Speaker 1: Hi, and thank you for signing up to the Ultimate Public Relations Masterclass. My name's Heather, and I've been working in PR for the last 15 years. And I've been running my own agency for the last decade. My company has offices in London and Cape Town, and we service clients around the world in the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, Europe, and Africa. During my time working in PR, I have seen the industry change dramatically. Consumers used to get their news from newspapers, magazines, and news channels published by large and reputable media organizations that were able to produce quality content thanks to advertising revenue they generated. Now, people mostly discover their news online via social media. In fact, a report by the Pew Research Centre found that 68% of US adults get their news from social media. And user-generated content now competes with traditional media and often wins. And traditional media outlets are struggling to keep up, which means less money and fewer journalists to work with. So as a result of all of these changes in how people consume media, the whole PR industry has had to change alongside that. That can be frustrating because it means that a lot of the techniques that worked 10, 20 years ago aren't nearly as effective as they were then, but it's also very exciting because it means that you have the opportunity as a PR practitioner in a digital era to push the boundaries of how we deliver public relations. So this course is going to teach you the theoretical and practical elements of doing PR in a digital world. This course is for you if you want to launch a career in PR, agency, or within a company, and get a solid grounding of how to do PR well. Or if you want to understand how you can do PR for your own company, or if you want to get a good understanding of how PR works so that you can manage a PR team or an agency to get the best results for your business. By the time you've completed this course, you will know the fundamentals of building a PR strategy that generates leads, makes your brand famous, builds a community, and attracts customers. Using PR to increase traffic to your site, managing, implementing, and measuring the success of your PR plan, presenting your PR strategy to stakeholders, getting buy-in, and securing budgets, persuading journalists and influencers to endorse your company, using social media, video, content, and traditional media to gain publicity, entering awards and maximizing your chances of winning, writing for PR, generating your own media stories, managing a crisis or handling negative publicity, building authority and thought leadership through the media. We'll also cover how best to get your first job in PR and how to choose your specialism. There's a lot to cover, but I've tried to make the course as accessible as possible using lots of practical examples, real-life case studies from brands that I hope you'll recognize and appreciate. If you want to be successful at PR, you're going to have to work hard, but in my opinion, nothing worth doing is ever easy, so put in the hours and you'll really reap the rewards in the end. So much has changed in the PR industry in the last couple of decades, but many of the core principles remain the same. In this section, I'm going to give you an overview of what is included in the definition of PR. We'll start with the definition of public relations, then we'll move on to some core concepts that anyone in this industry needs to get their head around. Finally, we will take a look at how digital PR affects your company's central marketing asset, your website. At its most basic, public relations is about managing the public profile of an organization or a person using a mixture of communications tools. These could include building awareness of yourself, your book, your organization or your product or service, aiming to influence the public's attitudes to you, your book, your company or your product or service, trying to encourage the public to take an action or change a behavior. And how you go about doing it varies quite a lot depending on who your public is. For example, for Kylie Jenner, that might be primarily Gen Z girls. For a calorie counting app like MyFitnessPal, the public might be people looking to lose weight or to bulk up. For an e-commerce platform like Shopify, it might be entrepreneurs looking to launch an e-commerce business. For a charity like Greenpeace, it might be the environmentally conscious, policy makers and the general public. For the cake shop down the road, it could be residents in the immediate vicinity. All of these publics, in PR we call them target audiences, use different media, have different levels of knowledge of the industry in which you operate, find out about products and services in different ways, are influenced by different people and organizations and have different priorities in life. They therefore need to be reached in different ways. In this course, you're going to learn how to identify who your public or target audience is and how best to reach them and influence them. But what exactly does PR do? Targeted PR delivers awareness, more people know about you, credibility, more people trust or respect you. In fact, PR is the ultimate form of third party endorsement which can have a major impact on any company. Leads or customers, more people want to buy from you, differentiation, more people understand how you are different from competitors, behavior change, people start or stop doing something, education, people develop a better understanding of an issue as a result of your campaign, funding, people or organizations invest in you, your product or your service, search rankings, your website is more likely to rank in Google search results for specific keywords, employer branding, more people want to work for you. PR usually sits alongside advertising, branding, market research, sponsorship and direct marketing. But the lines between PR and other marketing disciplines are becoming increasingly blurred. They all rely heavily on elements of social and digital media, content and design and they all need to report back to senior stakeholders on the value they're adding to the business. That means that now PR has expanded to cover tactics and activities that might previously have fallen outside of the traditional definition of PR. This is great news for you as a PR practitioner as it means there is even more scope for creativity in your day-to-day PR activity. PR is about storytelling. As Seth Godin said, people do not buy products and services, they buy relations, stories and magic. In almost every instance, great PR is about telling great stories, whether that's your company's story, your own personal story or your customers' stories. People love to read, listen to and watch stories because stories are interesting and captivating. PR is about taking a step back and looking at your business from the outside. What stories do you have to tell and how can you package them in a way that will resonate with the people you're trying to target? To recap, PR is about managing your public perception by telling stories about your business that resonate with your target audience. Good PR can help a business grow by attracting funding, generating leads and customers and assisting with talent acquisition. In the next lesson, we're going to go through some of the core concepts that anybody working in PR needs to understand. After that, we'll drill down into some of the tools and tactics that you'll need to develop your story and package it and distribute it, as well as measuring the success of your PR campaign. Finally, we're going to look at the most important part of the course, which is how to pull together a strategic PR plan, implement it, measure it and report back on its success. In this section, we're going to cover some of the key concepts that anybody working in PR needs to get their head around. Traditional versus digital media. The first concept we need to explore is the difference between traditional and digital media. Traditional media is all those magazines, news channels on radio or TV and newspapers that were around before the internet. Anything printed or broadcast on the radio or television is considered traditional. Digital media is anything online, from your own website to social media such as YouTube and Facebook, online publications, podcasts and apps. One of the huge benefits of digital media is that your story lasts longer because it's saved in searchable archives. That means it doesn't have a shelf life. Some people talk about digital PR as being about dealing with online publications, but that's a very narrow definition. Digital PR is about working with digital publications and using digital platforms and channels to communicate with your audience, but it's also about embracing technology, using software and online tools to design, manage and measure your campaigns. Print versus broadcast versus online. When we talk about the media, we're referring to a very broad category that includes really anything that is published by one person or organization to be consumed by other people or organizations. But generally, there are three types of media, and when dealing with them from a PR perspective, you need to think about them differently. Print media, for example, magazines such as Cosmopolitan or National Geographic, and newspapers such as the Financial Times or the New York Times. Because these publications have to be printed, they take extra time to reach consumers. That means if you want your story to be included in one of their articles, you need to allow extra time to work with them. You need to know when their print deadlines are and work around those. Broadcast media, for example, TV news channels such as CNN or BBC, TV shows such as Newsnight and The Late Show, radio stations such as WACB and BBC Radio 4, and radio shows such as the Today Programme. Broadcast media has changed quite a lot in the last decade or so. In the old days, TV and radio stations would broadcast news shows at regular intervals throughout the day, such as the 6 o'clock news. Now we have 24-hour news, which means there is much more of a requirement for these channels to produce news as it happens, and they have more time to cover more stories. But they're also very competitive with each other to capture more views, so they like to focus on the most newsworthy content. It's also worth noting that because a lot of broadcast news happens live, it can be very unpredictable. One story can quickly be overshadowed or pushed out of the way by another breaking story. Online media is anything that is published online, for example, blogs like Perez Hilton and online media outlets such as The Huffington Post. Because there's no need to send the publication to the printers, online media outlets don't have deadlines. They publish when the story is ready. Online media play a very important role in supporting your website and branding strategy, something that we will cover later in the course. Social media, for example, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter are a subcategory of online media and really important for PR because of the huge reach and influence of social networks. When you think of social networks, you need to consider your own channels, those of influences in your industry, those of your customers and the channels of the broadcast, print and online media. Keep in mind that none of these media types exists in isolation. The BBC, for example, has traditional broadcast channels such as BBC News 24, BBC Radio 1, its online news site and a whole host of social channels. The FT has a print edition and an online version on ft.com, as well as a bunch of social media channels and podcasts. And Cosmopolitan has the print magazine, a website, an app and a podcast. PR strategy versus PR campaign. A lot of people get these two confused. Your PR strategy is a high-level plan or roadmap for how you're going to achieve your PR objectives. It's usually long-term and ongoing. A PR campaign is a smaller activity that will contribute to your strategy. Most PR strategies are made up of several campaigns that help you achieve specific goals. Owned versus earned versus bought media. In PR, we refer to three types of media, owned, earned and bought. Owned media is anything that you or your company own. Your blog, your website or your own social channels or your monthly company newsletter would all count as owned media. You can publish whatever you want to these media and no one will stop you. Earned media is the holy grail of PR. That's media publicity that you have achieved on someone else's media or social media channel without paying for it. They think you're interesting or valuable enough to mention you, interview you or write about you. Owned media has more clout and credibility because endorsement from an independent third party is highly persuasive. Bought media is kind of like advertising. You pay an outlet or publisher to cover your company or product. Media relations versus analyst relations versus influencer relations. In PR, you will be dealing with lots of stakeholders. Media relations is about working with journalists, reporters and broadcasters to persuade them to position your company in a positive light. Analyst relations is about working with market analysts who advise industries and investors to persuade them to position your company in a positive light. It's much more about the facts than figures. Influencer relations is about working with people who have built up a loyal following and encouraging or paying them to promote your product or service to their following. B2B versus B2C versus B2G PR. There are three different types of audiences in PR. Business to business PR is PR activity that's targeted at other businesses. As an example, a business accountant would be targeting other small businesses or a company that makes CRM software like Salesforce is selling that to other businesses. B2B PR is very much about understanding the best media channels for reaching decision makers in other businesses. Business to consumer PR, which is also just known as consumer PR, is PR that is targeted directly at the general public or consumers. For example, a supermarket chain or a meditation app would be targeted directly at consumers. Business to government PR, also known as government relations or public affairs, is PR activity that's targeted at government bodies, lawmakers and civil servants. This can be about selling services to governments, for example, selling town planning consultancy or pressurizing governments to change laws. For example, an environmental charity working to get lawmakers to legislate against making plastic packaging. It's important to note that one company might require a B2B, B2C and B2G strategy to target different stakeholders and audiences. In-house versus agency. If you work in-house, then you work for a company and all you do is that company's PR. A lot of large companies have sizable in-house PR teams. If you work for an agency, that agency will have multiple clients and you'll work on PR strategies for a range of different companies. There are benefits and drawbacks to both. Decision makers and budget holders. A decision maker is a person within an organization who has the final say in whether to buy a product or service. This is usually someone senior, such as a VP, CEO or director, and they're usually influenced by other people in the organization. A budget holder is someone who has the authority to spend the organization's money. While budget holders are often senior, this is not always the case. For example, an office manager will often have a budget to spend on things such as stationery or flowers. So, now that you've got some of the key concepts in PR nailed down, our next step is to look at how digital PR activity can be used to drive traffic to your company's website. This is a huge development in the PR industry and can have a major impact on the success of your business. So, keep watching and I look forward to seeing you in the next lesson.