“The history of PR is… a history of a battle for what is reality and how people will see and understand reality.” – Stuart Ewen
The Public Relations Society of America defines public relations as “a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.”
Public Relations educates and informs the people about the contributions of the organizations and enhances its brand recognition by making it more relevant in the public eye. PR is inherent in an organization and the very nature of modern society.
The Purpose of Public Relations!
Public Relations assists organizations to develop and maintain good relationships with all of their key publics and stakeholders through effective communications. Their efforts strive to help in maintaining the positive reputation of the organization or stakeholder and generate goodwill among the media and target audience. PR can play an effective role in winning customer trust on a long-term basis. It can provide the right orientation to the market.
What Public Relations Professionals Do?
A Public Relations professional could play a definite and active role. PR professionals will make an effort to maximize their client’s requests while minimizing the effects of any negative press.
They are in charge of:
- Arranging speaking engagements,
- Helping a business to generate a positive reputation,
- Organizing important events,
- Writing press releases,
- Creating strategies for crisis management.
To understand this, you must think through the two sides of PR.
Positive PR and Negative PR.
Positive PR:
Public Relations is to build the brand image. It generates positive publicity for an organization, an individual and enhances its reputation or accomplishments in a positive light.
PR convinces reporters to write a positive story about the industry or an organization free of cost. Some useful PR tools to form positive PR.
- Speakership Opportunities
- Social Media
- Oral Communication
Negative PR:
Public Relations isn’t just for generating positive storytelling. It plays a critical role in protecting the reputation of the organization, company, or industry facing a plethora of crises.
At the time of crisis, this is where PR comes into action. The PR professional’s job is to assure that the organization will be protected at all costs. PR can help in minimizing damage to its reputation.
A PR professional will be assign with:
- Crisis Management
- Reputation Management
- Damage Control
PR has traveled quite far and, in the modern world, will continue to move faster than many other present-day professions.
