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Good Public Relations is More Than A Good News Release

Guest post by: Harvey Farr

Article Overview: People too often believe that public relations is only for a mass audience. Not so. Good public relations starts with one-on-one relationships.

Good Public Relations is More Than A Good News Release

If you want to really frighten someone, just give them a real answer when they ask you “how’s it going?”

All of us meet and greet one another with this overused and disingenuous question, not really wanting to know how it is going for the other person. It is a cliché, a platitude that rolls off the tips of our tongues with the expectation that the response will always be: “fine, and you?”

Truth be told, we really don’t care how other people are doing. We do if they are close friends or relatives, but not our business associates or casual acquaintances. And that’s a shame.

This is not a feel-good article about how we need to love one another. It is a statement that good public relations starts with one-on-one sincerity, and not an obligatory greeting so you can hurry up and get down to business.

A major mistake companies and organizations make about their public relations programs is to focus only on the external. They believe that good PR is just getting their message out to their target audiences and not listening to their needs. Companies too often neglect to take stock of how they handle customer calls, customer complaints, customer service and employee relations.

What good is having an aggressive PR department that blasts out news releases to the media if a customer calls and then has to fight through voice mail hell to get a question answered or an order placed? What good are pretty, convincing and emotional advertisements if a product doesn’t live up to the promises of the advertising?

Good PR starts with a friendly, helpful person answering the phone. Or, with a phone system that is not frustrating and gives callers the option to speak to a knowledgeable person if they so choose. It moves forward with good customer service and finally with delivering a quality product.

When these things are in place, then a strong external PR campaign not only makes sense, it has a greater chance of succeeding.

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Article Tags: los angeles PR, marketing, mass audience, news release, PR, public relations, relationships



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