Guide

Public relations: a guide to PR

Earning coverage, managing reputation and telling your story through the media and beyond.

Public relations is about reputation: what people say about you when you are not in the room. Its core is earned media — coverage, comment and recommendations you cannot simply buy — which is why it carries more credibility than advertising. Modern PR spans the press, broadcasters, podcasts, newsletters, creators and online communities.

The UK's professional bodies for the industry are the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) and the Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA).

Media relations

Journalists need stories their readers care about, delivered on deadline. Learn what each publication covers, read the journalist's recent work, and pitch a specific idea in a few lines rather than sending a generic release to everyone. Be available, accurate and quick to respond — reliability builds relationships faster than lunches.

Press releases

A good release leads with the news in the first sentence, answers who, what, when, where and why in the first paragraph, includes a quote that says something, and gives the facts a journalist needs to write the story. Keep it to a page, put the full details on a web page you can link to, and supply good photographs.

Digital PR

Digital PR uses research, data, tools and newsworthy campaigns to earn coverage and links online. It is where PR and SEO meet: a story picked up by national news sites can earn more authoritative links in a week than years of outreach.

Crisis communications

Plan before you need it: agree who speaks, who signs off, and how quickly you will respond. When something goes wrong, acknowledge it quickly, say what you are doing about it, and keep updating. Silence and spin both make a bad story worse.

Measuring PR

Measure outcomes, not column inches. Track coverage in the publications that matter to your audience, key messages carried, share of voice against competitors, referral traffic, links and changes in awareness or enquiries. The industry has moved away from advertising value equivalents (AVEs), which say little about real impact.