Role and Functions of PR

Role of Public Relations Departments 

According to the Role of the public relations department/agencies, public relations can be divided into 7 types. These are:

• Media Relations: Establishing a good relationship with the media organisations and acting as their content source.
• Investor Relations: Handling investors events, releasing financial reports and regulatory filings, and handling investors, analysts and media queries and complaints.
• Government Relations: Representing the brand to the government with regard to the fulfilment of policies like corporate social responsibility, fair competition, consumer protection, employee protection, etc.
• Community Relations: Handling the social aspect of the brand and establishing a positive reputation in the social niche like environment protection, education, etc.
• Internal Relations: Counselling the employees of the organisation with regard to policies, course of action, organisation’s responsibility and their responsibility. Cooperating with them during special product launches and events.
• Customer Relations: Handling relationships with the target market and lead consumers. Conducting market research to know more about interests, attitudes, and priorities of the customers and crafting strategies to influence the same using earned media.
• Marketing Communications: Supporting marketing efforts relating to product launch, special campaigns, brand awareness, image, and positioning.

Functions Of Public Relations

Public relations is different from advertising. Public relations agencies don’t buy ads, they don’t write stories for reporters, and they don’t focus on attractive paid promotions. The main role of public relations is to promote the brand by using editorial content appearing in magazines, newspapers, news channels, websites, blogs, and TV programs.

Using earned or free media for promotion has its own benefits as information on these mediums aren’t bought. It has a third-party validation and hence isn’t viewed with scepticism by the public.

The functions of public relations managers and public relations agencies include:

• Anticipating, analysing, and interpreting the public opinion and attitudes of the public towards the brand and drafting strategies which use free or earned media to influence them.
• Drafting strategies to support the brand’s every campaign and new move through editorial content.
• Writing and distributing press releases.
• Speechwriting.
• Planning and executing special public outreach and media relations events.
• Writing content for the web (internal and external websites).
• Developing a crisis public relations strategy.
• Handling the social media presence of the brand and responding to public reviews on social media websites.
• Counselling the employees of the organisation with regard to policies, course of action, organisation’s responsibility and their responsibility.
• Dealing with government and legislative agencies on behalf of the organisation.
• Dealing with public groups and other organisations with regard to social and other policies of the organisation and legislation of the government.
• Handling investor relations.

Advantages Of Public Relations

Credibility: Public trusts the message coming from a trusted third party more than the advertised content.

Reach: A good public relations strategy can attract many news outlets, exposing the content to a large audience. Moreover, this medium can help the company utilise certain organic touchpoints that are hard to capitalise on otherwise. 

Cost effectiveness: Public relations is a cost effective technique to reach large audience as compared to paid promotion. 

Better Communication: Public relations help the company to communicate more information to the public than other forms of communication media.