Public Relations definition, according to the largest industry association, supposedly crowdsourced from its members, is “…a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.” It is not pitching journalists or an audience en mass. It’s not hyping a product or service in order to convince people it’s something it’s not.

Public Relations is everything an organization or entrepreneur does to build a relationship between it and an audience. It’s about building trust, credibility and demonstrating that you have a shared interest. It’s about communicating what you stand for; your values and demonstrating that you value the role your audience plans in a relationship.

Public Relations is the platform on which effective marketing communications – the part where you leverage the relationships you’ve established – is built on.  I’m hoping to help more small business owners and startup entrepreneurs understand what public relations is all about and how it can be used as a growth engine.

What PR is NOT

Public relations is not about awareness.  It’s not about media coverage, or content marketing, or social media, or engagement.  It’s not about message or brand. PR is not about  shouting as loudly as you can to as many people as possible in the hope that some will listen or about gathering email addresses that can be fed in to a content marketing machine that relentlessly pumps out self-promotional content.

Public relations is also not something that should be outsourced to a third party.  It’s not something you can dip in and out of.