniques may need to be used.
Budgeting is the next step and is for coordinating resources and expenses over a period of time by assigning costs to goals and objectives for specific activities.
Once a strategic plan has been written and all steps covered, a plan needs to be implemented through thorough scheduling.
Tactics relate back to achieving the strategic outcome. Controlled tactics are those which the PR practitioner has control over every aspect of the process and include tactics such as posters, direct mail and brochures. Uncontrolled tactics are those which can be altered or even blocked and include such tactics as media relations or a public meeting.
Things that need to be considered when selecting tactics include the target audience, their appropriateness as the vehicle for the message , their advantages and disadvantages and the available budget.
This weeks learning builds upon previous leaning about public relations in the area of tactics which I had previously studied for the annotated bibliography. The method and effectiveness of implementing strategic public relations is an area I had not yet studied but I now see the importance.
3 comments:
I totally agree that there is a lot to consider when selecting tactics to use in public relations. Target audience, medium and message purpose are all very important in the implementation. its also important that setting achievable goals to evaluate tactics effectively.
Maxine, the points you make are extremely vital and have furthered my understanding greatly. I especially like the point you make about the information about tactics paralleling with the information you researched for the annotated bibliography. Since the information we need to know as a public relations practitioner is so broad and diverse, constant referral back to the information is a great way to heighten our understanding of it and imprint it onto our brain in a sense.
maxine i think you picked up on some really important points. you covered all the important information needed to understand PR strategy, planning and tactics. In addition to what you said about the five stages of strategy and planning. A really good quote i found really helped sum up the importance of PR strategic planning so i thought you might find it helpful too. "In order to achieve its ends, careful planning is necessary to maintain direction and focus. Specific goals and objectives need to be determined and achieved and action plans developed and coordinated if tools such as brochures or newsletters or events such as launches or news conferences are to be successful in implementing the strategy. Planning is therefore an extremely important part of managing strategic public relations." Also, i think it is really important to remember that planning takes a lot of time and cost. so it is important to stay with in an organisations budget.
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