Public Relations Professionals Prove Their Worth Once Again!
Determining the appropriate methods
As if we didn’t already know, we develop further in Chapter 10 the sense that the public relations professional is not only the master communicator of the organization, but the eyes and ears of the organization as well. Which communication methods best meet both your purpose and objectives and your audience’s needs? This is neither an easy question to answer nor a straightforward one. At the end of the day, you are employed by an organization that wants to get out its message with little interference from the outside. You have been hired by this organization as an extension of the CEO and it is your job to make sure the messages reach the appropriate audiences. However, as the all-knowing public relations practitioner you know that communicating with the audience is not just beneficial to your organization, but crucial. It is crucial in a crisis and it is crucial in developing a long-term relationship of trust with the audience.
So how do you best do this? How best to communicate a lot of information simply, in limited time and space yet in eye-catching and memorable formats? In order to develop the method you have to know your audience. Is this an audience that is Web savvy or is this an audience that has limited, if any, access to computers? Is this an audience that needs to hear a message time and again, and in differently worded formats, or is this audience quick to absorb a message and quick to retain pertinent facts? How about audiences that want to be able to take something with them, to share with family and friends?
This is where knowing your audience comes in and where you can prove your worth to management as a public relations master! Any technical member of an organization can craft a message of the facts. What the public relations professional brings to the table is the ability to craft the message to not only suit certain audiences but to make sure it’s neither overly technical nor too rudimentary. While you don’t want to insult or alienate your audience by making the message over their heads you don’t want to oversimplify either – you don’t want to insult their intelligence but also you don’t want an opportunity to convey information for your organization pass you by. If you are so caught up in making sure the message can be understood by everyone you may be missing opportunities to get your message out there.
Face-to-face communication can be an excellent method – if you and your organization are prepared for it. You can see the message being absorbed (while you will never for certain know what materials have been read, by whom and when) and you can visually note looks of confusion – where people need clarification, more explanation, etc. The positive flipside is you can see what messages are really resonating with the audience – and you can use this to your further advantage in future segments of the campaign (by including more of these points in the CEOs talking points, for example). The downside of this method is that you can over-estimate the comfort level of your audience; they may be too intimidated to ask the questions they really want to ask so you run the risk of walking away from the event thinking everyone understands and agrees. You can avoid this by utilizing stakeholder participation – a scary proposition for some CEOs, but one that will, ideally, develop positive attitudes by the audiences. If they can see exactly the development of the plan, and see how decisions are reached, they will be more likely to listen to, and to trust, the organization in the future.
As if we didn’t already know, we develop further in Chapter 10 the sense that the public relations professional is not only the master communicator of the organization, but the eyes and ears of the organization as well. Which communication methods best meet both your purpose and objectives and your audience’s needs? This is neither an easy question to answer nor a straightforward one. At the end of the day, you are employed by an organization that wants to get out its message with little interference from the outside. You have been hired by this organization as an extension of the CEO and it is your job to make sure the messages reach the appropriate audiences. However, as the all-knowing public relations practitioner you know that communicating with the audience is not just beneficial to your organization, but crucial. It is crucial in a crisis and it is crucial in developing a long-term relationship of trust with the audience.
So how do you best do this? How best to communicate a lot of information simply, in limited time and space yet in eye-catching and memorable formats? In order to develop the method you have to know your audience. Is this an audience that is Web savvy or is this an audience that has limited, if any, access to computers? Is this an audience that needs to hear a message time and again, and in differently worded formats, or is this audience quick to absorb a message and quick to retain pertinent facts? How about audiences that want to be able to take something with them, to share with family and friends?
This is where knowing your audience comes in and where you can prove your worth to management as a public relations master! Any technical member of an organization can craft a message of the facts. What the public relations professional brings to the table is the ability to craft the message to not only suit certain audiences but to make sure it’s neither overly technical nor too rudimentary. While you don’t want to insult or alienate your audience by making the message over their heads you don’t want to oversimplify either – you don’t want to insult their intelligence but also you don’t want an opportunity to convey information for your organization pass you by. If you are so caught up in making sure the message can be understood by everyone you may be missing opportunities to get your message out there.
Face-to-face communication can be an excellent method – if you and your organization are prepared for it. You can see the message being absorbed (while you will never for certain know what materials have been read, by whom and when) and you can visually note looks of confusion – where people need clarification, more explanation, etc. The positive flipside is you can see what messages are really resonating with the audience – and you can use this to your further advantage in future segments of the campaign (by including more of these points in the CEOs talking points, for example). The downside of this method is that you can over-estimate the comfort level of your audience; they may be too intimidated to ask the questions they really want to ask so you run the risk of walking away from the event thinking everyone understands and agrees. You can avoid this by utilizing stakeholder participation – a scary proposition for some CEOs, but one that will, ideally, develop positive attitudes by the audiences. If they can see exactly the development of the plan, and see how decisions are reached, they will be more likely to listen to, and to trust, the organization in the future.
posted by Lauren at
2/06/2007 01:41:00 AM
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