A How To Piece: Communications Plan

A great way to figure out what to do in any situation is to have a communications plan. Below is an example based from "Public Relations: Strategies and Tactics." This example doesn’t use calendar or budget, but some situations may involve those components as well. In the end, there is also an evaluation that measures the success of your objectives.



SITUATION

The Communications Director for PRSA is presented with a problem; the PR profession lacks credibility in the United States. As the director, he/she must come up with a plan to generate more credibility.

OBJECTIVES

The objectives are:

• To create awareness about the PR profession
• To give credibility to PR professionals.

TARGET AUDIENCE

• Businesses with Public Relations positions
• Universities (teaching future generations the importance)

STRATEGIES

• Develop many story angles for broad range of media
• Generate event ideas
• Involve universities from all over the U.S.
• Involve businesses from all over the U.S.
• Develop main points to put into the newsletters and public service announcements

TACTICS

• Provide print and broadcast media with media kits (which include fact sheets and news releases)
• Make public service announcements on the importance of Public Relations
• Host special events (networking, invite businesses: local and national, tell universities about the events)
• Send out newsletters
• Have biannual reports (to show the increase in awareness and credibility, or progress)

For this example, the objectives are to create awareness and credibility for the PR profession. These are very open objectives, and therefore must have strong strategies and tactics to fulfill these objectives.

The strategies listed above lead to the tactics needed to fulfill the objectives. Above all, getting word out about PR professionals is what will help the objectives succeed.

The PR tactics used are media kits, public service announcements, special events, newsletters and biannual reports.

By sending media kits to print and broadcast stations, they can take the main points to tell audiences around the world. Making a public service announcement can also help, because news stations can play them constantly.

Networking events are a more personal way of getting the word out. Media kits, public service announcements and newsletters are just information, whereas events are a way to make face-to-face meetings with businesses and university faculty. These businesses are important in knowing about the PR profession because they more than likely have positions available for PR and should know the importance of credibility of the profession. University faculty are important because these are the individuals who teach our future PR professionals. If they teach them the importance now, then those individuals can spread the word and it may become more well known.

I chose these tactics because I believe these are strongest to help get the word out. They all tie together and feed off of each other in helping get word out.