Take advantage of your PR staff experience to critique your plans for monitoring and gathering perceptions by questioning members of your most important outside audiences. Suggest queries along these lines: how much do you know about our organization? Have you had prior contact with us and were you pleased with the exchange? Are you familiar with our services or products and employees? Have you experienced problems with our people or procedures?

Do satisfy yourself that they really accept why it’s SO important to know how your most important outside audiences perceive your operations, products or services

As a business, non-profit, government agency or association manager, you need the kind of public relations effort that leads directly to achieving your managerial objectives. And you need it because you no longer wish to be denied the best public relations has to offer, and because you want to pursue the quality public relations results you believe you deserve.

That’s fair, but chances are good that you still have most of your PR eggs in the tactical basket. You know, with the big PR emphasis on press releases, special events, brochures and broadcast plugs. And your public relations people pretty much preoccupied with moving messages from one point to another.

But here’s how easy it is to make the changeover from PR tactics like that to PR strategy where the payoff is much richer, namely, nothing less than those managerial objectives of yours.

This is an action plan that calls on you to do some meaningful things about the behaviors of those important outside audiences that most affect your operation; to create the kind of external stakeholder behavior change that leads directly to achieving your managerial objectives; and to do so by persuading those key outside folks to your way of thinking by helping move them to take actions that allow your department, group, division or subsidiary to succeed.

What’s really going on here? Well, you’re preparing to do something positive about the behaviors of the very outside audiences of yours that MOST affect your operation. And that’s when PR actually creates the kind of external stakeholder behavior change that leads directly to achieving those key managerial objectives of yours.

The underlying premise of public relations brings the plan into focus: people act on their own perception of the facts before them, which leads to predictable behaviors about which something can be done. When we create, change or reinforce that opinion by reaching, persuading and moving-to-desired-action the very people whose behaviors affect the organization the most, the public relations mission is accomplished.

And it is results such as these that a manager might expect when he or she approaches PR this way: improved relations with government agencies and legislative bodies; a rebound in showroom visits; membership applications on the rise; new thoughtleader and special event contacts; capital givers or specifying sources looking your way; new proposals for strategic alliances and joint ventures; fresh community service and sponsorship opportunities; prospects starting to work with you; customers making repeat purchases; and even stronger relationships with the educational, labor, financial and healthcare communities.

Take advantage of your PR staff experience to critique your plans for monitoring and gathering perceptions by questioning members of your most important outside audiences. Suggest queries along these lines: how much do you know about our organization? Have you had prior contact with us and were you pleased with the exchange? Are you familiar with our services or products and employees? Have you experienced problems with our people or procedures?

Do satisfy yourself that they really accept why it’s SO important to know how your most important outside audiences perceive your operations, products or services.

But here’s how easy it is to make the changeover from PR tactics like that to PR strategy where the payoff is much richer, namely, nothing less than those managerial objectives of yours.

This is an action plan that calls on you to do some meaningful things about the behaviors of those important outside audiences that most affect your operation; to create the kind of external stakeholder behavior change that leads directly to achieving your managerial objectives; and to do so by persuading those key outside folks to your way of thinking by helping move them to take actions that allow your department, group, division or subsidiary to succeed.

What’s really going on here? Well, you’re preparing to do something positive about the behaviors of the very outside audiences of yours that MOST affect your operation. And that’s when PR actually creates the kind of external stakeholder behavior change that leads directly to achieving those key managerial objectives of yours.

The underlying premise of public relations brings the plan into focus: people act on their own perception of the facts before them, which leads to predictable behaviors about which something can be done. When we create, change or reinforce that opinion by reaching, persuading and moving-to-desired-action the very people whose behaviors affect the organization the most, the public relations mission is accomplished.

And it is results such as these that a manager might expect when he or she approaches PR this way: improved relations with government agencies and legislative bodies; a rebound in showroom visits; membership applications on the rise; new thoughtleader and special event contacts; capital givers or specifying sources looking your way; new proposals for strategic alliances and joint ventures; fresh community service and sponsorship opportunities; prospects starting to work with you; customers making repeat purchases; and even stronger relationships with the educational, labor, financial and healthcare communities.

Take advantage of your PR staff experience to critique your plans for monitoring and gathering perceptions by questioning members of your most important outside audiences. Suggest queries along these lines: how much do you know about our organization? Have you had prior contact with us and were you pleased with the exchange? Are you familiar with our services or products and employees? Have you experienced problems with our people or procedures?

Do satisfy yourself that they really accept why it’s SO important to know how your most important outside audiences perceive your operations, products or services

What’s really going on here? Well, you’re preparing to do something positive about the behaviors of the very outside audiences of yours that MOST affect your operation. And that’s when PR actually creates the kind of external stakeholder behavior change that leads directly to achieving those key managerial objectives of yours.

The underlying premise of public relations brings the plan into focus: people act on their own perception of the facts before them, which leads to predictable behaviors about which something can be done. When we create, change or reinforce that opinion by reaching, persuading and moving-to-desired-action the very people whose behaviors affect the organization the most, the public relations mission is accomplished.

And it is results such as these that a manager might expect when he or she approaches PR this way: improved relations with government agencies and legislative bodies; a rebound in showroom visits; membership applications on the rise; new thoughtleader and special event contacts; capital givers or specifying sources looking your way; new proposals for strategic alliances and joint ventures; fresh community service and sponsorship opportunities; prospects starting to work with you; customers making repeat purchases; and even stronger relationships with the educational, labor, financial and healthcare communities.

Take advantage of your PR staff experience to critique your plans for monitoring and gathering perceptions by questioning members of your most important outside audiences. Suggest queries along these lines: how much do you know about our organization? Have you had prior contact with us and were you pleased with the exchange? Are you familiar with our services or products and employees? Have you experienced problems with our people or procedures?

Do satisfy yourself that they really accept why it’s SO important to know how your most important outside audiences perceive your operations, products or services

And it is results such as these that a manager might expect when he or she approaches PR this way: improved relations with government agencies and legislative bodies; a rebound in showroom visits; membership applications on the rise; new thoughtleader and special event contacts; capital givers or specifying sources looking your way; new proposals for strategic alliances and joint ventures; fresh community service and sponsorship opportunities; prospects starting to work with you; customers making repeat purchases; and even stronger relationships with the educational, labor, financial and healthcare communities.

Take advantage of your PR staff experience to critique your plans for monitoring and gathering perceptions by questioning members of your most important outside audiences. Suggest queries along these lines: how much do you know about our organization? Have you had prior contact with us and were you pleased with the exchange? Are you familiar with our services or products and employees? Have you experienced problems with our people or procedures?

Do satisfy yourself that they really accept why it’s SO important to know how your most important outside audiences perceive your operations, products or services

Take advantage of your PR staff experience to critique your plans for monitoring and gathering perceptions by questioning members of your most important outside audiences. Suggest queries along these lines: how much do you know about our organization? Have you had prior contact with us and were you pleased with the exchange? Are you familiar with our services or products and employees? Have you experienced problems with our people or procedures?

Do satisfy yourself that they really accept why it’s SO important to know how your most important outside audiences perceive your operations, products or services. And be sure they believe that perceptions almost always result in behaviors that can help or hurt your operation.

There is always a temptation to use a professional survey firm to handle the opinion monitoring phase. But compare the cost of such service to the administrative cost of using your staff PR people because they also are experienced in perception and behavior matters. But whether it’s your people or a survey firm asking the questions, the objective remains the same: identify untruths, false assumptions, unfounded rumors, inaccuracies, misconceptions and any other negative perception that might translate into hurtful behaviors.

A realistic PR goal is an absolute requirement, and it must call for action on the most serious problem areas you uncovered during your key audience perception monitoring. You may, for example, decide to straighten out that dangerous misconception, bring to an end that potentially painful rumor, or correct that awful inaccuracy.

To show you how to get to where you’re going, you must have the right action-oriented strategy. But, you have just three strategic options available to you when it comes to doing something about perception and opinion: change existing perception, create perception where there may be none, or reinforce it. Needless to say, the wrong strategy pick will taste like fried onions on your pumpkin couscous. So be sure your new strategy fits well with your new public relations goal. You certainly don’t want to pursue “change” when the facts dictate a strategy of reinforcement.

Here you’re going to have to write a persuasive message in order to move your key audience to your way of thinking. Which suggests that you ask the best writer on your team to prepare a carefully-written message targeted directly at your key external audience. S/he must produce some really corrective language that is not merely compelling, persuasive and believable, but clear and factual if they are to shift perception/opinion towards your point of view and lead to the behaviors you have in mind.

You will need carefully selected communications tactics to carry your message to the attention of your target audience, and there are many such available. From speeches, facility tours, emails and brochures to consumer briefings, media interviews, newsletters, personal meetings and many others. But be certain that the tactics you pick are known to reach folks just like your audience members.

By the way, you may wish initially to unveil your corrective message before smaller meetings rather than using higher profile news releases or broadcast announcements. This is because a message’s credibility is