By Humbert Luna, Emerging Insider Communications

When it comes to initiating PR efforts, it’s crucial to have a plan in place. It’s a great resource to have and to use as a guide. It will help you strategize, implement, and map out your PR efforts so you’re never left clueless on what the next steps are. These 5 tips are imperative for developing a rock star PR plan.

 

1. Survey your space

Initially, you want to assess your business and your competition. Be careful to note anything of importance, especially anything you don’t offer that others do. Also, pay attention to their media mentions. When it comes to assessing your business, you want to look into all previous PR efforts. Some questions you may want to ask yourself are: Did you get any media attention? Was it good or bad? Are there certain angles that worked? Answer these, then analyze your failures and successes.

Additionally, you want to know who your target audience is and what they’re into. It’s also important to know the media you’re targeting. Ask yourself what publications, blogs, or media outlets are you looking to target and why? Are there any specific writers? These are all questions you want to start asking yourself as you start developing your plan.

 

2. Create Goals and Set Objectives

A goal is a desired result that you work towards. Goals vary depending on the business and the desired results. Come up with an all-encompassing goal, preferably one that you thought of as you were surveying your space. Make sure it’s something that can realistically be reached so you’re not setting yourself up for failure.

Once the goal is set, it’s time to create some objectives. This is really what will make or break your plan. You need to create concrete and attainable objectives that benchmark the progress you’ve made. For each goal, it’s wise to create 2-3 objectives. These all need to be specific, measurable, and attainable.

 

3. Key messages

Messaging is vital to success. You must create messages that relate to your goal, objectives, and your audience. Make sure they’re relevant to your audience because the more relevant your messages are, the more effective they are.

 

4. Strategy

At this point you should already have key messages intact. This is where your ideas for new angles, ideas, and tactics will be of importance. Think events, PR stunts, press releases, news, or anything that you know will be relevant to your audience and the media. The more creative or out-of-the-box it is, the better off you are. However, don’t get too crazy because you may just create a crisis you’ll need to clean up.

 

5. Measurement

Once you have gone through and implemented your PR plan, you want to be able to measure your results. Take note of how you will measure your performance. Is it going to be determined by the number of media placements? Inventory sold? Or are you looking for social media hits? These measurements will provide you with data as to how your PR plan performed and how it can be improved. Just remember: at the end of the day, it’s the results that matter most.

 

As you work on implementing your PR plan feel free to change it and remember to use your PR plan as a guide and not as something that has to strictly be followed.