Every business strives to build a positive reputation, as it is critical to its success. A company’s good reputation is often a sign of reliability, which in turn can attract more potential customers and qualified employees. The various strategies involved in how information about a person or company is spread to the public take part in maintaining a positive public image. This set of strategic communications refers to public relations.
What is public relations (PR)?
Public relations in short PR is a set of strategies that an organization applies to the audience to maintain positive media coverage and, or response to public discussion. In public relations “public” is an audience that can be divided into different target groups. For example people from a certain region, who are of a certain age, customers, or people with deep knowledge of the industry.
PR may occur in the form of a company press release, news conference, interviews with journalists, or social media posting. The position that is responsible for maintaining these strategic communications is called public relations specialist.
What is a public relations professional?
Through various channels and social media, the public relations specialist builds and maintains a positive brand image. They plan promotional campaigns, write press releases, and generally provide strategies and tactics for sharing organizational news and events. While doing this they also predict and analyze how the public perceives the company or brand.
Often in larger industries, public relations functions are divided into different areas. Since each of them deals with a specific aspect, there are different types of public relations.
The most common ones are listed below.
What are the types of PR?
- Media Relations – This type of public relations is responsible for building a good relationship between the brand or company and the public media organizations. The team of public relations specialists directly provides the media with news about the company or brand.
- Investor Relations (IR) – This type refers to building and managing relationships between the company and its investors. For example, the investors might be shareholders, government authorities, or the financial community.
- Internal Relations – This includes building relationships between the company and its employees. It is related to conversations about working conditions or the presence of issues in order to avoid future misunderstandings and disappointments.
- Community relations – In this form of public relations the focus is to build strong community partnerships in the areas in which a business operates.
- Customer relations – This type of public relations refers to the connection between the company and its customers. This involves the keeping of positive relationships and managing market research.
Conclusion
The impact that public relations has on any business determines how the public perceives companies and brands in the area. I.E. gives an idea of the way the audience perceives the relevant brand.
