Create a Professional Bill Format for Public Relations Effortlessly

Professional bill format for Public Relations

hi guys welcome to senayan PR welcome to another episode so much to do today I've bought myself some tea because we are going to be doing some real work today so a question that I received after posting the first episode is how do you put together a public relations plan Wow if you guys have ever heard of the seven steps you know we're going to be doing some real work today so let's get into it [Music] before we get into how strategy I think it's important for us to talk about why you need one so you may need a PR plan for a campaign for a year even if you are planning ahead for your brand or for something as simple as putting together the small projects it really helps you to put together the blueprints of what you're going to do how you're gonna go about it how much money you're going to need and most importantly how you're going to evaluate yourself at the end of the project so I'm going to take you through some steps of how to put together the PR plan and just some little secrets and tips of how I work through mine I know that in college or university they'd only take you through the seven steps of a PR plan I've got an additional stick to mine but it doesn't mean that yours is wrong so we'll just work through it and hopefully it will make understanding the seven steps of a PR and easier for you get into step one step one for me is a situational analysis for you it may be called a SWOT analysis and really what it means it means doing research figuring out as much as you can about the product about the server's about the company about the project so you need to know what the strains are what the weaknesses are what the opportunities are if you don't do the research beforehand you'll really struggle to put together a plan say for example you're working on a PR plan to launch a new vehicle the new mercedes-benz vehicle so it's important for you to know what the features are of the vehicle when exactly it's going to be launched what are the best features of that vehicle why should people buy it what colors is it available in what is the fuel consumption you need to know as much as you can and while you're doing this research you also need to understand your market or the market that the vehicle is going to be launched in so that forms a part of your research and that forms a part of your step one which really is the foundation of your PR plan yep - for me is always setting the overarching goal of the strategy or of the PR plan or of the project that I'm working on so for example your overarching goal could be that you want to educate you want to educate people or you want to create awareness so save yourself one big goal why are you doing this why are you putting together this plan this will really help you with the steps that are coming up ahead step number three is identifying your target audience so you need to know who your PR efforts are going to be aimed at and for me one very important thing to always remember is make sure that you include internal staff so if you're putting together a PR plan for a large corporation or for a company that manufactures a product or a vehicle you need to make sure that you include the internal staff members the directors the people that are in production frontline staff because imagine how horrible it would be for big billboards and radio messaging to go out and the people that work inside the company or the corporation don't actually know what's going on so for me internal staff is always at the top of the list and then I make my way down I try not to complicate it I add at least three or four target audiences that I want to work with and of course because we are in PR media is always going to be there and we can break it down even further into you know owned media or earned media but you guys know what I'm talking about so try to make sure that your target audience list is not too long because you do know that when you get to your tactics you're going to maybe put together a tactic or think up a tactic to reach each target audience for as creating your key messages this is probably one of my favorite parts next to coming up with tactics but this is because all the research that you've done in the beginning comes into play here so you need key messages because you need to identify what it is that your target audience needs to know what are the most important effects is it when the company was launched is it why is the companies doing this is it how this is going to change people's lives those are your key messages sometimes when you're working on a campaign you end up just having one key message and that's good enough or if you've got a lot of facts and a lot of knowledge to share you end up with between two and four key messages I'm a bit of an overachiever so I always end up with at least four key messages and they really do help when you're putting together your press release or if you end up extending yourself to the social media team and you need to share some facts with them which they could use while building their quantity number five is identifying your objectives this should be easy enough once you've done your research identified who your key audience is and also identified the key messages so the easiest way to put your objectives together is to use smarty I know that you guys have used smarty before so make sure that you use multi with the objectives because they need to be measurable you know they need to be specific they need to be timeless as well so when you do such objectives make sure that you know who each objective is targeted at how you're gonna go about doing it and when you're gonna go about doing it so that is important also sometimes to make it easier for yourself you can link your objectives to your key audience so if you have identified internal staff media external stakeholders try to link objectives to each of them it just makes it easier for you that's how we normally do it at NPR and that's how I've done it for the longest time as well six is tactics and others like to call it concepts so for me this is probably the most innovative part this is when you really get to come up with some great ideas that you can link to your target audience and link to your objectives so PR tactics you know the list keeps growing it could be a media release it could be an event it could be an exhibition it could be the sponsorship of a campaign or a team or something like that there are so many different tactics that you can use to reach your goal to reach your objective and like I said before and even in the first video you know one of the things that really excites me about public relations is the ability or the opportunity to be as innovative as you possibly can so use the tactic phase to wow your client - wow your boss - wow your manager this is the chance for you to come up with brilliant ideas how are you going to create awareness how are you going to educate how are you going to excite so once you've come up with your tactics you have the very very important task of working out what your budget is and you would have asked your client or your manager or your boss what the budget is but sometimes I'm like in many cases you don't know what the budget is so you come up with big ideas or small ideas and at the end of the day the budget needs to be approved so coming up with your budget your budget should be linked to your tactics so if you've decided that you want to have an event or you want to sponsor or you want to have an exhibition each of those line items needs to have a cost associated with it people to put together your budget and remember you need a 10% contingency in case anything happens so if you're working with a budget of $300,000 for 30,000 Rand in case you need it in case something goes wrong maybe it rains and you need a marquee all of a sudden or people drop out and you need to fly someone in quickly so always give yourself a 10% buffer and explain to your clients or your boss or your manager that you have done this because it's very important to be transparent especially when it comes to financial matters I always get asked the question how do you measure public relations so it all depends on the tactic that you are using if you've decided to write and publish me tyrannies then you might measure yourself by the number of times that has been published whether it's been published in publications that really suit your client or your brand and the value of that publicity that you've received if you've decided to host an event I usually like to survey people during the events and just get little recordings for myself how did they enjoy the event what did they like the most about it would they come again if we have it next year so those are the evaluation tools if one of your tactics is going to be social media as well are you going to measure engagement are you going to measure whether the clients page grows or doesn't grow so you need to look at each tactic and each tactic then needs to be linked to how you are going to measure how are you going to be evaluate and once again you need to be transparent so you need to let your clients boss or manager know that this is how I'm going to evaluate my effort so that at the end of it all once you've done all of this you've executed your PR plan you can sit down and measure yourself and then put together a report on your efforts I've reached the end of how to put together a public relations plan or a public relations strategy and as I said to you guys I have eight steps instead of seven just to run through them one more time you need to do a situational analysis or SWOT analysis you need to set your overarching goal you need to identify who your target audience is set your key messages write down what your objectives are remember to link them to your key audience decide on your tactics get creative have fun and work on your budget link your budget to each tactic and at the end of it all make sure that you know how you're going to evaluate or measure all of your efforts I am gonna put a summary at the end of this step-by-step plan of how to put together a public relations plan remember that you are very welcome to in the comments section ask a question ask anything that you'd like in to tackle in the next episode do subscribe follow me on Instagram and I look forward to chatting with you guys again soon