The Essential PR Toolkit Manual
As it is rightly said, life is a race, and if you don’t find a way to stay in the competition, it wouldn’t take much time for others to run ahead of you. This holds true when it comes to making a strong and relevant PR strategy for your brand. After all, business runs on constant upskilling.
An ideal PR activity is made of growth strategy, expertise, and updated toolkits. Finding and implementing all of these together in a plan of action can be a task sometimes. Therefore, to make it easier for you, we have summarized an essential PR toolkit manual. Let’s move forward and have a look at it.
The Must-Know Skills
Public relation is a combination of regular conversations with various stakeholders, research and analysis, and keeping up with the trends. All of this requires skills and management. We have compiled a list of skills that will make this task easier for you.
1. Communication
Effective communication can do wonders for your business. Beyond everything, it is the content that helps a brand establish a strong relationship with its target audience. Therefore, you must make sure that your communication strategy is on-point. Here are the four components you need to include in your communication plan-
A purposeful communication plan
Well-recognized target audience
Definite communication channels, such as YouTube, Wix, and so on.
Strategized timing of communication
2. Research
Research to PR is what butter is to bread- it enhances the quality of your overall strategy. Gaining knowledge has never hurt anybody and, therefore, researching the latest trends, your clients, influencers, and any other social media content will help you boost your brand’s image.
3. Creativity
There are a billion brands with a billion PR strategies. What will make you stand out from them is your creativity. While the base job of every PR team is the same, sometimes what makes a brand distinct is how uniquely it chooses to deal with an issue. A subtle and beautiful example of this is Penguin Random House's Unburnable Books Campaign. When a few schools in America banned and burned some books, many publications decided to slam their act on Twitter and other social media sites. Penguin took the opportunity to create a strong brand image and launched an unburnable copy of The Handmaid’s Tale to criticize the act. Now, that’s how you stand out!
Toolkits To Compliment The Skills
As mentioned before, a PR strategy is made up of several elements. While having the right skills paves the way for a strong strategy, adding appropriate toolkits to your plan can further boost your overall PR plan. Here are some of the best software that you can use for your PR activity.
1. Brandwatch
Favored by many brands, this application is useful for detecting trends and market analysis. Some of the features that make this application stand out are a common inbox for all platforms, tools to discover trends and align them with the brand’s goals, and a deep research analysis based on consumer demands.
2. PRophet
PRophet focuses on targeting the right journalists. You can discover a thousand guest opportunities through podcasts and optimize your crisis response by getting an insight into how the media might react to ongoing issues. What makes this software stand out from the rest is that it is the only predictive AI-driven PR platform.
This should be your go-to tool for creating an effective influencer marketing campaign. It helps in filtering influencers' insights and finding out what latest trends have been capturing your target audience’s attention. Based on this information, you can devise a content strategy to collaborate with influencers in your niche.
4. Prowly
This software is a hub for all PR activities. Whether you're looking for relevant media contacts or drafting eye-catching visual press releases, Prowly has everything you need.
Conclusion
Every brand, regardless of whether it has become renowned or still has a start-up feel, relies and thrives on its reputation amongst the audience. An updated and well-planned PR strategy can make sure that their image is rightly articulated on social media. Don’t forget to align the skills with the right tools to crack the PR game.