How to Get Started with a PR Plan
“Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.”
Public relations is an essential part of your strategic marketing. For example, if you’re a nonprofit, PR supports your fundraising efforts, social media strategy and special events. If you’re a small business, PR can help you attract potential clients and customers.
To get started with PR efforts for your organization, you need a plan — a roadmap, if you will. This will help you determine where you are, where you want to go, how you’ll get there, who is going to be in the driver’s seat and do what needs to be done and, finally, when you’ve reached your destination.
You need to include in your plan:
Overview: Briefly assess/summarize your organization’s situation. For example:
ABC Nonprofit mostly has remained in the background of media stories about people and organizations that have benefited from its assistance. With the public launch of its rebrand to Awesome Nonprofit approaching, it is time for the nonprofit to step into the spotlight, with public relations support. The challenge — and opportunity — is that stories about the rebrand cannot simply be just “we have a new name.”
Goals: What do you want to accomplish through PR? Why? Set specific goals and make them measurable. Include:
What is being measured? Staff awareness of our organization’s new mission and vision statements.
What’s your starting point? We surveyed our staff and determined that 30% were aware of the new mission and vision statements.
What quantity or percentage do you want to achieve? We want to increase staff awareness of our new mission and vision statements to 85 percent.
What is your deadline or amount of time for accomplishing this goal? We want to increase staff awareness of our new mission and vision statements from 30 percent to 85 percent by the end of the third quarter of our current fiscal year.
Why do we want to achieve this goal? Our employees are our most important audience. We want them to feel more connected to and promote our new mission and vision statements.
Target Audiences: Think about who are your current stakeholders — and who else you want to reach. Current donors? Current board members? Staff? Community partners? Past customers? Potential customers for your product? It’s important to prioritize your audiences. PR cannot be all things to all people.
Messages: Consider the points you want to communicate regularly about your organization: ABC Awesome Nonprofit’s helps connect people in the community. Terrific T-Shirt Company creates fun shirts that fit customers to a T.
Tactics: These are the things you’ll do/actions you’ll take: are the things you’ll do: write press releases, pitch feature stories to media, use Facebook Live to stream Q&As with staff and board members, share behind-the-scenes photos of your business on Instagram.
Budget: How much money do you have to allocate to PR? Knowing this will help you figure out whether you can hire outside help, such as a PR professional to write your news release (or your plan!), or pay for outside resources, such as a press release distribution service or media database.
Timeline: Create a schedule to help you manage the tasks in your plan. Included deadlines (When do you intend to send a news release?), steps you need to take (When will you do research for your news release? When will you write it?) and milestones (What date will your organization launch its brand?).
Measurement: How will you know if your PR efforts are successful? Methods of measuring the outcome of PR efforts could include tracking coverage resulting from your PR plan, using Google Analytics to see if there is an increase in web traffic following media coverage, looking to see whether there is any increase in followers/engagement on social media channels.
Include these elements in your PR plan and you’ll be on your way.