The Public Relations Blog

Use these tips from PR to guide you

September is Ethics Awareness Month, but that doesn’t mean it’s OK for your company to misbehave for the other 11 months of the year. This recognition serves to remind us of the evergreen importance of ethics.

The Public Relations Society of America details a stringent code of ethics to address challenges and serve as a guide for ethical actions within the industry. With help from PR, you can learn about the importance of ethics for your own business and improve your chances of getting it right.

A public relations mentor of mine spent many years hammering home a philosophy that he lived by not only professionally, but personally: the THINK principle, which serves as a series of governing rules for communication.

Public relations professionals are trained communications experts often sought after to convey information with clarity, but when I first heard this philosophy, I found it rather perplexing. Is it really possible to hold to these principles with each sentence we utter? It seems like an awful lot to consider. The THINK philosophy is outlined as follows:

Information overload can be a dealbreaker for many

Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, storage online is not a problem; we can write as many words as we want without fear of eating up too much space. However, while it may seem handy at first, research has shown two things:

Consumers will actively shy away from content that’s too long.

Consumers want information as quickly as possible.

It isn’t a good idea to overwhelm your customers with too much information.

When you know what to measure, you can reach your business goals more easily.

Are you getting your money’s worth from your public relations efforts? It’s a question asked every day in conference rooms and strategy sessions, but many companies don’t know how to tell or even what they should measure in order to determine the answer.

No company of any size can afford to waste money. You need to ensure that PR initiatives are working to increase your customer base, visibility and profits. With help from Axia Public Relations and our PR PRoof system, you can take away the guesswork when measuring PR success.

PR can show you how to take control of your online image

Have you ever watched a small snowball roll downhill? If you don’t stop it, it keeps gathering more snow until it’s too big to handle. One negative comment or bit of incorrect information about your company on social media can create the same phenomenon as that small snowball.

Therefore, it is vital to your business that you manage social media content before it develops into a crisis. With help from PR, you can take control of your image and reputation.

Businessweek magazine is one of the world’s top business publications, preparing its readers to succeed in today’s complex economy. The magazine focuses on the most important news in finance, technology and economics.

What to do about the swelling shooting epidemic

It’s not surprising that gun shops are doing brisk business, or that parents are turning more and more to home schooling. It’s because crisis situations like terrorist threats, criminal attacks and active shootings are becoming a pervasive headline throughout the United States.

Most people don’t expect to be at the mercy of an active shooter. Although mass shootings are rare, the number of incidents in which a gunman has opened fire on a crowd has doubled in the last seven years, primarily in businesses and schools, based on a study by the FBI.

Communicating properly results in a successful, winning team

I read one of John Maxwell’s iconic quotes the other day: “The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.”

Bill Gates’ phrase “content is king” has become a well-known mantra for all marketing professionals. To expand on that, great content is king, and it has its own stiff competition for consumers’ attention and dissemination to the right audiences through earned media.

Wikipedia defines “earned media” as “publicity gained through promotional efforts other than advertising.” In other words, earned media is online word of mouth (mentions, shares, reports).

Learn what to expect and how to choose the right one for you

PR is everywhere. In order for people to know about your company and trust you enough to purchase from you, you need PR.

If you have decided that your in-house PR staff could use some extra help or you believe that a PR firm is best suited to give you an edge over the competition, you’ve come to the right blog. Still, you may have some questions about how to choose a PR firm and how the whole process works. Axia Public Relations is here to help.