Relationship in PR & Corporate News Dissemination (2023)

These two professions interact with each other daily for the production of news. PR practitioners provide journalists with a suggested story and information shaped in the way they would like it to be publicized in a specific media channel.

Between the two, there is a fine line that separates them. While Corporate Communication encompasses all internal and external communications with employees, employers, investors, promoters, and the management team, Public Relations is all about engaging with the general public using the extensive tool called media.

“Make friends” is a positioning of Luo’s live broadcast room, and this copywriting also became popular with the popularity of his live broadcast room. Undoubtedly, this is a very successful and very flattering advertising copy. It weakens the color of business and profit, and strengthens the relationship with consumers.

And behind this advertising copy, the real effort is the value of “public relations”. This is also the core topic that this article wants to talk about: the “relationship” in corporate public relations.

The Ultimate Goal of a Business is To Create Customers

It seems that they are all profit-oriented, but when the order of “creating customers > creating profits” is determined, it will indeed affect many business behavior logics.

For example, after a company has the mentality of making friends, it has to ask itself: Is my product good for friends? Is my service worthy of my friends? Is my communication sincere enough to my friend to inspire empathy and have positive value? Am I still “holding up” and “above” my attitude towards my friends?

With the string of “friends”, it is not easy for companies to do outrageous things.

Conversely, if an enterprise puts “creating profits” first in everything, then in the process of development, once there is a conflict between “profits” and “friends”, it is easy to do something that harms friends.

To sum up, the core of Drucker’s point of view is that enterprises should pay attention to the shaping and maintenance of relationships with consumers , and this happens to be the soul of corporate public relations: “relationship”.

Does PR really know himself?

Among the core components of corporate public relations, “management” and “communication” are just strategies and means, and the ultimate goal is to create and maintain various “relationships”, which also corresponds to the ultimate goal of the enterprise – to create customers.

It can be deduced from this that the “PR” department is actually an important department that can promote the company to create more customers (relationships) in the process of enterprise development.

But now when we talk about the position of “PR”, we usually think in a rough way: PR is writing and publishing, doing activities, “wiping the ass”, and having media resources…

What’s even more frightening is that many PRs now define themselves in this way.

This kind of understanding is obviously limited to the concrete work content, rather than the core value of the function.

From a professional definition, the core value of a company’s PR department is to shape and maintain various relationships within the organization, between organizations, and between organizations and the public.

To put it simply, PR should help companies make as many friends as possible and make fewer enemies; at the same time, it should communicate more with friends on behalf of the company, build deeper friendship and loyalty, and ultimately form friends into a solid corporate moat. This is the core value of PR.

Use “relationship” thinking to do a good job in corporate public relations

The reason why it is necessary to clarify the core value of PR is “relationship”, not only to let external personnel understand the role of PR, but also to help PRs find a direction when exercising their functions, and have a main axis or value Orientation, and use this to deduce whether what we do is in line with the value of “relationship”.

For example, when PR is centered on enhancing “relationships”, in the actual work of public relations, it is necessary to deeply understand what friends (customers, the public, investors and other stakeholders) need; Whether one thing, each article written, can match its interests and win recognition; whether every interaction between corporate PR and media teachers is effective and positive, and whether it can help the company establish a more solid media relationship, etc.

At the same time, when an incident that may cause a “relationship” crisis occurs, the PR department must be able to detect the flame in time and quickly “extinguish the flame”.

But this is not to say that crisis public relations are all kinds of “concealing the truth” and “transferring flowers and trees”, but to be able to detect and solve problems in a timely manner, and remind the company at any time to pay attention to potential problems that may exist and avoid them.

Talk about “relationship” in PR and corporate news dissemination

It can be seen that as long as the PR department locks on the principle of “shaping and maintaining relationships”, the ideas, directions and methods of specific work will be clear and precise.

Do a good job in corporate news dissemination with the mentality of “making friends”

Next, we might as well take the most common and basic corporate press release in corporate public relations work as an example.

Public relations circles often say, “Half of public relations is news.” But the author believes that the official press release is especially important.

Why do you say that?

First of all, to build a public relations relationship, an enterprise needs to actively speak out to maintain communication with stakeholders and increase transparency. The “official”, “accurate” and “timely” characteristics of corporate press releases determine that it becomes the foundation of corporate communication.

Secondly, companies now generally attach importance to media news reports, and believe that it is enough to do a good job in third-party media communication.

But it is not the case. Media reports need reliable sources of news and information, and cannot be based on hearsay, and official press releases are undoubtedly the best source of material and information.

At the same time, what the media provides is a third-party perspective and point of view, and its position is to serve the readers. Therefore, the story perspective, content, angle, and style itself cannot represent the company itself. The corporate press release represents the company’s own attitude and can provide a comprehensive, official position and perspective.

Finally, corporate press releases can also be used as an effective public relations tool to help companies deal with crises in a timely manner and maintain corporate reputation. Corporate press releases with news value may also be directly adopted by the media, thereby expanding their influence.

After clarifying the role of corporate press releases, let’s think about how to implement the attitude of “relationship” and “making more friends” into the actual work of corporate news dissemination.

Here are three suggestions:

1) PR should start from different concerns and communicate more with different friends

Corporate public relations to shape “relationships” is actually to turn all the public and organizations that have the opportunity to come into contact with into friends and customers. And it will attach great importance to four types of relationships: government relations, customer relations, investor relations and media relations.

However, the focus of these four relationships is not the same.

For example, the general public is more eager to see product and service content; the media wants to see stories, opinions, leadership interviews, industry content, etc.; investors pay more attention to financial reports and business status news; the government values , ESG and other corporate social responsibility reports.

To become friends with these different roles and organizations, it is necessary to regularly plan different types of news release stories for different concerns, so as to increase communication, maintain the transparency of the company, and let them know who the company is, whether it is in good condition, and what it has. something new.

In addition, companies can also increase transparency by speaking from different angles, and avoid only third-party voices and user comments on the market.

2) Corporate news should be an advocate of corporate value and show positive aspects

After understanding the company and establishing a certain understanding, we need to deepen the relationship and increase trust. At this stage of corporate news, not only must there be a wealth of topics for dissemination, but also ask yourself before each news dissemination:

Who is the topic of this news written for? Can the title and content attract them? How can I clearly express the positive side of the company in this news and make readers feel it clearly. I believe that starting with these questions will affect the perspective, title, story and other details of corporate news.

In addition, another important value is that positive corporate news can also help companies to accumulate “trust currency” , which will help when the company has negative public opinion, events, etc., there will be enough “trust currency” to eliminate the negative impact . Crisis public relations is not just a close call, but also integrated into the daily work of PR.

3) Corporate news should be like a stamen, actively attracting “bees” to help companies make friends

It is not enough for the company to speak out. In the process of shaping the relationship, public relations also need to produce content together with the media and reporters to achieve higher and wider influence.

Corporate news and media reports have always been interdependent. Corporate news is a basic position that can provide journalists with reliable sources of information and news materials, while the media are like bees. They participate in news events, pollinate from different angles, and transfer corporate News and opinions spread through their respective channels.

This guides PR to think: Every news report should not be written for the sake of writing, but should be published for the sake of posting. Instead, try to start from the perspective of the media, consider what kind of content the reporter likes, and whether it can arouse the reporter’s interest in reporting.

But we also know that communicating voice today is complicated and saturated, and journalists are busy. Therefore, corporate news must not only be high-quality, but PR must also establish effective communication with reporters.

The company should also establish a news push mechanism to communicate with the media on a regular basis so that they can understand the company’s dynamics and promote the media’s secondary reporting of corporate stories.