Strategies to proactively manage activity

First of all I would like to congratulate myself for finally catching up and being on-par with my course schedule and readings. YAY ME! Next, I would like to highlight that according to the course schedule, it states that I have 2 readings for the week but 1 of it is repeated, thus I will not blog about it since I already blogged about it in my previous entries. Please take a look at it under Gae Synnott’s readings: Public Relations practice. And lucky me for having repetitive readings! =) Anyway, back to the readings...

Missed readings #5

This reading talks about the importance of strategy and what it is. It is very similar to my second blog posting about what I learnt in lecture. In fact it is almost exactly the same which makes it easier for me since I am familiar with the terms. However, this chapter goes more in-depth about strategy.

Strategy is central to the role of public relations and it is a plan or method by which you will be able to achieve a specific goal in a contested environment (James, 2009). There are steps to develop a strategy – a good one especially.

Firstly you have to conduct research about you specific topic before coming up with a plan about it. Next you have to analyse the results of the research. Under the analysis you have to take note of the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats- SWOT for short (James, 2009) which I have also mentioned in my 2^nd post. You have to specify your target audience and evaluate your results at the end as well.

Strategies are created to achieve goals and objectives. Thus in order to achieve them, you have to create your objectives well. It has to be SMART- Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Results-orientated and Time frame (James, 2009). This is a popular method adapted by most management.

After setting your strategies, you have to start thinking of tactics which is how you are going to implement your strategies (James, 2009). This involves creative thinking as practitioners need to compete with so many other factors in order to publicise their client. Furthermore, it has become such that involvement of target audience plays an important part currently.

For example during our lecture, Ms Tanya mention of a Confucius proverb saying ‘Tell me and I will forget; Show me and I may remember; Involve me and I will Understand.’ I agree with this statement as in my opinion, it is one of the best and smartest way to implement your strategy as what better way is there then to involve you target audience so that they can experience whatever your client is offering.

An example of using involvement tactic is the HP camera tactic where they gave their cameras to certain hotels and resort so that customers are able to loan the camera whenever they go out to capture their precious moment. Thus, customers will be able to experience the camera by trying out the functions and thus either getting it for themselves or spreading about it by word of mouth. Thus this is a very good example of the tactics implemented by PR practitioners.

In conclusion, I feel that this reading tells you about the step-by-step method to achieving a good strategy and tactic. One thing that I am pretty sure of is that you will only get better if you practice what you learn. Thus, it is important that I practice what I learnt from the book and become street-smart and not just book-smart.

signing off,

nivitra