Small Business PR Placement

I have been completing my PR placement over a period of months at the company I have worked fulltime at for 4 years.

Though it would have been incredible to gain further PR knowledge and experience from a placement within a new company unfortunately, as with many things, life gets in the way and time off is not always possible.

So what situation did that leave me in and what have the past few months entailed?

The company I work for is a relatively small IT and web design firm, who traditionally have not embarked on many PR or marketing adventures. With this in mind, I knew my placement could be a struggle, however I also firmly believed that more firmly introducing and engraining a PR mindset and associated activities into the company would be of incredible benefit for all involved.

The first real hurdle I came up against was expressing the difference between marketing and PR. Being a small company, we are used to placing ads in magazines or other mediums, or undertaking SEM or SEO practices, or sending out direct mail or eDM campaigns to our target markets. “Unpaid advertising/marketing” is a relatively new and unfamiliar concept to the business.

Advertising and PR are becoming so intrinsically linked that it is hard I feel, for people to see their direct differences. Even small business resources (online and other) are listing them conjointly (see http://www.marketingprofs.com/ea/qst_category.asp?catID=1 as an example).
With both disciplines coming under the umbrella of “Marketing” in its most generic sense, most often they are used in conjunction with one another, whether known or not. In real business scenarios, I have found and so believe, that best outcomes are achieved when PR initiatives are used in conjunction with traditional advertising methods. But still it remains difficult at times. I have pinned this up in my office, to serve as a reminder http://adsoftheworld.com/blog/ivan/2007/apr/11/the_difference_between_marketing_pr_advertising_and_branding

At the start of my placement I had clear ideas of what I wanted to achieve – creation of an official Media Kit and Style Guide for the company (as we had none initially), establishing a firm involvement in social media forums such as Facebook and Twitter in order to grow two way communication with our stakeholders, utilise PR in conjunction with traditional advertising methods for a new retail store we were opening, as well as utilise PR for a new range of products we secured the Australian Distributorship for, and finally ensure that our other marketing efforts and communications with stakeholders was as PR oriented as could be.

The path I had set out was not 100% hurdle free. Being a small company, traditional advertising methods are normally preferred over the somewhat lesser understood public relations activities. However, the placement had me excited for what I could achieve for both myself and the company. Time would tell...