Answered by Helen Holland

Any PR activity should be considered in conjunction with a clear view on what is to be achieved. A number of questions need to be answered before any combinations of PR activities are put in place. For example:

• What business objective will these activities support?
• Who are we trying to reach, and why, via the PR activities?
• What is the best ‘channel’ to reach the audiences we are trying to reach?
• In what tone should we be communicating with the audiences?
• What are we going to say – what is our story?

Today PR should not be viewed in isolation of online as well as the traditional offline ‘stories in the paper’ view that PR receives. The breadth of PR activities that are available today are considerably expanded following the explosion of social media.

Key tactics could include, depending on your type of business – business-to-business or business-to-consumer:

• news announcements made directly to the press, via Twitter, Facebook page, LinkedIn
• sustained and engaging Twitter feed, Facebook (although watch out for Google +!) page if you are a consumer business, LinkedIn campaign if you are b2b
• input to features being written by the press
• develop relationships with key media that are read by your audiences
• invest in research to demonstrate thought leadership in your industry sector – the media regularly uses research to underpin a story
• direct to consumer through experiential activity – allowing the consumer to interact with your product or service

At the core of any successful PR activity is the content, the story – this must receive as much attention as the execution of the above tactics.