As 2018 starts to rear its head, lots of us will be planning our New Year’s resolutions. Even if you know deep down that it’s highly likely that you’ll give up on them by mid-January, a new year marks a time to set yourself some objectives and make some improvements. New Year’s resolutions can apply to business too and it’s a great excuse to kick start your PR plans for next year.
Here are our top five New Year’s resolutions to help ensure that your PR gets off to a great start in 2018:
- Shout about coverage successes: So your PR team flags to you some press coverage and you share it with your colleagues and then forget about it. Departments across the organisation, from HR to finance, might never see PR’s results and so by sharing it far and wide within the business, including external channels such as social media platforms, you can ensure that everyone is aware of who’s writing and reading about your business.
- Measure your results: Sharing press coverage with the business is great, but it’s even better to put some context around it to demonstrate what it is doing for you. It’s important to show how the coverage has helped with your PR objectives. Whether that objective is brand building, lead generation, or SEO, your PR agency can help measure how a piece of coverage is contributing.
- Invest in good photography: Giving the media a full package: a great story accompanied by some images can really help the press sit up and take notice. All publications need photography to accompany their stories, so when you’re thinking about your next announcement or article you should also be thinking about supporting images. Great head and shoulders shots of your key spokespeople are a must, and even better is to provide images that demonstrate what your business does.
- Media train your spokespeople: Often, it’s not until after a tricky media interview that spokespeople wish they’d had media training. Not only does it give spokespeople the confidence to handle any scenario thrown at them in an interview, media training will help ensure your spokespeople are on message and thereby helping to improve on the quality of your press coverage.
- Plan for the year ahead: PR works best when it’s fully integrated with an organisation’s marketing plans. Sharing these plans with your PR team in advance of the New Year means that PR activity can be tailored accordingly. Perhaps there are some channels that you haven’t explored, such as media relations or social media, which would strengthen your campaigns?
Adding PR to your list of New Year’s resolutions may just help you make the most of your investment and enable you to embrace any media or content opportunities that come your way in 2018.
Alex Brown enjoys being one of the Skout blog’s most regular contributors.
