MarketingMel’s Mary Ellen Miller at a recent public speaking engagement along with Sarah Kinsler in the background.
The Holston River Regional Library has invited me to train regional librarians from throughout the Northeast Tennessee region in the importance of “Public Relations in the 21st Century” during a half day workshop session in August. As a result I’ve reviewed several public relations plan templates and compiled this list of top PR Plan ideas. A shout out of thanks to Debbie Leven who offers a free downloadable template and to PR for Dummies. I’ve compiled some of those PR ideas along with my own thoughts from years of experience as a professional communicator, to come up with this list.
- Overview – What is your current Public Relations challenge?
- Goals/Objectives – What do you want to achieve? Why?
- Target Audience – Who do you want to reach? What do you know about them?
- Messages – What are your key messages? (No more than three at any one time! The human mind can’t keep up with more.)
- Strategies – What are the methods to achieve your goals and objectives?
- Tools – What methods will you use to support your PR? Example: email blast, Social Media Outreach, etc.
- Media – What publications/broadcast/blogs will you target? Do you have an up-to-date “media list”?
- Designated Spokesperson- Every company needs to speak with one or no more than two voices. Who is your designated company spokesperson? (This is particularly important should a crisis arise.)
- Evaluation – How will you measure and monitor your success?
- Action Steps – What are your next steps? Timeline? (In the case of the librarians they are expected to issue a minimum of quarterly news releases.)
I plan to have the librarians actually create a news release so that when they leave the workshop they will have something “ready to roll.”
Do you have other steps to add that you would add to this plan? What are some of your best PR practices for your company? I would love to hear from you!
10 Comments
PR can be really fun and I love what you said about having a spokesperson. Too many people speaking for a brand is a red flag!
Jessica, you are correct in your description of “red flag!” with too many spokespersons.
I love the idea of a spokesperson – need that myself!!
Sue, your designated spokesperson for your own company may be yourself but it may also not be. If it is you or the CEO be sure that person is media trained and savvy!
I also love the idea of a designated spokesperson so you have a consistent message.
I like that you include measurement and evaluation of success too.
Trudy as you well know what gets measured gets valued!
Mary Ellen – I was just looking for a simple checklist like this! Thank you so much for laying it out so clearly. Now … do you have templates and step by step instructions for individual parts?
Jennifer, I will be elaborating on this during the training. I really like your idea to create a template and will do so for the librarian training and beyond! Thanks for your suggestion.
This is a great checklist, Mary Ellen. Those librarians are lucky because I am sure your workshop is going to be awesome!
Thank you Tiffany. Glad you found it helpful.