From the course: Public Relations (PR) Foundations

Building your PR plan

From the course: Public Relations (PR) Foundations

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Building your PR plan

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- I wouldn't build a house without an architect's blueprint, would you? It's the same in public relations. Build a plan prior to launching and measuring the outcomes of your communications program. Let me guide you through the planning process. Here are the important parts of your plan to help you reach your PR goals. There's the executive summary. Although it's the first part of the plan, you don't complete it until all the other pieces of the plan are in place. When you're ready to share your plan, write your summary for executives who just want to read the highlights, rather than getting all the finer details. They're looking for a high level overview. You need a background and situation analysis. You should understand the background of the situation to lay the groundwork or the reason why you're developing a plan. Your background and situation analysis will uncover major issues or challenges that you face. Next, nail down key goals and objectives. These are what you're trying to accomplish, both from a business and a communications perspective. The communications goals should support the higher level business objectives. Then there's the overall message statement. This message statement captures the entire idea behind the plan. It's your overall theme. You're crafting the most important messages to help create the outcomes you are looking to achieve. Now you can look at your audiences. Your plan will break down audiences into segments. Then you'll need to prioritize the importance of building relationships with these groups of stakeholders. Ask yourself how these constituents are tied to the issues represented to determine how to prioritize them. There are key audience messages to draft. Here's where you take your overall messaging and really break it down to meet the specific needs of a particular target audience. You're tweaking the messages to make the communication more relevant to their personal or professional cause. Now it's time to implement strategies and tactics. Implementation covers what happens when you roll out your program strategies and tactics, and how you're going to achieve expected outcomes. For instance, you'll want to outline launch details, the media vehicles you'll use to convey your messages, and what monitoring services are needed to evaluate each moving part. Don't forget about the budget. The budget is a big part of your planning. Those hidden costs can creep up on you. Your budget should carefully outline every line item in your plan with a price tag, from the media and research services, video production and post-production, and graphic design fees to the cost of events and the use of technology such as monitoring platforms. Lastly, monitoring and measurement. Evaluation is the final piece of your plan, and among the most important. If you're not benchmarking the key performance indicators or KPIs of your communication, then why bother implementing your program? Let your PR plan guide you. The more details you put into your plan, the better the outcome will be. Your plan is the roadmap to help you stay on course to create PR value and success.

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