Please feel free to publish this article and resource box in your ezine, newsletter, offline publication or website. A copy would be appreciated at bobkelly@TNI.net. Net word count is 770 including guidelines and resource box. Robert A. Kelly © 2003. Ignore PR at Your Peril!
If you do, it means:
1. you don’t value tracking
perceptions of important outside audiences whose behaviors could sink your ship:
2. you don’t care about setting a public relations goal designed to correct misconceptions, inaccuracies or rumors that can hurt you;
3. you care even less about strategies to get you from here to that PR goal you already don’t care about;
4. and you certainly don’t value persuasive messages you need to convince your key outside audiences that their damaging perceptions of your enterprise are dead wrong.
Man, that’s risky and an awful lot not to care about!
Actually, I don’t believe you don’t care, and I don’t believe you’re really ignoring public relations. If you were, by now your organization would be on its last legs, Kaput!, Morto!
In fact, you may be a closet PR person who knows better. Why you may even buy fundamental premise of public relations:
“People act on their own perception of facts before them, which leads to predictable behaviors about which something can be done. When we create, change or reinforce that opinion by reaching, persuading and moving-to-desired-action those people whose behaviors affect organization, public relations mission is accomplished.”
I’ll bet you’re also pretty darn good at monitoring what that #1 external audience thinks about you and your organization. And that you regularly interact with them asking questions like What do you think of us? Why? while watching for negative undertones, wrong-headed beliefs or misconceptions.
And that means you’ll be anxious to create a public relations goal that corrects such misconceptions because they can lead directly to negative behaviors that will hurt you.
In practice, your goal may be focused on pacifying an activist group, reinforcing prospect interest in your product or service, or even countering a painful rumor.
You’re probably ahead of me in forming strategy you need to reach that goal. For better or worse, there are only three ways to deal with opinion or perception problems. Create some all-new opinion where none exists, change existing opinion, or reinforce it.
