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The Ultimate PR Scam

Written by: Bob Kelly

Article Overview: No fear of a "PR scam" when you are on-track to achieve those key audience behaviors you must have to reach your unit's managerial objectives.

The Ultimate PR Scam

Please feel free to publish this article in your ezine,
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The Ultimate PR “Scam”

It happens to business, non-profit and association managers
when their public relations budget fails to deliver the crucial
external audience behaviors they need to achieve their
department, division or subsidiary objectives.

Behaviors they should have received leading directly to
boosts in repeat purchases; growing community support; more
tech firms specifying the manager’s components; increased
capital donations; stronger employee retention rates; new
waves of prospects, or healthy membership increases.

If that rings your bell, you need to take two actions.

First, insist that your public relations activity is based on a
fundamental premise like this: People act on their own
perception of the facts before them, which leads to predictable
behaviors about which something can be done. When we
create, change or reinforce that opinion by reaching,
persuading and moving-to-desired-action the very people
whose behaviors affect the organization the most, the public
relations mission is accomplished.

Second, as the manager for whom they labor, get personally
involved with the professionals managing your PR effort.
Tell those specialists that you must list, then prioritize those
key external audiences whose behaviors effect your unit
the most.

Identify that outside audience sitting at the top of your slate,
and we’ll work on it right now.

Nothing happens, of course, until you gather some pithy
information. Namely, how do members of that key target
audience, whose behaviors affect your unit’s success or
failure, actually perceive you?

You and/or your PR team must interact with members of
that audience and monitor their perceptions by asking a
number of questions: Do you know anything about us?
What have you heard about our services or products?
Have you ever had contact with our organization? Was
it satisfactory?

The trick here is to stay vigilant for negative signs, in
particular, untruths, exaggerations, inaccuracies, rumors or
misconceptions.

By the time you complete this exercise, you will have
gathered the raw material you need to establish a corrective
public relations goal. It might aim to fix an inaccuracy,
clear up a misconception or lay that rumor to rest.

How you get to that goal, however, is another question
because you have just three strategy choices when it
comes to perception/ opinion matters like this. Create
perception/opinion where there isn’t any, reinforce
existing opinion, or change it. A warning: insure that
your new strategy is an obvious match for your new
public relations goal.

Now, alert your team to a real writing challenge – a
message tasked with altering the offending perception.
Which means your writer must produce a message that
changes what many target audience members now believe.
No easy job!

It must be clear about how the current perception is out
of kilter. And it must not only be truthful, but persuasive,
compelling and believable if it is to lead ultimately to the
desired behavior. True heavy lifting!

By the way, messages like that best retain their credibility
when delivered along with another news announcement or
presentation, rather than a dedicated, high-profile press release.

Speaking of delivery, it’s time for you and your PR team to
select the communications tactics to carry that message of
yours to members of a target audience that really needs to
hear it. Fortunately, there are dozens of such tactics awaiting
your pleasure – speeches, radio/newspaper interviews,
brochures, op-eds, newsmaker events, newsletters and many,
many more. Be careful that the tactics you use have a record
of reaching folks just like those you’re aiming at.

It won’t be long before people around you begin asking about
progress. Which, once again, will put your team back in the
opinion monitoring mode out among the members of your
target audience. And the questions they ask will be very
similar to those used in the first perception monitoring session.

Difference this time around will be your close attention to just
how much current perceptions are really undergoing the change
for which you planned. You want solid signs that the offending
perception is actually being altered.

You can always shovel more coal into the boiler by adding
new communications tactics, then using them more frequently
to achieve faster progress.

When you apply a comprehensive and workable plan like
this, you have little to fear from “a PR scam.” Instead, you are
on-track to achieve those key audience behaviors you must
have to reach your unit’s operating objectives.

end

Bob Kelly counsels, writes and speaks to business, non-profit
and association managers about using the fundamental premise
of public relations to achieve their operating objectives. He has
authored 245 articles on the subject which are listed at
EzineArticles.com, click Expert Author, click Robert A. Kelly.
He has been DPR, Pepsi-Cola Co.; AGM-PR, Texaco Inc.; VP-PR,
Olin Corp.; VP-PR, Newport News Shipbuilding & Drydock Co.;
director of communications, U.S. Department of the Interior,
and deputy assistant press secretary, The White House. Kelly holds
a bachelor of science degree from Columbia University, major in
Public Relations.
mailto:bobkelly@TNI.net Visit:http://www.prcommentary.com

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Re: Profiles on Infamous Entrepreneurs? - Hi Kevin, I guess the point about running a "Scam" thread would be to attract those different opinions so they can be aired on an open forum and responded to fairly. Both sides of the argument could then be seen in one place (here!).
Re: Bye Bye Vista - [quote="RussellWebb":3q55cgov]I've been cleaning house...Finally rid myself of this atrocious operating system called Windows Vista. Eeeegads! It's good to have a nice clean computer again - all reformatted and shiny new! Windows XP has been reinstalled and Vista is in the trash can. Vista is a bomb... plain and simple. ..[/quote:3q55cgov] Where do I begin... I love Vista Ultimate on my personal laptop, but when I tried to integrate my Vista Ultimate laptop into the local area network here at work... Let's just say Vista couldn't quite take on the challenge of a network log-on and killed itself. I have since formatted Vista and vowed to keep my Vista at home, XP here at work. I have an XP desktop and I'm having an older laptop of mine reformatted into an XP Pro laptop for when I need to VPN in to work (as it turns out, Vista and my office network don't really like to VPN, as it is currently.) Vista is a lot of fun for personal use, but it's an abysmal atrocity for work use.
Good Adwords Books? - I've just purchased "Ultimate Guide to Pay-Per-Click Advertising" by Richard Stokes. Has anyone read it, and if so what do you think? Does anyone have any other recommendations for books relating to Adwords? Thanks,
Re: Burn all your bridges inorder to succeed?? - [quote="BuzzAroundBooks":x11o039o] Some people are very self motivated, while others are lazy and need to create a sense of urgency to get themselves moving toward their goal. For instance, I was just watching a television interview on a mixed martial arts fighter who admitted to being lazy and burned all of his bridges in order to succeed. He sold all of his possessions, got in his car and left his family and friends behind to pursue his dream until he eventually made it into the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championships). When you have literally nothing to go home to, it can drive a person to do great things. At times, burning all of your bridges is what it takes since "bonds" between you and others can actually be a distraction.[/quote:x11o039o] As my fraternity brothers and I said in college, "there is nothing that motivates us so much as the imminence of failure." For my personal fitness I definitely have to burn bridges; I need to be left alone for months in order to reach my fitness goals.
Getting links from the giants - Hi Kevin - it's simple - what do you have to offer them? What kind of compelling reason can you give them to link to you? According to my Google Webmaster Central Tools I have a total of 15,937 links to my site. 4,523 of them go to my homepage while the remaining 11,414 go to various pages on my site. My last sitemap indicated that I have 34,789 pages of content on my website so, excluding the homepage, I have about one link for every three pages of content. I think it’s important to also note that I don’t do any link buying and never tell people what anchor text to use when they link to me. I always suggest that they use whatever text they feel best describes the page they are linking to on my site (if everyone links to you with the same anchor text you can get penalized from Google). Having great content is one way to build links but usually you also need to take an active approach to marketing yourself. Can you build a section on your shoe site along the lines of "The Tennis Player's Ultimate Guide To Buying Shoes" where you talk about all the different considerations someone needs to make before buying shoes - and then at the end recommend Nike? In return Nike links to the site because it's a 3rd party endorsement of their products. Many big companies have News sections on their sites and always love showing off good news - you just need to find a way to give them something worth showing off!


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