Not that I mean to sound biased but Public Relations is the spinal cord of any company and with a good PR department in place, internal and external relations are bound to flow smoothly. With a company website, there are even many more opportunities to ensure the efficient practice of Public Relations.
For all the PR practitioners out there, here are a few tips on how to make your website work for you when it comes to PR;
1. Corporate Social Responsibility
Being any PR practitioner, you know that the duty of any company is to always find a way of giving back to the society. Using a website to do CSR is simple because not only will you keep the public updated on whom and how you are giving back to the society but you also get an opportunity to show them through the photographs and videos which can easily be uploaded onto the website and viewed by the public.
2. Crisis Management
The internet is a growing source of communication worldwide, therefore in case of an external crisis, the company should be sure to use the internet as one of the mediums to get information to the public on the status of the crisis, cause, reassurance, public apologies and or reimbursement; just to mention a few. The more you extensively exercise the use of the most used mediums to communicate to the public in case of a crisis, the better the information is passed on.
3. Internal PR
Not only will the website be used to build trust and communication with your external publics, but also your internal publics. A website can be built in such a way that information is filtered on what the public sees and what just members of the company see. So, with the appropriate creation of your website, you can also use the website to inform company employees on speeches, annual reports, events and in-house magazines.
4. Event Organizing
Another duty of any PR Practitioner is to organize events; some might be open and others might be closed events. Depending on the type of event; a couple of things that you are supposed to have ready are the guest-speakers or internal speakers, handouts, brochures, multimedia, press, just to mention a few. Having a website would help you upload information regarding the event to the public (if the event is open) or to just the staff (if the event is closed) and also get information to the different media houses so that appropriate media coverage is handled for the different events.
5. Research
Doing research is very vital in PR, lucky for PR practitioners, we don’t have to go office to office or hire people to stand in different areas to distribute the 5 minute surveys… it’s as easy as uploading the questionnaire on the website and there is a feature available which does the tallying for you. You have just got to love technology! You can also have a feed-back feature which keeps you in-touch with the thoughts and ideas of the internal and external publics.
6. Social Networks
The best thing about the growth of web design is that you no longer have to update the facebook and Twitter pages separately. Some websites are created the great function of a connection between the websites and the social networks so once information to go out to the public is uploaded on the website, it is automatically uploaded on the social network sites too… making your updating social networks duty much easier.
7. Advertising
Another very important aspect of PR is advertising. The best thing about the internet is that you can watch videos, listen to audio and look at different print and billboard adverts. Therefore, no matter what kind of medium the advert was intended for, it will always be suitable to be used on your website.
Please note that you should not in any way use Public Relations to discredit any individual or company, always try to attain clients the better, honest way… Good Luck!:-)
