Successful PR Writing Tips

Most of a PR representative's day is filled with writing (media releases, social networking, emails, etc.) and they must know that most of their success is determined by how well they communicate clearly. Here are some tips to help keep your reader engaged.

• Use strong action words that fill your message with emphasis.
• By keeping your nouns and verbs within 8 words of each other, it makes it easier for your reader to understand who is doing what.
• Use sentence connectors to follow complex sentences. By using words like however, thus, etc., it helps your reader navigate through the text.
• Always state new information first and old information second. By doing so, you establish familiar ground and work into new ground.
• Problem-Solution-Action paradigm - Write a problem, propose a solution, and state an action plan.

By using these simple writing tips, one can be confident that their message is effective and straight to the point.

Dealing With a Foreign Audience (PR)

It may be easy to keep the interest of clients in your own country, but dealing with a foreign audience is a little more difficult. Here are some tips on how to maintain the foreign audience by recognizing cross cultural differences.

• Language and Culture - Maintain good translations when advertising a product. (Ex: Ford launched a car called the "Pinto" in Brazil and they were unsuccessful because the Brazilians did not want to buy a car meaning "small male genitals".
• The Written Word - Look at and integrate the cross cultural particulars of the target audience. Some cultures want colorful and inspirational writing while others may just want factual and objective.
• Communication Channels - Be aware of the different primary sources of information each culture has (Ex: Radio, television, Internet, the press, etc.).
• PR Materials - The publicity materials your campaign involves must be appropriate to each culture you advertise to. Logos may mean one thing in one culture and something else in another.

Build campaigns that target (appeal) the audience to which you are advertising. 

How to Respond to Criticism

When restoring an image, there are certain strategies that you may guide with repairing an organizations image.

•  Denial - Indicating that the crisis committed has either not happened or it is not your organizations' fault.
• Evading Responsibility - Minimizing an organizations responsibility to the crisis (Ex: Saying that the actions taken place were with a good intent).
• Reducing Offensiveness - A strategy used to minimize the harm committed by the crisis and prove that it was not aimed purposely at anyone.
• Corrective Action - Putting the crisis behind you and stating that it will never happen again because you've already performed preventative actions that will keep it from occurring again.

By using these strategies, one has the ability to create a swift escape from a very detrimental situation. Note that you may use more than one of these strategies in order to restore one's image, especially if the consequences are more severe.

Crisis Management

Crisis planning is like buying insurance. Purchasing automobile insurance is a way of planning for the worst case scenario, similar to how a crisis management plan is an important step for planning on the worst case scenario occurring for any organization. A crisis management plan helps manage any crisis as well as prevent a similar crisis occurring in the future. Below are brief critical steps to crisis management:

• Bring the entire crisis communication team together at a specific location - Determining where everyone should meet so that a plan can be arranged.
• Create a crisis management mission - Everyone on the team needs to be on the same page with a clear goal of the crisis.
• Identify your organization's most important public's and communicate with them first (e.g., employees, news media, stockholders, customers, etc.)
• Assign roles to each team member - Crisis manager liaison (Communicator between upper-level managers and crisis team), employee liaison (communicates to all the employees), spokesperson (publicly announces recent updates), etc.
• Disseminate the plan - Make sure each team member knows exactly what they are doing in case of a crisis and regularly update the plan.

It's also important that everyone in the organization understands the procedure of handling a crisis. This prevents panic and bad decision making in the organization. A clear crisis management plan has the ability to prevent further damage to the organization, prevent similar future crises, and keep a positive and confident quality to business decisions.

Great PR Representative Qualities

Here are some helpful tips on what companies/organizations look for when hiring a PR representative:

• A long list of clients in which the PR representative is happy to share about. Having plenty of references shows off their experience as a public relations professional. Having online and broadcast media outlets proves a strong candidate that will be able to sell/persuade a product quickly. Ex: When hiring a PR representative who specializes in commercial real estate, their knowledge of the field will get nowhere if they don't have contacts to back it up.
• A representative that not only maintains already established relationships, but constantly cultivate new relationships.
• Someone who approached a client's PR campaign with specific angles to target audiences instead of a cookie-cutter approach.

Keeping a Fresh Relationship With the Media

Maintaining good relationships with the media will lay the foundations of a successful PR firm. Here are some helpful tips for dealing with the press:

• By feeding good stories to journalists, you will make them come back for more, which is great publicity.
• When speaking with the media, you need to remember that unless you confirm that what you're saying is off the record, anything you say can and will be referenced in a story.

Dealing with the media is easy and fearless as long as you present your story with a fresh angle.

• Relate your business or product to a human interest story.
• Make sure the message you're trying to get across can be summed up within a few sentences. By making it clear and concise, people are more likely to read your story.

Maintaining Positive Relationships With the Public

One of the more obvious strategies of maintaining good PR is access.

• By providing access to public opinion leaders or other businesses, it entails answering emails, telephone calls, letters, and other forms of communication to simply show that you are willing to answer any complaints or queries rather than including third parties in negative reactions.

By networking you can develop relationships with similar companies that already have great relationships with the public.

• Ex: If you're representing a company that is seeking to increase recycling efforts, than you might consider developing a strong relationship with a nearby organization that already has some sort of environmental enhancement program that the public has been supporting.
• When communicating with another organization, trust proves your level of confidence and willingness to create a good relationship. Along with trust, comes dependability. The other organization needs to know that the organization you're representing is going to do what they set out to do.