As a Lakeland public relations agent, you’ll be based in different places and for various clients. Some of you might work in-house to handle inquiries about your agency’s work but some of you will be sent to organizations, businesses, consultancies, celebrities’ and politicians’ PR teams, etc. Your role as a PR agent is very varied and will depend on the organization or sector that you are a part of or that you are trying to help with your skills and strategies.
The responsibilities often involve having to plan and develop PR strategies, as well as implementing them to target and influence the market. And after the development of such strategies, you would also need to communicate with your team and the stakeholders (your clients) about how to go about with the strategies and what kind of outcome is expected.
Dealing with the media and other organizations
PR is all about dealing with the media and maintaining a good relationship with them. And since this is the new age, it’s more than just about the mainstream media… yes, mainstream, like the newspaper, the television, the radio, the magazines. Remember these?
If you are handling a high-profile client, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll be receiving inquiries about him/her from reporters. Building good relationships with them even before you need them will make it easier for you to manage them once the time comes.
Researching and writing press releases
More than just talking to the media, you would also need to come up with press releases to discuss and address the issues thrown at your client/s. Writing an eloquent answer to every issue is not nearly enough. You need to make a conscious effort of researching about the issues and writing them in such a way that would be easy for everyone to understand.
You need to focus on certain keywords that would influence the way the journalists would talk about the issue in their reports. Speaking of reporters, this is where your friendships with them could influence the way they see your press releases.
Collating and analyzing media coverage
After the distribution of the press release or the holding of the event or the addressing of the issue through a speech, you will need to collect evidence as to how much media coverage your event/s and issue/s got. After collecting the information, you have to analyze each media coverage and see if it put your client in a good light.
