What good is story telling if no one is listening?

Or if a story was told and no one heard it, was it told?

The starting point to every public relations program consists of five key steps:

1. Identifying the audiences you are trying to reach;
2. Assessing their current perceptions;
3. Identifying your desired perceptions;
4. Developing a program to establish, reinforce or change perceptions;
5. Measuring it. 

And as critical as this strategy is, the reality is that you are now only 25% of the way home.  The remaining 75% is the heavy lifting in reaching the greatest number of demographically compatible targets with the desired messaging and getting them to believe it.  At this point, the more people you positively influence, the better.

Too many people get lost in taking a victory lap around the strategy process – they celebrate with PowerPoints, videos and graphics, rather than focusing on the results.  The best designed plays in a playbook mean nothing unless you can execute them during the game. 

Reaching 500 demographically targets through a LinkedIn posting is great, but how about reaching 20,000 through a byline article or mention in a demographically compatible trade publication?  But why stop there -- how about reaching 150,000 targets through an article in the Harvard Business Review, reaching 800,000 targets through an article in The Wall Street Journal or more than 1 million on CNN International?

The key to generating this high-impact press coverage requires two skills that you should make sure your PR consultant possesses:

1. Demonstrable news judgment - what makes something newsworthy.  This ability usually comes from having worked in the press as a journalist or as a news producer;
2. Creativity to make something newsworthy when it isn’t in its current state.

 

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