GET FIT FOR PR IN JUST 26 STEPS #26StepsToGreatPR
A 26th anniversary is a bit like a 22nd birthday: you feel like celebrating but there’s no way you can make it as special as last year. At Clare PR in Manchester, we believe in making things special. Numbers shouldn’t have to fit into neat little boxes any more than ideas, so, to mark our 26th anniversary in business, we’ve defined 26 Steps to Great PR.
ATTENTION! This is not a hand book. Nor is it a toolkit or a ‘how to’ guide. It won’t help you cram for your PR exams (sorry) and it won’t make you a PR whizz kid in five minutes flat either.
In fact, our 26 steps to Great PR is more of a philosophy than a methodology. If you’re a client it will tell you what you should expect from your agency. If you’re a PR, it could give you a few home truths about how you could improve you services.
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The steps start with the word ‘trust’, which is often hard won but can be lost in an instant. How do you gain a client’s trust – and the trust of the media and any other stakeholders for that matter? The answer to that question is covered off in step 13: ‘reliable’, step 17: ‘accountable’ and steps 19 & 20: ‘on brief’ and ‘on time’.
In short, no client relationship can work without trust and a client will only trust an agency that keeps its promises and delivers tangible business benefits for the PR fee (see step 11) and provides results aligned to targeted outcomes (step 10).
Of course, achieving all of that takes skill and experience too, as step 25 points out. It also takes a creative plan (step 5), an ability to identify a different angle (step 16) and meaningful, consistent messaging (step 7) to differentiate the client from competitors and raise their profile effectively (see step 9).
As an agency, Clare PR hesitates to generalise or over simplify because there is never a one-size-fits all approach to PR. There is, however, a set of core values that all PR professionals should live and breathe every day of their working lives: we think our 26 Steps to Great PR sums them up.
To find out more and get involved in the debate follow us on Twitter @ClareComms or search #26StepsToGreatPR