Public Relations

There are several ways to define public relations, but here are some common elements. Public relations is the art and science of creating, communicating, and managing information to create a positive perception of your brand, products and services. Public relations helps enhance your relationship with your target audience. Public relations specialists achieve this via techniques like writing and distributing press releases and holding public or online events. Public relations works together with marketing and advertising to generate leads and sales.

Here's how you differentiate between public relations, marketing, and advertising. Marketing is an umbrella term for strategies and tactics used to promote your business, products, and services. Public relations and advertising are two forms of marketing that work in different ways. Public relations helps you manage your reputation by earning you positive public coverage through the media and social media. With advertising, you pay for that positive coverage, and can also use the technique to drive leads and sales directly.

Aside from marketing communications, one well known type of public relations is media relations. This is where you manage your relationship with the media via interviews, press releases, and press conferences. Crisis management is another public relations sector, which helps companies manage their reputation and public interactions in times of disaster. Other public relations types include community relations, employee relations, investor relations, corporate social responsibility, and public affairs. Social media campaigns are sometimes also considered a type of public relations.

Public relations (PR) supports marketing in many ways. It's another way to communicate your message to the same audience you're trying to reach with marketing campaigns. And since public relations aims to enhance brand awareness and reputation, any success in those areas makes your marketing campaigns more effective. Public relations gives you a way to earn positive attention for your brand without a hard sell. That's why it's a good complement to inbound marketing activities and paid promotions like advertising.

There are several ways to measure public relations impact. For example, you can track positive media mentions, and see if those include the key messages you want your target audience to hear. Similarly, you can track social media mentions, checking for positive sentiment from fans, followers, and others. Other important metrics for public relations include website traffic, inbound links, and engagement with your content. Use web and social media analytics tools to ensure you are meeting your public relations goals.