By Linda Forrest
The PR industry has been aflutter with activity in response to the recent efforts of the Public Relations Society of America to crowd source a new definition for PR.
Rather than leave it open ended, PRSA has gone with a fill-in-the-blank (in this case, parentheses) approach:
Public relations (does what) with/for (whom) to (with/for) for (what purpose).
If you wish to weigh in, submissions will be accepted at the above link until the end of the week, with a new definition targeted for publication before the end of the year.
It has indeed been quite some time since the term has been defined, nearly 20 years, during which time the means by which public relations is conducted has evolved markedly from dead trees to digital zeros and ones, shifting from a one-way conversation to a multi-stakeholder conversation.
From the PRSA website:
The PRSA 1982 National Assembly formally adopted a definition of public relations, which remains widely accepted and used today:
“Public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other.”
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This is the next entry in our “Best of” series, in which we venture deep into the vault to replay blog opinion and insight that has withstood the test of time. Today’s post hails from April, 2010. We welcome your feedback.
By Linda Forrest
I had a long and interesting chat with the publisher of a specialized trade publication this morning, the results of which turned my thoughts to the importance of getting a return on investment in PR. I mean this in two ways: first, getting the most value for your dollars spent with a PR practitioner or agency and second, getting the most eyeballs on your coverage.
With regards to the first, this was the particular scenario that I was discussing with the aforementioned publisher. Having pitched a series of contributed articles by email, I was calling to follow up and discuss the level of interest in my proposition. The publisher, a 30-plus-year veteran of the Canadian publishing world, talked about shrinking editorial space and how he’s unable to commit to publishing an article, however appropriate for his readership. With shrinking ad budgets, increasing competition from exclusively online publications and other factors, it’s not feasible for him to accept and commit, based on an abstract, to publishing something that would take up precious room on his pages. Rather, he’s suggested that we develop an article purely on spec, and that once submitted, he’ll review it and if he’s got the room and inclination, he’ll publish it.
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By Linda Forrest
In my last post, I wrote about how PR practitioners annoy journalists. It’s ironic that many of the issues come down to a failure to implement the fundamentals of successful communication. So, in an effort to clear up exactly what it is that reporters want from PR people, this post aims to list the traits of a good PR practitioner, with a healthy dose of anecdotes from PR agency executives and reporters sounding off on what they think are essential attributes. While some posts I came across while researching this post were downright effusive about how wonderful PR people are, others contained language that might be deemed unfit for work.
The reporter’s view
I’ll start off by referring back to the very informative blog post by Matt Hartley, the editor of the Financial Post’s Tech Desk, wherein he demonstrated a learned understanding of the symbiotic nature of the relationship between reporters and PR professionals:
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This is the third article in a continuing series that will feature case studies and anecdotal stories from entrepreneurs, consultants and veteran marketers about their efforts to develop, implement and measure marketing programs to bring technology to market and grow market share. We invite your feedback.
By Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette
Many startups with aspirations of grandeur have fallen prey to the temptation to call themselves a “leading provider of …”. But at Teamly, founder and CEO Scott Allison and his team appreciate that earning the label is a “big hairy audacious goal” which takes a lot of hard work and no shortage of hustling.
Teamly is a two-year-old startup which has brought to market an innovative productivity and project management tool which it delivers through a Software-as-a-Service (Saas) model. Or, as described in the company’s vision statement, “Teamly provides online teamwork software that helps businesses be more successful through more aligned and effective people.”
It’s a compelling value proposition at a time when the typical workplace is filled with more distractions than ever which erode productivity and throw the best laid plans out the window. But productivity tools are legion and many fail to live up to their hype.
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This is the next entry in our “Best of” series, in which we venture deep into the vault to replay blog opinion and insight that has withstood the test of time. Today’s post hails from January, 2009. We welcome your feedback.
By Danny Sullivan
At inmedia, we frequently position ourselves against those whose perspective is that PR is “all about relationships.” And, while I wholeheartedly stand by our mantra that it is the ability to convey a story and not the relationship that dictates PR success, it cannot be denied that relationships are still important. They are even more relevant from the perspective of a PR firm’s clients than for the PR firm itself. PR firms come and go but, assuming a company sticks around, its relationship with its target media will last forever.
This week, one of my clients traveled to New York to meet face to face with a group of editors from a key trade publication that covers his company’s market. Was this meeting at the request of the editors? No, we brokered it from our end. Was it for an article they were working on? No. So why was this meeting happening? Simple. It was for the relationship.
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