I first want to start off by explaining what PR is, because sometimes there is confusion between PR and advertising. They’re both totally different things. PR is meant to shape and maintain the messages that a company sends out to the public, and they do that because they want to control how the public perceives them. It’s all about image here, making sure that your image is controlled, making sure that your messages are broadcasted in the best method and the best time. Companies hire PR firms and publicists, or maybe they’ll hire their own publicist to come on board on their team as their employe.
Here are the steps to create a good PR plan.
So the first thing that I recommend to do is to look at your press activities. What you did last year, what worked and what didn’t work. What time of the year did you get a lot of press activity. What kind of press activity did you most get, was it more online, on TV or was it more on print. Look at which activities got the most press and look at which journalists or writers actually worked with you to create those stories, because what you essentially want to do is learn from everything that you did last year and apply it to what you’re gonna do this year.
Next thing you want to do is to look at your business calendar. I actually recommend that you create a plan. If you don’t know what you’re gonna be doing then you really have no clue about how you’re going to get out there in the public eye. You’re not gonna know what to say, you’re not gonna have a message to broadcast. So look first at your business calendar, then depending on what you see in your business calendar look at the activities that you know will be press-worthy.
The next thing that you want to do is make sure to create, if you don’t already have, a good media list. Media list is a list of press contacts from different publications you know, there’s a lot of different media outlets out there. There are blogs, online newspapers, print newspapers, online magazines, print magazines, there are radio shows and TV shows. Look at the kind of media outlets you want to appear at and then you can create a list of people who work for those media outlets. That’s going to be the key, you want to choose the right media outlets for your business and have a list of people who you’re gonna contact. Next thing that you want to have is a news release calendar. A news release calendar will save you a lot of heartache and confusion because it will make sure that you’re on track with writing your press release and sending out your press release on time. You don’t want to send it too late when your collection is already out, but you don’t want to send it to early. Plan it out in the right time. The key here is timing, how do you know when is the right time. Well it’s going to depend on when your activities happening and also it’s going to depend on the editorial timelines. Each outlet will have their own timeline. Online media outlets will probably have a faster rate in terms of how they pump up news, because it’s a lot easier to get news on the web versus print publications. They usually run on longer leaves, you need to get a hold of them a few days ahead of time so that way you can make it into their issue.
So those are the key things. This is basically how you create a PR plan, review last year’s PR, look at your business calendar and determine which activities are press-worthy, have a good media list and last create a news calendar. Not everyone will want to cover your story all the time so don’t feel bad.
Karla Gracin
PReport 
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