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I’ve worked in public relations for most of my professional life and one thing’s certain: PR is incredibly misunderstood, perhaps more so now than ever because of the proliferation of tactics and channels available to marketers and business owners.
To many people – including those in the industry – PR just focuses on ‘getting ink’: in other words, generating coverage in the media. But that is just one component of public relations today. Heck, I know PR pros who wouldn’t even talk to a journalist today!
To help demystify PR and where it fits in the overall marketing landscape, I’ve created the framework below.
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Essentially, PR is about building the marketing communications foundations for your business. See the activities listed in the ‘black box’.
PR people also do a fair bit with ‘partner media’, hence it’s a grey area because marketers operate in this area as well.
To be fair – and to confuse matters further – marketers also are involved in creating content for owned media and social media (‘content marketing’). This is why it’s important to understand why you’re doing what you’re doing as a business, and to have developed a philosophy around such matters.
We may differ in our view, but that’s okay. My philosophy is that building the brand and reputation of a business (visibility, influence and trust) should fall under the PR remit, while marketers focus on any ‘campaign’-type (call to action, designed to sell) activity within the owned and social media categories’.
