3 Business Problems that Public Relations can solve

Business owners may face Public Relations and communications problems on a day to day basis, many are straight forward and some are a little more complicated. Before I get into the problems let me get back to basics:
"What is PR?"
It's funny because I get asked this question more often than I care to admit and whilst to me it's very simple and straightforward to many business owners looking to hire a PR agency there are blurred definitions that cause confusion and disappointment. I think one of the best definitions that I have found is this via the CIPR: “Public Relations is the discipline which looks after reputation, with the aim of earning understanding and support and influencing opinion and behaviour. It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics.”

In PR reputation is KEY - it is the very foundation of what PR is and is relevant not only in business but in the political and even individual personal branding landscape.

Here are 3 problems that PR can help to solve, although it might not be able to fix every single business problem these are a few of the key ones that PR can help to resolve if implemented correctly:

Weak Brand Reputation: Sometimes a company's reputation can start to falter, this could be for an array of reasons but usually it's due to ineffective communication between the customer and the brand itself. With a consistent and unified approach, Public Relations can really help to maintain the brand reputation of a company and/or entrepreneur. The ability to ensure that the brand reputation of a business is held to high regard can really make the difference between high levels of customer retention and low brand loyalty. Use PR to share good news stories and communicate best practice to the customer base and the wider community.

Social Media Crisis: In the social media age, how a business copes with a PR crisis is now more important than ever before. It can take just a few hours for a business to start trending for all of the wrong reasons and without a PR crisis management strategy in place the damage to a company's brand may appear to be irreparable.

Poor Customer Services: The media is now more accessible than ever before, journalists frequently seek interesting news stories via social media and members of the public also approach media outlets directly when they have had a poor customer services experience. PR can be used to improve communication between the customer and the business. Negative feedback can be used to create a change within a business and also improve the relationship it has with it's customers.

These are just 3 problems that PR can help solve but of course it should not be used in isolation. Every member of your business team should seek to help resolve any issues that your business faces and if you're a sole trader then take the time to really focus on what needs to be done to fix your problems.

A useful video on how PR can help small businesses:

(Originally published on http://www.ronkelawal.com/2016/02/problems-that-pr-can-solve.html)

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