PR for PR's Sake

Ever wonder why as a PR professional you are not given the kind of credit you deserve for enhancing perception and building a company's reputation? That might be because measuring the impact PR plays on the bottom line is difficult to evaluate, even if you're striking home runs with each press release. Measurement is defined as confirming or denying a hypothesis...in the case of today's tech industry, business objectives would serve as the hypothesis. But often PR is asked to promote and publicize the company and products without executive-level direction to work from. I know I've had plenty of cases where I was asked to come up with a communications plan out of thin air, without knowing what the vision or short-term goals were from top management.

So, how do you take the initiative and show your worth to today's measurement-driven start-ups, emerging companies and corporations? Because you have to have something to measure against, it's important to get the objectives from senior management or participate in developing those objectives if they don't exist. Working from your communications plan, you will be summarizing the consequences from your PR strategy, ideally on a quarterly basis.

Next, speak the language of business, using standard methods such as a balanced scoreboard, benchmarking or dashboard to showcase your qualitative and quantitative evaluation. You can compare coverage to competitors, whether key messages were integrated in articles, how many were in print, broadcast, online, blogs, and how the company/product was positioned, and comparative ad value. Using surveys or focus groups can also help identify opportunities and risks for the company that you can include in your measurement.

Also, you can evaluate your own performance to your supervisors on a monthly basis, tracing your number of contacts, reason for calling/emailing them and what the results were.

Summarizing a collection of public relations measurements showcases your hard work and puts you at the head of the communications table!

Five Ways to Get Your Message Across

There are some tried and true methods of building brand by communicating your corporate or product positioning in a clear, concise way. Here are some tips that work every time:
* Nail down what you want your company name/logo to mean to the public, and especially to your customers and investors.
* Create three messages from the exercise above that are simple, easy to understand and to memorize.
* Distribute these three points, along with a 30-second "elevator" pitch, to anyone who speaks on your behalf - spokespeople, investors, employees, influencers.
* Weave these messages in all of your external and internal written and oral communications.
* Stay consistent and don't waver from your agreed-upon messaging, especially with the media.

Messaging and positioning 101 - Obama

What is one of the elemental reasons we now have a Democrat in the White House? President Obama (http://www.whitehouse.gov) and his creative staff hit the right note from the beginning of his campaign by developing his messaging and positioning first and sticking to it throughout his campaign. If you noticed, he very rarely went off topic, keeping to his themes of change, hope and responsibility...addressed in every speech, every spontaneous meeting, every sound bite. And not only was Obama pitching these themes but so were his spokespeople, aides and volunteers throughout the country. Why was it so effective? Because remembering and speaking three simple messages can magnify and clarify what a company, person or product is all about while building a strong brand through its consistency.

Companies need to review their value proposition and take a note from President Obama's playbook to differentiate themselves from their competitors. Another reason why PR can play a substantive and important role in today's economic condition.