This is my second post on effective communication skills and public relations. The first post introduced the communication confirmation table and covered the first two columns of it. If you missed it, you can access it through the link below:

Effective Communication Skills And Public Relations, Part 1

This second post covers columns three through six of the table.

Effective Communication Skills
And Public Relations
Column 3 – Influentials

Public relations practitioners know that effective communication skills require communicating with more than the target public. It also requires communicating with people who influence target public members.

The target public in the communication confirmation table above is high school students. Column 3 identifies influentials for high school students as teachers and local leaders. You could add to this column peers and teachers.

By communicating with these influentials and winning their support, effectiveness of communications with high school students is increased. So public relations practitioners will take a two-prong approach to communications. First communicating with the influentials and then through the influentials to high school students, as well as directly to the students.

Effective Communication Skills
And Public Relations
Column 4 – Strategy

Public relations practitioners use the term “strategy” much the same as marketers do. A strategy is a plan to reach a goal. You may want to include your communication goal in an additional column of the table. I didn’t because when I was teaching, I added a separate unit on goals. So goals were well covered before getting to the communication confirmation table.

Of course you have to know your goal of a communication campaign before you can plan a strategy to reach that goal.

For the communication confirmation table above, the strategy is to communicate with high school students about drugs through their schools.

Effective Communication Skills
And Public Relations
Column 5 – Tactics

“Tactics” is another term that public relations practitioners and marketers use the same. Tactics are specific actions to implement the strategy. The communication confirmation table above lists four tactics.

First the public relations practitioners will produce curriculum packets for teachers to use in a unit on drug abuse. Providing all the teaching aids required to teach the unit effectively, motivates teachers to participate in the communication program by making it easy for them.

The second tactic is to do major presentations in high schools about the dangers of drug abuse. For example, public relations practitioners can produce a power point, video, or multi-media program as the major component of a presentation and deliver it at high school assemblies or through individual school organizations.

The third tactic is to create and produce bookmarks listing facts about the dangers of drug abuse. Every time a student uses the bookmark to hold a place in a book, that student will be reminded of those dangers. So the bookmarks will provide a subtle but repetitive communication.

The fourth tactic is to write and distribute a news feature to all major media in the campaign area. Media owners and managers are often community leaders so the prior communications with influentials will have helped set up support for this tactic as well as for the drug abuse units with teachers.

Media should be selected to further reach influentials and communicate with high school students both indirectly through the influentials and directly with the students.

Effective Communication Skills
And Public Relations
Column 6 – Messages

Column 6 summarizes the primary message to be included in all communications throughout the campaign.This primary message is the major idea of the campaign. Public relations practitioners call this a key message. You can read more about key messages at the page linked below:

What Is A Key Message?

To read more about improving your communications, click the link below:

How To Improve The Communication Process With Market Segmentation

What Technology And Human Communication Share

If you need to improve your external or internal communications, don’t miss 101 Ways To Power-Up Your Writing. It contains writing tips and advice from a Fortune 500 writer. It will help you prevent embarrassing mistakes in English, and teach you to write with power and impact.

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Posted 1-9-09:
Effective Communication Skills
And Public Relations, Part 2

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 14th, 2009 at 6:29 am and is filed under Communication. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.