Tactic for Gaining Support
If you decide to get started with PR, it's essential to create support. If you want your PR efforts to succeed, you are partly dependent on your colleagues. PR is much less likely to be successful without internal support. And that's not just a matter of the PR budget that organizations allocate.
Why is support for PR needed? Because you depend on the knowledge of the experts in your organization. Because sales colleagues can update you on the challenges and desires of the market. Moreover, communication should never be a separate department within an organization but should be more actively involved in the company's processes.
Make Communication a Part of Every Process
How is it that some organizations end up in a media crisis? Because they do not consider how the outside world would react to a certain change or a (well-considered) decision. An example: ING bank decided to give CEO Ralph Hamers a salary increase, while at the same time the bank faced a fine of hundreds of millions of euros. This does not demonstrate a keen awareness of the environment – to put it mildly.
Communication (or: taking into account the outside world) should therefore be part of every process. Considering how the world reacts to a certain choice not only prevents reputational crises. By integrating communication into every process, an organization also comes up with relevant and distinctive content more quickly.
Gain Support, Organize Trend Discussions
To involve all departments of the organization in the PR plans, it is useful to involve them at an early stage. You do this by regularly holding trend discussions. Organize discussions with every department in an organization: from sales to IT, from HR to management, from the secretary's office to the founder or director.
In these discussions, you could ask the following questions:
- In which direction do you think our market is moving?
- Do you see any notable trends or developments in our market?
- Which fact about our industry or company is a hit at birthdays and parties?
- What knowledge do we have in-house that benefits our target audience?
- Which question are you increasingly getting from our customers?
- What makes our company different from the competition or any other company?
The Best Content for PR
Regularly engaging with different departments in a company not only creates more support for PR. It is also an opportunity to clarify what PR delivers to the organization. But most of all: the best content for PR is created by having discussions with all departments and layers of the organization.
An example from practice to illustrate the above. Tentoo wanted to profile itself more as an HR party and not just as a payroll company. Therefore, we looked for content that illustrates that Tentoo is a knowledge partner in HR. After several discussions with professionals from the business, we discovered that unusual job titles are on the rise.
A press release containing the eight most striking job titles led to good publicity in media like Metro and various national radio programs. This is a give-and-take between business and communication – resulting in great exposure.
In Conclusion
If you want to convince other departments of the commercial value of PR, try reading the blog that explains how this PR accelerates sales efforts. Companies that don't want to be replaceable would also do well to consider PR. Do you find it difficult to recognize news? This checklist can help you on your way.
