It can be taxing to public relations specialists to get their clients covered by publications of the world. The writers and journalists can be flooded with a large number of PR pitches, hence it can be challenging to be a standout. PR professionals are like storytellers. 

Reliably securing coverage is possible, when you use effective public relations strategies, and design pitches by making them interesting and engaging. Having a professional and proactive line of communication with the media is a vital segment of PR. Customer trust is the peak of all PR efforts. Free-flowing communication brings about a win-win situation. The availability of a toolkit for your public relations strategy can ensure success in building customer trust and build an integrated system working dynamically. Before we delve into the tools, let us look at what PR encompasses.

What is public relations?

As defined by the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), “Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.” Going by familiar terms, when a group, product, brand, person’s achievements, ideas, or other unique credits are exposed to the media personnel, writers, journalists and other influencers, encouraging them to write about, cover, promote, telecast segments, and spread the subject matter at hand, we call this practice PR. Professionally maintaining a favourable public image is a vital part of what we understand as PR. The PR professionals help build a positive reputation of a business or individual via various communications that may be unpaid or earned. These can be traditional media, social media, or even speaking engagements. Even during a crisis, the client’s reputation is defended by the PR specialists, so as to maintain their credibility. 

What are some examples of PR activities?

Public relations works on a certain standard and almost all PR activities involve these actions: 

• One of the objectives is to send press releases, strategically timed ones, to a list of media figures.
• A part of media relations involves the pitching of your brand or product to carefully selected media personnel, journalists, and major influencers to cover the story.

Some other PR activities include: 

• As a means of social media campaigning, using Twitter, Facebook and Instagram as ad platforms.
• Inviting journalists to be a part of press conferences.
• Having in place a general branding strategy that focuses on brand image, customer-facing communications, and social media coverage.
• Using special events as a platform to expand client-audience base, provision of a personal interface to promote the person or product, and allowing networking and business opportunities to develop.
• Use of market research to understand the viability and resonance of the brand, product or pitch.
• Expounding on the significance, unique attributes and excellence of the business by blogging on their website.

Who requires public relations?

Theoretically speaking, anyone who looks to promote their brand, product, or business, can benefit from a PR campaign with viable goals. Being a trustworthy public relations specialist, one can turn down a potential client, knowing fully well that not every organization or person will need PR. Moreover, some entities do not require PR immediately and may take to it eventually. Normally, there are three categories that the PR clients fall into: 

• Businesses: It is the consumers who ultimately power the profits of PR clients. To look presentable to them and make sure the media pays attention to the products and services of the business, hiring PR professionals and having a public relations strategy is highly beneficial to both, the small scale businesses who are focusing on futuristic and possible game-changing products, and the large business operators like leading department stores.
• Nonprofit organizations: Just like businesses, NPO’s too have the desire to succeed in their mission. For this to happen, they wish that their goals and missions are thoroughly known by the public. PR could significantly ease their efforts in this regard. 
• Individuals: Public figures like performing artists or Fortune 500 entrepreneurs tend to hire publicists to advocate their recent work or achievements. Along with performing and providing the many known PR activities and tools, publicists serve as a mediator between the public figures and media figures, giving the former the space to focus on their work instead of relations with their followers. 

Public Relations Strategy Toolkit

Although having an email account and a phone would, in theory, be sufficient to run a PR campaign, the use of PR tools would make your public relations strategy a lot more organized, effective and efficient. 

• Pitching tools: The presence of certain platforms help you create visually attractive press releases, to find and approach journalists, and to maintain online newsrooms that would be more effective than just using standard email and calling methods.
• Email marketing tools: These allow for the easy creation and distribution of publicity emails and press releases, and you can use them to keep a track of engagement on your press releases and make note of who has read them.
• Social media monitoring tools: With effective social media monitoring, you can use social media as a powerful platform to boost your brand recognition and increase sales, and stand out from your other competitors on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.  Some of these cool tools let you set alerts for when the media persons or other influencers use hashtags or post about a topic relevant to your brand.
• Coverage monitoring tools: Once your press release is sent, it can be challenging to keep a track of every news piece about it. With the use of coverage monitoring tools, you can gather and organize news about yourself or your brand in a neat and easily understandable manner. 
• Database tools: Managing various data and storing it is made easier using this single most important organizational PR tool. Whether you use certain platforms where you have to pay for entry to journalists’ contact info or an organizational tool to record new contact information and log your pitching activities, database tools come in very handy.

Having PR under your belt is a blessing if you are looking to promote your brand, product, business or your public image as a person. Public relations professionals are skilled at handling a wide range of good and bad circumstances, and their storytelling ability helps the public and the client maintain a beneficial relationship. There is a list of PR activities that help keep the ball rolling in this integrated system, some being, campaigning through social media, use of branding strategies and market research, and even blogging on the client’s website. 

The benefit of PR goes out to individuals, NPO’s, and businesses. Government agencies also utilise it to advocate new policies to the public. The public relations strategy toolkit is the highlight of PR work, as it makes the task of reaching customers more efficient and effective. The tools that are available, like Database and social media monitoring among a few others, makes sure that no detail is missed out on when it comes to winning the game of acquiring a worldwide public image.

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