Online Class: Public Relations 101

A solid and well thought out public relations plan can bring awareness to a company's products and services. But can also provide a wealth of exposure that is necessary to keep a business alive. Not only can public relations be your number one fan, it can provide low cost or no cost advertising that is easy on a budget.

The role that public relations will play for your particular business, or organization will depend on your goals and what you intend to accomplish. In a marketing plan there are four major components a. public relations b. marketing, c. advertising and d. selling. These are four distinct areas that are interrelated but play unique roles. While we will briefly touch on the relationships of each and how they affect one another, this course will primarily focus on the Public Relations actions your business can take that can contribute to business success.

Courses Frequently Bought Together:

How to Deal with Difficult Personalities

Effective Communication Skills

Communication with Diplomacy and Tact

Course Motivation

Every business no matter what industry, no matter how big or small needs a certain degree of good public relations. Public relations is not just an image, it is also a solid, cohesive plan that brings together, good business, and good business relationships. It means connecting with people, the people that will use your products and services. Public relations and marketing are so often confused or used interchangeably because they intertwine so often. Most large-scale businesses budget thousands of public relations (PR) dollars in their marketing plan, some hire outside public relations agencies. However, in most cases small and medium businesses and organizations can handle their own public relations needs and benefit their business. Public relations is presenting an image to the public, and making that image work for you in terms of sales, and growing your business. Public relations = free advertising.

Paying for advertising is always an option, and a viable one in most cases. But when public relations is virtually free, it is the ideal option for smaller to medium sized businesses and organizations such as non-profits, and schools, etc. Virtually free refers to getting the media to pick up your stories, event notices and other company information as well as business networking opportunities. If you own a financial or brokerage firm, and you want to advertise your newest rate and top-notch customer service, you would ideally put together a basic press release that has a catchy headline and send it over to local media contacts that include newspaper, radio and local public television stations. After about two weeks you see a blurb in the newspapers about your new rates and customer service savvy, you have more foot traffic than ever and people are calling in who heard about your company on the radio. This is the power of public relations. The message is clear and concise. It is like the grapevine of true information that is there to benefit consumers. Think about the all of the advertisements, and marketing promotions from local retailers that were based around Americans receiving their stimulus checks recently. Every retailer jumped on the bandwagon of telling consumers they could spend their stimulus check with them. The message was clear; the goal was to get Americans to go shopping again.

One clear example of how public relations comes into play is through promotions. We have all been exposed to some type of sweepstakes at some point in time, or a contest. "Write an essay and win a free trip to Hollywood," or Enter for a Chance to Win $1,000,000!" This is not just advertising and marketing at work, but public relations had a big role in these campaigns by getting the word out about the contests and sweepstakes in the first place. Upon entering the contest or sweepstakes you find out more information about the company behind the promotion, and those companies or organizations are hoping that consumers will learn more about them and possibly use their services.

Relationships with local media, which we will also focus on in this course, is truly a key to the placement of public relations for your organization. If you are having an event that is open to the public and you want the local paper to run a story, sending in a press release is fantastic provided you know who to send it to, and how they prefer to be approached. Each media source will be different and will not accept submissions in the same way. This is because some reporters can afford to be choosy, and some will be looking to fill their pages with event information just like yours.

Non-profits and profits alike are always vying for customers, and/or donors. Publicity can really be more powerful than advertising because it is a true reflection of what your organization has to offer, why it matters to the general public and how you will benefit the customer or public.