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The Important Role of Public Relations
by Sue Jan
Published on this site: July 7th, 2006 - See more
articles from this month
Public relations is fundamentally the art and science of establishing
relationships between an organization and its key audiences. Public relations
plays a key role in helping business industries create strong relationships
with customers.
Public relations involves supervising and assessing public attitudes,
and maintaining mutual relations and understanding between an organization
and its public. The function of public relations is to improve channels
of communication and to institute new ways of setting up a two-way flow
of information and understanding.
Public relations is effective in helping:
- Corporations convey information about their products or services
to potential customers
- Corporations reach local government and legislators
- Politicians attract votes and raise money, and craft their public
image and legacy
- Non-profit organizations, including schools, hospitals, social service
agencies etc. boost support of their programs such as awareness programs,
fund-raising programs, and to increase patronage of their services
Public relations in present times employs diverse techniques such as
opinion polling and focus groups to evaluate public opinion, combined
with a variety of high-tech techniques for distributing information on
behalf of their clients, including the internet, satellite feeds, broadcast
faxes, and database-driven phone banks.
As public image is important to all organizations and prominent personalities
the role of public relations specialist becomes pertinent in crisis situations.
Public relations agencies provide important and timely transmission of
information that helps save the face of the organization. In the words
of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), "Public relations helps
an organization and its public adopt mutually to one another."
Experienced public relations agencies have formulation press releases
into which they can plug the company news, as well as a targeted list
of publications for their industry. Truly good public relations agencies
generally have a good working relationship with key reporters, boosting
their chances of getting coverage. Some public relations agencies deal
only with large, established clients, while smaller boutique public relations
agencies specialize in certain areas.
At present public relations as a career option exists in private companies
or government institutions that actively market their product, service
and facilities. Public relations training courses are widespread in educational
institutions. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there
were 122,000 public relations specialists in the United States in 1998
and approximately 485,000 advertising, marketing, and public relations
managers working in all industries.
Most public relations practitioners are recruited from the ranks of journalism.
Public relations officers are highly trained professionals with expertise
and knowledge in many areas, for example shareholder management during
a crisis, the evolving role of the in-house public relations professional,
account management skills for public relations, an introduction to financial
public relations, an introduction to consumer public relations, an introduction
to public relations software etc.
Sue Jan - For a more in-depth look at Public Relations, visit Susan's
site at http://www.public-relations-whiz.info.
Susan also enjoys writing on various topics at http://www.health-and-fitness-hub.info.
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