The role of Public Relations professionals has evolved remarkably over the years. There was a time when it was limited to largely media relations. Now the role of public relations is to guide organisations and individuals on matters of reputation.
On a broader side, PR consultants are responsible for building the public image of a company and do whatever it takes, which eventually makes the career in PR exciting, fast-paced, and demanding.
With things getting digitised today, the functions and capacity of PR consultants have exponentially increased over the years. In a nutshell, PR pros are expected to create a unique brand narrative that wins the love and loyalty of its customers.
Building positive relations with the media to get free coverage for your brand is one of the crucial tasks in the ‘To-do list’ of any PR consultant. Warren Buffet once rightly said “it takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it” but you could turn the table in no time if you have media on your side.
If you have a knack for developing content that perfectly resonates with your target audience then, congratulations!
Because developing PR assets in the form of survey data, videos, infographics, newsletters, press releases, etc., and then distributing them in the right format is a surefire way to get picked up by the media. It’s a regular job of a PR consultant to build a content strategy that engages the audience with the brand.
As a PR consultant, it would be your job to meticulously organise events through which you could maintain positive relationships with your audience, media, and stakeholders.
While hosting an event, you would be required to complete tasks like making arrangements for branding collaterals, blasting press releases, conducting interviews, attending guests, and many more.
Solid brand positioning and transmitting consistent, compelling, and credible messages are what it wants to give the desired shape to the brand.
For developing corporate and product positioning, you would need to do in depth-research, study competitions/market, and build communication strategies all around it.
Handling crisis is a common role of public relations consultants. At the time of any mishappening, brands often call upon PR agencies to mitigate the loss incurred during and after the crisis. As an expert in managing the reputation, PR pros assess the situation and then direct step-by-step to manage the current crisis.
Influencer marketing is a modern way of doing PR and has now become a huge part of an overall PR campaign. PR Pros builds strong ties with the bloggers and influencers to gain people’s trust and upscale brand’s credibility.
Observing trends, understanding their practices, and identifying innovative opportunities out of them has become essential for a brand to stay ahead of competitors. PR Pros remain active and keep up with what’s new in the market.
Application of this role depends upon the size of a company. New media landscape provides ample opportunities for PR Pros to tell brand stories through social media and create a true-blue community.
Data Journalism entails gathering and analyzing data and then transforming the results into captivating stories that fit to be offered for the marketing of a brand or new product.
PR Pros. often with the help of data scientists do extensive research and then reveal the unknown insights to win brand mentions and create a buzz among its audience.
PR Pros have multiple functions out of which the not so famous is Public Affairs. It involves collecting information, liaising with the government, corporate and social responsibility in order to influence legislation, regulation, or any government decisions on behalf of a brand or a client.
-Shifta Alim
Shifta Alim is an alumna of Class of 2020 of the PG Programme in Journalism and Mass Communication at IIS University. She has interned with Zeno Group, Mumbai.
People find her to be an upbeat, and self-motivated team player. She is passionate about building reputation and stays ready to talk on everything about PR.
