Who Knew You Could Learn PR Skills Right in Your Kitchen!

Source: http://www.propelgrowth.com/

A common mistake when developing a public relations plan is confusing strategy with tactic (and vice versa). They are alike and go hand-in-hand with each other, but have different purposes.

What is the difference?
A public relations strategy describes the overall plan of HOW you will achieve your program’s objectives. This process determines your key publics, your overall approach, and the communication channels you will use. What strategy is not, is specifying WHAT the activities/actions are to implement your strategy into operation — these are your tactics. These may include garage sale fundraisers, press conferences, newsletters, etc.

Here are some in-depth examples of PR plans to further your understanding between strategy and tactic:

• RWU PR Plan (Ashley Portal)
• TIffany & Co PR Plan (Zeenat Rasheed)

As a PR person, we tend to jump right into the tactics, skipping the strategic process. So we come to the question of asking if strategy is really necessary?

Importance of Developing a Strategy
Scott Fogg mentioned in his blog post on Two Common Communication Mistakes that “we marry the tactics and date the strategy. We get so welded onto how we are doing it, even when it loses it effectiveness we still insist on doing it the same way.” As PR people, we need to be experts in our tools such as event planning, social media and writing. But in order to have an effective campaign, we need to develop a plan to determine which tools are best to deliver our key messages.

Source: http://frtim.files.wordpress.com/

In my understanding, our tools are like ingredients. You have your spices, vegetables, protein — everything you need to prepare a meal. But where do you start? What’s on the menu? Who are you feeding and for how many people? What do they like to eat? What impression are you trying to make? We need a plan to help narrow the scope. Before going straight to cooking/preparing, we need to answer these questions to ensure we are in line with our objectives. When we develop our strategies, our tactics should flow naturally.

I do have to admit, I get confused between strategy and tactic every now and then but it’s important to know the theory. When you’re struggling to understand their differences, it helps to apply them into real situations (and maybe create cheesy analogies along the way).