As one of the most important tools of reputation management, public relations, if used properly, can use its power to build up a positive reputation for your company or if something goes wrong, then it helps prevent current and future clients from abandoning your business.
Here are the 5 rules of an effective public relations campaign:
- Walk a mile in the public’s shoes. One of the hardest challenges of creating a PR campaign that benefits both your company and the public is trying to make them both equally happy. It is important that when you are developing a campaign that you try to understand the public’s perspective.
- Keep all content consistent. If you are posting on your website, be sure that your press releases and social media outlets are all saying the same exact message. Creating misinterpretation between those outlets will lead to confusion from the public, which could end in customers not trusting your brand.
- Optimization is key. Everyone has access to the Internet and people use it as their number one resource in finding information. Be sure that you properly optimize each press release with keywords relevant to what you are writing about and essentially what the public will be searching for.
- Be honest. If something bad has happened, the worst thing you can do is try to hide it from the public or beat around the bush. Hiding behind complicated phrases in an attempt to confuse your audience will end in loss of credibility with the public.
- Know whom you are talking to. It is important that you optimize press releases to reach different target audiences. If you have a new product that you want to introduce, then the engineers will need different information than the average consumer.