The PR Cycle of Life
If your company has an active public relations program, you may be familiar with the PR cycle. The cycle starts with a coordinated strategic approach to reach established PR goals and should integrate with your entire marketing plan. To put life into the PR cycle, you must build solid relationships between your company and the media. Today, it’s not just writers and editors in traditional print and electronic media that need your attention, but also bloggers, on-line wire services, forum authors, Facebook fans and Tweeters. Constant contact with these communicators, who talk to your customers every day, is vital. As the PR cycle continues, valuable content needs to flow out to all the chosen media outlets. No longer does a monthly press release fill the void of information needed for the printed pages, blogs and forums. A successful PR cycle requires the company to listen to customers, answer their questions, solve their problems, and sing the praises of all the products and services that will change their lives.
But the cycle doesn’t stop there. Tracking the success of your PR tactics is the only way to evaluate the effectiveness of your work. Talking to your brand advocates is important to gauge their interest and determine if they are going to spread your message to their audience. And then comes the final piece of the cycle, the ROI. Did all your work pay off in getting your message covered and communicated to the masses? If so, it’s important to determine value of this coverage and evaluate it with the cost of production and distribution. The PR cycle is a valuable component to a successful marketing strategy, but it’s not a simple circle to complete. Following a strategic PR plan and committing marketing resources during all stages of the plan can make this cycle worth all the work and help assure a healthy bottom line as well.
How are you doing in the cycle?
