Guide pr: The Ultimate Guide to Public Relations in 2023

The Beginner’s Guide To Public Relations And The Best PR Tools By Linchpin SEO

Would you like to learn how to use public relations to build your business and raise awareness about your brand more effectively? Let’s take a look at everything you need to know about PR.

What Are Public Relations?

To eventually use public relations successfully, you must first have a basic understanding of what PR is. Public relations is a strategic communication process used by individuals, businesses, and organizations to create a positive relationship with the public.

A public relations specialist aims to maintain a strong relationship and positive image with a target market. This is accomplished using a communication plan encompassing media and other direct and indirect mediums.

Public relations is not the same as advertising. PR is a process where brands are promoted through editorial content on blogs, websites, magazines, news channels, television programs, and newspapers. This is entirely different than advertising, where paid promotions, ads, or stories written for reporters are the main methods of operation.

Types of PR

• media relations
• community relations
• corporate and social responsibility
• public affairs
• crisis management
• social media
• employee relations
• integrated marketing and communications

The History of Public Relations

How long have public relations been put to use? That’s a topic up for debate. While some point its origins back to ancient Egypt, our modern view of PR is said to have started about 100 years ago with Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays.

Lee is said to have invented the press release when he had to spin a news story about an accident for his client, the Pennsylvania Railroad, in 1906. He wanted to get ahead of the situation before reporters could report on other versions regarding what happened.

When John D. Rockefeller became a client in 1915, Lee told him to show his philanthropic side by giving dimes to poor children. Lee is also credited with inventing the “Breakfast of Champions” slogan for Wheaties and coming up with the Betty Crocker symbol.

Bernays used lessons from his uncle, Sigmund Freud, to take a more scientific approach to public relations. He used Freud’s ideas of psychology” to ideas ell soap, cigarettes, and bacon. Bernays is credited with creating what our modern world calls “media events” when he staged “overt acts” to tap into the subconscious feelings of the public.

The Purpose of PR

PR aims to raise awareness about your brand and establish trust in your company. Public relations will help you:

• Manage reputation
• Build credibility
• Promote your brand’s values
• Create a likable image
• Strengthens community relations
• Increase niche authority

Traditional PR vs. Digital PR

Today’s public relations world involves an exciting mix of traditional and digital PR tactics.

Traditional public relations methods include:

• Crisis communications
• Sponsorship opportunities
• Event coordination
• Press release distribution
• Trade shows
• Reputation management

While traditional PR successfully improves brand awareness, tracking exact performance metrics isn’t easy. For example, print and broadcast numbers are estimates of how many monthly readers or potential TV audience sizes are reached. Unfortunately, this makes it more challenging to know precisely how many people saw or read your piece.

Rather than focusing on numbers, publicists working with traditional PR methods keep their eyes on brand positioning inside each media placement. They want to know how often the client brand has been mentioned in the post, how well the message was communicated, and how well their client was portrayed.

While the strategies used with digital PR are similar to those used with traditional PR, the digital arm has added to the impact of link building and search engine optimization across the Internet. These tactics bring about more tangible and measurable insight and results.

Another way that digital PR differs is its ability to create partnerships with online influencers and bloggers. These online influencers often have just as much authority with their audiences as traditional sources do.

A digital PR specialist builds strong relationships with influential bloggers and works with them regularly to share content. This might be a blog post that links to a client’s social media or website.

Both forms of PR are essential. Traditional PR helps create brand awareness and is an excellent complement to digital PR’s more immediate and measurable results.

Public Relations vs. Marketing

Now that you know the difference between traditional and digital PR, let’s tackle another common question: What is the difference between PR and marketing?

Here is a quick recap of our PR definition: Maintaining the favorable public image of an organization, a company, or a famous individual.

Marketing can be defined as a way to promote and sell products and services.

Marketing focuses on the act of selling, while PR focuses on maintaining the positive image of the company selling the products or services.

Looking at how success is measured between these two business activities helps provide more clues about the differences.

A PR specialist might look at these activities as a success:

• For example, the positive press produced from a company executive’s speech at a significant event.
• Positive press about a company or product generated in broadcast outlets and trade publications
• Generating positive “buzz” about a company from what is said by journalists, social media followers, or industry influencers
• Awards won at industry events.

A marketer might look at these metrics when defining the success of a campaign:

• The return on investment (ROI) – Was there more revenue generated than money spent on the marketing campaign?
• Whether or not sales goals were met

There is also an overlap between public relations and marketing. This is because making sure people like a company and products are selling well are intertwined goals. If people don’t connect well with the brand, then they’re not likely going to buy the product. If a product is horrible, then people aren’t going to view the company in a positive light.

Top 10 Public Relations Strategies and Tactics

Use the Power of Influencers

More and more people today are losing trust in traditional advertising. Instead, they listen to the third-party recommendations of influencers. Find influencers with your target audience and partner with them to promote you and your business.

Add the Human Element to Your Brand

It’s easy for an upset customer to take to social media and attack your company. Combat this by sharing the core values that make up the backbone of your brand. This establishes a human feel to your company and helps mitigate the few who cause trouble.

Use the Power of Testimonials

This is one of the most effective public relations strategies. It’s powerful when you allow happy customers to express excitement about your brand. Ask for video testimonials—feature full-length customer case studies.

Media Relations

This creates positive relationships with publications, journalists, and other news outlets. Doing this correctly helps get your brand exposure and encourages the media to market your company for free.

Offer Exclusivity

Rather than blasting your press releases to all the traditional media outlets, offer your exclusive story to one targeted outlet at a time. Research journalists in your industry and pitch why you selected them for each unique and complete level.

Use Native Advertising

Native advertising is paid media that appears like a standard piece of content. However, with traditional advertising becoming less effective, native ads are less promotional and provide actual value to readers.

Use Social Media

Your social media activity is exposed to the public at all times. Therefore, makere each post adheres to an overall strategy that includes being positive, consistent, and accurate.

Internal PR

This is another name for employee relations. Employee relations involves communicating a positive employee perspective about your business. For example, you might use free training, employee newsletters, appreciation events, and employee perks.

Social and Corporate Responsibility

This allows you to directly impact the public perception of your company and brand. It includes taking the following seriously:

• Environmental responsibility
• Ethical business practices
• Philanthropy

Business Events

Business events can be attended by or hosted by your company and provide a chance to gain brand exposure. They also allow for sales opportunities as you meet prospects and current customers.

What is a Media Influencer?

The top tip in the previous section discussed the power of influencers. It’s important to know exactly what a media influencer is.

An influencer is a person with the ability to sway audiences into making purchase decisions. They possess this ability because of their knowledge, authority, or relationship with their audience. In addition, they have already invested years actively engaging with their following and know that following pays close attention to anything recommended.

Your job is to identify influencers in your niche who have your perfect audience so that you can get your brand and products in front of those targeted individuals.

Social media has grown significantly over the last decade, and many influencers use this medium for communication. They have built their reputation around their knowledge in their particular area of expertise. They create regular social media posts about that topic, and many followers pay close attention to their viewpoints.

Media influencers are made up of these four groups:

• Industry experts and thought leaders
• Bloggers and content creators
• Celebrities
• Micro-Influencers (experts in a specialist niche)

How to Develop Strong Media Lists

It’s essential to develop a media list of who will receive your news and how you’ll approach every blogger, journalist, editor, producer, and influencer to that you want to spread your brand story.

Figure out your target audience: Research everything about your audience. Learn what they’re interested in and how they enjoy consuming information. For example, do they use television, blogs, newspapers, websites, magazines, or videos?

Research your media outlets: You need to know what the audience or readership size is, the medium (radio, online, TV, etc.), and the topics covered.

Take the time to understand how often each media outlet produces new content. For example, a magazine might publish monthly, while a blog may publish daily posts. This is important to understand lead times and when your story will land in front of your audience.

Find out who your contact is: Your media list must include the best people to contact for each media outlet. For example, which journalist do you need to get in touch with when sending your pitch to the tech section of a local newspaper?

Take note of the journalists who wrote the stories inside your target publications. Look at the job titles of producers, reporters, and journalists. Job titles offer clues into their specific area of expertise.

Please find the contact details of each person, so you have the opportunity to pitch them directly. You won’t get anywhere if you send your pitch or media release to general email inboxes. Many media outlet sites list staff members and their email addresses on the Contact or Company page.

Get organized: Use an excel sheet, for example, to manage your media list in a database. Use columns for a media outlet, contact person, email address, phone number, and job title.

Keep the list updated: Media contacts often change jobs or roles inside their organization. Read industry news so you’re aware of changes taking place. This will inform you when new media outlets launch or existing outlets shut down.

Primary Public Relations KPIs You Need To Be Measuring

Here is a list of essential KPIs:

• Potential reach
• Active coverage
• Social engagement
• Media Outreach
• Quality of coverage
• Geographical presence
• Overall media presence
• Earned traffic
• Domain authority
• Event promotion

Top Public Relations Tools You May Not Have Heard About

• PRWeb helps you get found by the best-rated press release services. Then, all you need to do is create your news, distribute it and track it.
• Zoho Reports allows you to share data about your brand. It includes easy-to-use charts and graphs. These can be used for visuals in press kits and with media outreach.
• JustReachOut helps get you connected with bloggers and journalists writing about your industry and brand topics.
• PRNewswire is effective for distribution services and news production. They offer many ways to get in front of your audience, distributing to over 8,000 websites and 200,000 media outlets.
• HARO (Help a Reporter Out) is a quote-mention service. The site emails source requests relevant to your brand three times per day. You can email a pitch or quote to any requesting journalists, and they then select which ideas or sources they want to pursue.
• Prowly gives you the tools and insights to make you better at your everyday PR work.
• Use Muck Rack to find journalists, get press for your story, monitor the news, and report on the impact of your PR.
• Meltwater is a media intelligence company that provides media and social media monitoring to help companies grow and build a brand.
• Prezly provides software for communications teams that want to do more. For example, manage your media relations, create online newsrooms, and publish and pitch your story.
• Mention is an easy-to-use media monitoring tool that lets you track social mentions and analyze competitors.
• The coverage Book is used to showcase and measure the impact of your PR work.
• Anewstip allows you to search global media influentials by what they have written or tweeted.
• Agility PR Solutions allows you to discover journalists and influencers, amplify your messages, monitor media coverage, and measure the success of your PR campaigns.
• Brandwatch helps the world’s biggest brands listen to their customers and understand consumer trends.
• Critical Mention Critical Mention is the fastest, most reliable media monitoring and earned media measurement platform for broadcast media, online news, print, and social media.
• JournoRequests get PR opportunities delivered directly to your inbox daily.
• Augure gives you the power to transform the way you launch your Communication and Public Relations campaigns.
• Radio Guest List is similar to HARO; this service helps you find Interviews as a Podcast Guest, Talk Show, or Radio Interview Guest Expert.
• BlogDash Uses its Blogger Outreach program to filter through 200K+ bloggers by keywords, categories, Klout score, and more data points.

Use the above information to create your PR plan and watch as brand awareness builds for your company.

Public Relations for Beginners: A Guide to PR

Everybody knows that some kind of PR outreach is a must, but in a world of limitless choice it’s perfectly understandable if you’re stuck at “Where do I start?”

There are tons of PR techniques for increasing your reach. Some are more effective than others, but the goal is always the same — managing impressions of your brand with the help of media partners.

Many of those charged with the task of spreading the word about something follow a familiar path. A social media blitz, the most massive email marketing campaign this world has ever seen, killer paid ad campaigns. Sound familiar? But, too often, the method that can outperform all of those is the one that many are afraid to try — connecting with the right audience with a powerful media-based public relations strategy. 

Forget about being the next in line to fill social media profiles and search results full of more unwanted ads and see what you can accomplish by going directly to established media platforms that can deliver just the audience you’re looking for.

Instead, dive into the world of public relations with a crash course on PR basics for business owners and marketers, along with a look at the benefits the right PR plan can have on your business. 

• Public relations 101: What is PR
• What good PR should do for you
• Getting started in public relations – beginner’s guide 
• Media relations guidelines – do’s & don’ts  

Public relations 101: What is PR

Public relations is the process of establishing strategic communication relationships across different media channels in order to promote the positive perception of your company with the relevant audiences and get additional coverage from those channels.

An established PR strategy defines every way in which a company positions itself on the global stage and communicates with all the stakeholders – your current and prospective customers, journalists, influencers and anyone else who’s important to your organization.  

Sound a lot like branding or marketing? Yes, there is a lot of crossover between these terms but there’s more to it. While branding puts the main emphasis on how your business “looks & feels” (its visual identity, marketing materials, UX/UI designs, etc.) and marketing is selling a product, PR focuses purely on impressions and perceptions. It also goes a step further and actively engages media in an attempt to reach the audiences that follow various media channels. 

In the words of Kirk Hazlett, a Fellow at the Public Relations Society of America: 

PR is a dating service. PR introduces you or your product or service to those publics that are most likely to be interested. If it’s a good match, a relationship develops. Public relations is focusing on your customer, current or potential, and knowing what you want him or her to know or do as a result of the information you have provided.

What good PR should do for you

While all public relations efforts are dedicated to creating and supporting the positive image of your company, there are many additional objectives you can pursue with a well-developed PR strategy.  

Among all the benefits a good PR plan can bring to your business, there are certain key functions of public relations you need to be aware of. In particular, a strong public relations strategy should help you to:  

• learn and react to a particular audience’s opinion about your brand
• actively implement strategies that improve your brand image
• seek and maintain positive relationships with investors, journalists, clients, etc. 
• manage your online presence and the appearance of your business 
• promote your company across various media channels 
• mitigate the impact of a crisis on your brand’s reputation 

As you can see, PR can be a flexible term, and it covers a lot of bases. The important takeaway here is that it is about the general management of how you are perceived and the ability to actively engage with those in a position to improve that perception. 

Getting started in public relations – beginner’s guide

Public relations teams serve many different purposes and there are various types of PR activities, each addressing its own specific goals. These, in a way, are the checkpoints for your public relations roadmap, the most important elements of the basic PR plan you need to keep in mind while you’re trying to figure out how to do digital PR. 

Let’s look into each of them one by one, providing a clear overview of each aspect of public relations, its purpose, and some of the ways it could be implemented into a basic PR plan. 

Media relations

Chances are, this is exactly what you’re thinking about when hearing the term “public relations”. And yet, media relations management is just one of the main stepping stones on your way towards a proper PR strategy. 

Here, your main goal is to build positive relations with bloggers, journalists and influencers in order to get yourself media coverage for free (or close enough to it). It’s always good to have someone who speaks to large audiences on your behalf, and that’s exactly what media relations are all about.  

In the digital era, establishing and maintaining media relations for PR purposes mainly involves writing press releases and other communications, pitching the media, organizing and participating in different interviews, attending special events, etc.

Pro tip: Getting mainstream coverage is a lot more difficult than you think it is. Instead of shooting for the biggest media platform you can find, think about reaching out to the one most likely to be interested in your message. In an age when everything ends up online anyway, there’s nothing wrong with smaller, local platforms.

Further reading & resources on media relations management:

• How to Improve Media Relations – Best & Worst Practices
• How to Do PR Outreach (w/ Expert Tips, Tools & Examples)
• Best Media Relations Tools: The 2021 List
• How to Get Media Coverage for Your Business in 2023 (w/ Expert Tips)

Employee relations

When you’re learning how to do digital PR, it’s easy to fall into the novice error and focus on the clients and the clients alone. In reality, public relations are much more complicated than that. For starters, you need to make sure that your PR plan never omits your own employees, both current and the potential ones. 

Think of it as internal PR. 

First of all, your very own staff might be the strongest team of brand ambassadors you’ll ever need. At the same time, an unhappy employee is very likely to spread the harshest criticism. 

That’s why it’s crucial for the companies to invest in employer branding and internal PR & communications to ensure your team members feel appreciated, heard, and respected.

Pro tip: Remember that employer branding isn’t just about interacting with potential employees. Lots of people who have no plans to ever work for you, including many in the media and other opinion-influencing positions, will see your outreach too. Remember that more than just your target market is paying attention.

Community management

Another important audience to keep in mind is your local community. After all, if you own an offline business, you’d most probably like to have a community spirit around it. That’s exactly what this type of PR is all about. 

With community management, you ensure to communicate where your business stands on some of the crucial local issues, how it is perceived by the neighbors, whether it makes a social commitment or not. In the long run, investing in positive community relations can provide you with new loyal brand ambassadors, a strong boost in ethical reputation for your company, more recruits in the future, and more. 

Here, it’s not enough to say what your company’s behind – you need to really show it. Make sure you participate in local events sharing your expertise, time or at least donating some profits towards a worthy cause.

Highlight your good deeds online (having ongoing relations with the media from the previous point wouldn’t hurt here as well). Organize community events, and don’t be afraid to stand up for your ideas. You’ll be sure to get your share of supporters in no time!  

Pro tip: Keep an eye on the calendar of local events and make taking part where you can a priority. The cost / benefit calculation is often very favorable in terms of what you can get out of being an active member of your local community.

Social & corporate responsibility

Corporate and social responsibility (CSR) of a brand is among the first things everyone searches for in digital PR. While this form of public relations is very similar to community management, here a focus on ethics and philanthropy demonstrates your commitment to a cause. 

Do you have a cause connected to your business? Great, as long as it’s aligned with your target audience’s values. 

Has your business been associated with unethical business practices and poor employee culture? Not only are these problems you need to fix just because it’s the right thing to do, but you’ve also handed your competition a hammer to hit you with.  

On the other hand, did you host a fundraiser for a charity? Donate something to a local event? Don’t forget to write about it anywhere you can or, better yet, get someone else to write about you. 

Emphasize the good and try to minimize the damage of the bad via social sharing and positive reinforcement.

Pro tip: You might be aware of just how important CSR has become to a growing segment of consumers. Don’t let this fly under your radar — if you don’t have content on the topic of your brand’s involvement with CSR, make it one of your top priorities.

Further reading & resources on CSR:

• Why Corporate Social Responsibility is Essential
• Corporate Social Responsibility in the Age of Coronavirus (COVID-19)
• 6 Key Steps In Managing Corporate Social Responsibility
• How Prowly Can Help Communicate Your CSR Activities

Crisis management

Life happens, and that means unforeseen problems will show up in your office one day. When a crisis hits and things are moving at the speed of the internet, managing and, if needed, correcting the impressions that are created is hard. 

That’s when you need a good PR specialist right there in the eye of the storm ready to back your business up with some bulletproof crisis management techniques, contacts to help get your message out in a hurry and the ability to steer the conversation in the direction you want. 

While there’s no way to be prepared for everything that gets thrown at you, the point is that your PR team is appointed as the go-to leaders in dealing with managing a crisis. When the problem hits and your reputation is on the line, there’s no time for meetings to decide who’s going to be in charge of your response — your PR should be ready to go to work in difficult circumstances at a moment’s notice.

Pro tip: Too often, crisis management is one of those things that gets delayed or forgotten about until there’s a crisis. Don’t get caught off-guard — start working on a “What if?” plan, so you have something to work with immediately when someone hits the panic button.

Further reading & resources on crisis management: 

• 3 Proactive Ways to Protect Your Brand Image and Reputation
• How to Recover from a Reputation Crisis and Rebuild Your Brand
• How to Create a Crisis Communication Plan (Updated for COVID-19)

Marketing & communications

It’s pretty easy to forget about other important forms of communication while you’re searching for the most effective ways to do digital PR, like traditional marketing. Chances are, your business is already engaged in numerous marketing campaigns, so it’s your job to make sure those are well-managed as well. 

When talking about public relations, a particularly essential aspect of marketing is social media. In a way, this is the easiest way for you to talk directly to all the stakeholders. So make sure to apply each of the basic PR plan principles discussed above to your SM strategy as well. 

Reply to comments and reviews (especially the negative ones), engage in online social movements and challenges, collaborate with other brands from your area to improve community relations, and don’t be afraid to try new things! 

Every touchpoint where your brand gets a chance for exposure is another opportunity to shape opinions on what you’re all about.  
But most importantly, make sure your marketing and PR teams are on the same page. Pulling in opposite directions will get you nowhere. 

Pro tip: Typically, marketing and PR aren’t handled by the same staff. Much will depend on the setup of your organization but one thing is true no matter what — some kind of alignment between these two spokes of the same wheel is a must. Working completely independently will result in confusing messaging and confused consumers.

Further reading & resources on marketing:

• Why PR Teams Should Take Their Cue from Content Marketing Experts
• 6 Killer Ways to Amplify Content Marketing Results With Solid PR
• How to Use Prowly to Step Up Your PR Link Building Game 

Media relations guidelines – do’s & don’ts  

Let’s finish with some takeaways on both the positive and negative sides. Here are 5 Do’s and 5 Don’ts to keep in mind, all focused on the media relations aspect of PR.  

Top 5 do’s 

✅ DO create a contact list full of journalists and others in the media who are somehow aligned with your message in a way that makes them more likely to be interested. This means cultivating contacts that cover your industry, have recently written about something very similar, are in the same geographic location, work for a platform that’s focused on the same field, etc. Just because someone has a huge audience or you happen to like them personally or whatever doesn’t mean they’re a good match for whatever you have to share. 

✅ DO make your pitch focused on what’s in it for them. It’s obvious that you’re trying to get some kind of media coverage but how will your media contact benefit from this? Look at the pitch from their perspective and think of their interests. 

✅ DO follow up on your initial pitch. This means having a tool that gives you some analytical insights into which recipients opened your mail, clicked on a link, etc. Take advantage of these signs of interest with a follow-up message that moves the conversation forward. 

✅ DO consider using ready templates for your pitch if you’re just starting out or not confident about your writing skills. Templates make it easy to simply add the relevant details and still sound professional. Careful – you still need some personalization for every pitch (more on this in a second). 

✅ DO be patient after your pitch is sent. Your audience isn’t nearly as excited about your PR campaign as you are and need more time to get around to it and consider their response. It’s hard to specify the amount of time you should wait, but it’s almost certainly a bit longer than the amount of time you want to wait before following up.

Top 5 don’ts

⛔ DON’T assume that everyone (or anyone…) will be interested in your message and instantly jump at the chance to write about you. The truth is that gaining media coverage is hard and results from the careful cultivation of both your contacts and the way you make your pitch. Of course, we want you to be optimistic but also realistic about this aspect of PR. 

⛔ DON’T send the same pitch to everyone. Who wants to get a perfect copy of the same thing that everyone else got? Make it clear that you’ve spent some time getting to know someone and the work they’ve done with references to past contacts, their recent posts, etc. 

⛔ DON’T reach out to a particular journalist more than three times in a single campaign. The first pitch, a follow-up and a final message regretting that you couldn’t connect are enough. Don’t bombard anyone with repeated emails on the same topic. 

⛔ DON’T confuse the message you’re trying to spread with something that is truly newsworthy. Journalists know what meets this definition and if you repeatedly fail to gain interest in a media pitch, this is likely the explanation for why.  

⛔ DON’T make media contacts search for additional information about you, your brand, etc. Make background info and anything else they might need easily available to them so the entire task of covering you is easier. Online newsrooms are especially helpful here.

Ready to get started in PR?

Getting started in PR isn’t as hard as you might think. You don’t have to sit down for an interview with a famous media outlet or regularly appear on network television to engage in PR. As you can see from our list, there are many, smaller ways to take care of your public image and the way your brand or company is seen. 

It’s likely that you’re already involved in at least one thing on our list to some degree, so expanding your PR work is simply a matter of growing into new roles and turning to new opportunities to manage the way the public perceives you. 

If you’re doing anything to make that perception as favorable as possible, you’re already active in PR so there’s no need to think of yourself as a beginner.