Dear Sarah,
How are you? I’m doing great; I’m just starting into my major classes for public relations at Utah State. When I say public relations you are probably wondering what exactly that is. Well, basically public relations is making sure that a company gets their intended message successfully to the public. Public relations professionals are the middlemen in the relationship between the company and the public.
PR is similar to marketing and advertising but with public relations you are selling and promoting an idea and a company instead of selling and promoting a specific product. PR is a two-way communication between a company and the public, while advertising is only a one-way communication.
Communicating a message to the public with a purpose in mind is what PR does.
An example of this would be the new bridge that was put over I-215 and 4500 South. The old bridge was to be moved out and a new one put in place with this new technology within 36 hours. This was made a big deal to the residents because of the public relations strategy that was formulated. The PR professionals working for UDOT created the saying ‘We’ve moved construction delays from months to days,’ referring to the bridge-moving technology being used for the first time in Utah. UDOT wanted the public to first know that the project going on was a big deal; second that UDOT was in charge and third, they wanted the public to think it was amazing. The public relations professionals then made it happen with the help of the media.
PR professionals need to have a strong relationship with the media because the media goes directly to the people. PR professionals must also do a lot of research and either know the answers to all the questions or know where to find them.
PR professionals have to constantly promote the image of the company they are working for. In crisis situations, the public relations professionals will tell the company how to act to send a positive message to the public about them.
Writing is a bigger part of PR than most people may think. PR professionals deal a lot with press releases. They get a release of information from the company about something newsworthy and either send it directly to the media, use it as a background in writing their own story and then send it to the media or completely rewrite it and send it to the media.
Well, I’m excited for public relations and I hope to learn a lot more about it during the course of this semester.
~ Monica Swapp
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3 comments:
Monica,
You did an excellent job explaining public relations. I loved the example you gave with the bridge over I-215. Good job
Monica,
I've got to agree. People usually learn easier when an example is used in the letter. When you talked about the Public Relations aspect, your definitions were very clear and I learned a couple new things.
the explanation was great. You included a good amount of info on PR. Well explained.
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