Not just tactics

One of the hardest lessons I think I had to learn not only in school but entering the business place with PR plans, is it’s not all about the tactics.

Sure, tactics are great. They are fun to brainstorm and think of fun ideas to help accomplish your plan. You get to be creative and innovative with how to accomplish your objectives.

I am not saying tactics are not important but they aren’t the entire foundation of a public relations plan. Tactics are just a single part of the plan and need to be grounded in strategy, research and reasoning.

When considering social media or any PR tactic, you need to ask yourself some important questions.

• Will this tactic solve my client’s problem? 
• Does this tactic support my objective? Does this tactic work in harmony with other tactics in the campaign?
• Will the target audience respond to this tactic?
• Am I suggesting this tactic because their competitors are doing it? If so, is this the right move for my client? Is there market share available? 
• Is this tactic just the trendy thing to do do right now or will this be valuable to my client’s work?
• Can this tactic be executed on budget with a reasonable time line acceptable to the client?
• Can I measure this tactic? If so, how will I measure it?

I love being an advocate for social media at work. I think the utilization of social media and keeping up with communication trends is crucial in any communication field but if you expect your client to use social media, you need a reason behind it. You need to be able to make the business case and be able to answer every one of those questions. Using social media for the sake of social media is never the answer. 

Hopefully, you’ve done your research and it should be easy to answer all the questions but if not, there is no shame is going back to research more. If you can make a case for what you’re doing, it’ll be not only make your PR plans stronger but it’ll be  a valuable skill to have to get a job and in the workforce. Being able to say you’re familiar with PR tactics is great. Using the tactics, even better. Competent, experienced and able to make a business case on why you used certain tactics over others will make you stand out among a crowd. This skill will become crucial in the workforce so practice it now. 

The day will come when you have to enter a board room full of executives to explain the value of PR, what you’re doing, why it matters, how it will help them and why they should pay you to this will come soon enough. 

Any other questions that should be asked when evaluating tactics on being worthy for the public relations plan? 

[Photo credit: Anthony Carlucci]