Public relations or PR is all about being convincing. PR professionals persuade other people to do something for their company (or their client’s company) through effective communication. Here are some interesting facts about public relations:
The term “public relations” used to be very hard to define. In fact, it took over a thousand submissions of definitions to the Public Relations Society of America before the term truly came into being. Public relations is defined by the organization as “a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.”
Great PR people are masters of time management. They are expert jugglers of PR work for multiple clients and projects. This might seem easy on the surface, but the amount of time needed for research, which is a huge chunk of PR work, is a huge chunk of the challenge. Now multiply the normal rate by which a single employee can do research by a factor of four or five, because that’s usually how many clients and projects a PR person simultaneously handles.
Technology has made PR work both easier and harder. Since public relations work can now be done effectively online, PR people now have several platforms at their disposal. They can convince an exponentially wider audience. The other side of the coin however, is that their clients face more negative publicity because of these same platforms, which makes the job of a PR person more difficult.
Marc Slavin is an expert at business communication. He has helped companies through various levels of PR work. For more discussion on public relations and business communication, visit this blog.
