“Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.” – Public Relations Society of America PRSA

What is PR?

PR is the Persuasion Business. You are trying to convince an audience, inside your building or town, and outside your usual sphere of influence, to promote your idea, purchase your product, support your position, or recognise your accomplishments.

PR people are storytellers. They create narratives to advance their agenda. PR can be used to protect, enhance or build reputations through the media, social media, or self-produced communications. A good PR practitioner will analyse the organisation, find the positive messages and translate those messages into positive stories. When the news is bad, they can formulate the best response and mitigate the damage.

“A public relations specialist is an image shaper. Their job is to generate positive publicity for their client and enhance their reputation … They keep the public informed about the activity of government agencies, explain policy, and manage political campaigns. Public relations people working for a company may handle consumer relations, or the relationship between parts of the company such as the managers and employees, or different branch offices.” – The Princeton Review.

PR Enhances Your Digital Presence

Everyone is digitally connected in today’s world, and PR helps companies to create a strong online presence that is highly visible to their target audience. PR agencies provide businesses with support and guidance to help them market themselves online while being constantly ready to step in when a disaster occurs or something threatens to damage the image the company has been building.

Press releases, social media and influencer connections with promotional content-publishing sites are some of the tools that PR companies use to help their clients to strengthen their brand image and increase their profitability. Plus, they are tools that can also be used to overcome challenges that may threaten a company’s success.

The Perception Business

The online world allows people to say whatever they want about a business, true or not, with the business being able to do very little about it. A large number of businesses get a bad reputation without doing anything to deserve it, while other businesses are not within easy online reach of their intended markets. Both circumstances are hardly ideal.

The most effective way to fix that is through PR campaigns. PR support and the right campaigns increase awareness for a brand while maintaining a positive and consumer-resonant image.

Audiences are also more likely to listen to a message coming from an objective source, as opposed to paid-for advertising. By leveraging their connections with influencers, PR agencies can gain trust for a company.

Advertising vs PR

“Advertising is what you pay for, publicity is what you pray for.”

Advertising is paid media, public relations is earned media. This means you convince reporters or editors to write a positive story about you or your client, your candidate, brand or issue. It appears in the editorial section of the magazine, newspaper, TV station or website, rather than the “paid media” section where advertising messages appear. So your story has more credibility because it was independently verified by a trusted third party, rather than purchased