"Public Relations is the discipline which looks after reputation, with the aim of earning understanding and support and influencing opinion and behaviour. It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics." - CIPR
Public relations is about building and maintaining reputations, reputations that are built on fact and maintained by trust.
We see what happens when brands and businesses do not the importance of Public Relations and communications with their "publics"; anyone they need to communicate effectively with including stakeholders, employees, customers and the media into consideration. One of the most obvious and urgent impacts being PR disasters and cristes. By understanding PR you can understand how it can be used to improve your business credibility, raise visibility and enhance communications. Whether you choose to hire a PR Agency, publicist, PR consultant to help you with your public relations or you choose to do it yourself it is important to understand the fundamentals.
In this video Ariatu PR Founder, Ronke Lawal, provides a simple yet hopefully effective definition of Public Relations (PR) and it's overall impact on society at large. Whilst we work primarily with business clients it is still important to understand the influence that PR has on our communities and society as a whole.
Social media is a powerful way of developing relationships with consumers and audiences. There are a number of social media platforms which give businesses and business owners a way to actively engage and communicate with their audiences. Businesses can make money by using social media effectively as well as manage their reputations and build lasting relationships based on trust. Trust building is often overlooked when considering social media use, many customers are using social media to send feedback to businesses and how a business responds or deals with feedback can leave a lasting impression. The 6 social media platforms that I discuss in this video are; Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn and periscope (which is now part of twitter). In this video I talk you through 6 social media platforms which are very popularly (many of which are currently evolving and changing) that can be added to your PR and marketing mix and help you raise your business brand's visibility. Social media is not something to be dismissed when it comes to promoting your business. You have to learn how social media can make an impact on your business brand and not overlook it's immense power.
Here are 6 more social media platforms that will improve a business profile.
The following quote is attributed to M. Booth and Associates, Inc. as taken from a Reader’s Digest story called, Promoting Issues and Ideas. It does a great job of illustrating the differences between Marketing, PR and Sales and also how they are all so important to create an overall business strategy for a business. What do you think?
“If the circus is coming to town and you paint a sign saying ‘Circus coming to the Fairground Saturday’, that’s advertising. If you put the sign on the back of an elephant and walk it into town, that’s promotion. If the elephant walks through the mayor’s flower bed, that’s publicity. And if you get the mayor to laugh about it, that’s public relations. If you did all of this on purpose, that’s marketing. If the towns citizens go to the circus, you show them the entertainment booths, explain how much fun they’ll have spending money at the booths, answer their questions and ultimately, they spend a lot at the circus, that’s sales.
It is so important in my business to be clear that PR is a sustained range of activities which can create increased coverage and builds brand credibility but it is NOT sales. Of course that is not to say that it will not lead to increased sales but in and of itself it is not the solution to sales.
