Public Relations in the Community

Developing relations inside and outside your company is an essential to your company’s success. It is important public relations practitioners develop relationships within the community.

Because of social media, neighbors aren’t always close in proximity. They could be anywhere at any moment. It is important to define who your neighbors are in order to build relationships within the community. If you are able to build quality relationships within the community, your relationships can benefit you in times of crisis. Your publics will be able to defend your company when things get rough.

According to Katie Paine, author of “Measure What Matters”, there are six steps to measuring relationships with communities.

• Agree upon solid measurable tied to bottom line
• Define your publics 
• Who or what are your benchmarks?
• Set audience priorities 
• Choose measurement tools
• Analyze data

Remember, PR is still PR. The goal is to build mutually beneficial relationships. Take the initiative today and begin developing quality relationships within the community. As always, if you begin developing relationships, be sure to implement a measurement program. Your relationships are irrelevant if they are unmeasurable. Use Paine’s six tips for measurement to ensure your community relationships are mutually beneficial.

Unfriended

Thanks to social media it seems like every day is some type of holiday. Scroll down your newsfeed on any given day and you will see National Best Friend Day, National Dog Day or even National Pizza Day… are these even legitimate? Probably not but according to ABC News, today is National Unfriend Day.

Talk show host, Jimmy Kimmel, started this ‘holiday’ as a joke and it has turned into an annual occurrence. National Unfriend Day encourages Facebook users to look at their friends list online and choose people to unfriend. When you’re finished unfriending friends, you will be left with a friends list of those you actually care to stay connected to.

Relationships change. Do you really need your camp counselor from 6^th grade as a friend on Facebook? Or how about that annoying friend from high school? I have 1,487 friends on Facebook. I think I could use a little unfriending. How many people do I actually know or consider friends out of those 1,487 people? Social media has made it so easy for people to connect and build relationships.

Diane Gottsman, an etiquette expert advises you to “Use your best judgment. You have to weigh the annoyance. Is it going to be worse when you unfriend? Will it be more drama than its worth? If hiding their posts wont suffice and they’re still annoying you – it is OK to unfriend them.”

Make sure to celebrate National Unfriend Day every November 17 and keep Gottsman’s advice in mind and use your best judgment when it comes to unfriending friends. Happy unfriending y’all.