Hello everyone. Welcome to the week seven of our communication theory course. Last week, we discussed social media merchants and their radical approaches to communication. And today, we're moving towards the applied communication. And we're going to discuss public relations. Bill Gates once said that, If he had one dollar, he would spend it on public relations, really? Let's find out what it is, how we define public relations, what the functions of public relations are, where we work for those skills are. Alright, Public Relation Society of America defines public relations as a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics. There are several key points here. First is the strategic communication process. It is a process. So, it's not a one time deal when you write the press release and they send it out. No, it is a daily basis routine, and it's a strategic. So it's lined with organizations strategy. It has to force a mutually beneficial relationships. So, the relationships the organization builds doesn't only benefit the organization but they also benefit the society. They the receiver of those relationships. It is a two-way communication (process). So, we want to think about public relations, not as a one-way communications process, not as a management function when we tried to pester it and tried to do something to ensure that what we want is done. No, it is a two-way communication process. In that process, we change as well as an organization and the society changes as well as a society. Relationships. The key point in public relations is the relationship. And the last thing, it is the public nature of the public relations. We live in the society. The organization exists because the society lets the organization exist. So the whole public nature and how we help the society to become fully functioning is also highlighted in this definition. Let's see what the functions of the public relations are in the organization. Well we wear many hats. We have to do a lot of things. First we do research. It includes: anticipating, analyzing, interpreting public opinion issues. We have to know the trends, we have to know the context, we have to know what the competitors are doing. We have to know what the publics are thinking about us. We have to ensure that we meet our goals. We have to report to our management, and say, we were effective you know we've done a good job. So we have to do research. We have to do publicity and media relations. This is a very traditional function of public relations. Really, until now, many think of public relations as media relations. We built a relationship with the media. We make sure that media writes about us. And the best achievement of public relations, is to have publicity. Is when media writes about us for free. Because we created some really interesting content, really cool stuff, very important for publics, very important for the audience. So, we build relationships with the media. We also support employee relationships. Employee is actually one of our key publics. In the organization itself, it's supported, so it's important that everyone understands how their organization is working, what we're doing, where we're going to go, what our plans are, what our values are, and the employees, every single person have to understand why they're there. So, they would stick to the organization and they would identify themselves with that organization. Community relationships are also important. Organizations exist in some sort of community, whether it's a local community, whether it's a virtual community or community of some other sort. But you have to ensure that those who are around us feel good about it. Because, you know from that communities, people are going to come to work in our company. The families of those people, they will come and they will help our company to prosper. We have to think about the community as well. Problem management. Well that's also one of the key functions of ours. And when we talk about problem management, we talk about crisis management a lot. And really management remembers about public relations many times when there is a crisis going on. It's very difficult for us, really, to get money for us sometimes. But whenever crisis is there, they say okay, people, media talks very bad about us right now. So, public relations people go and talk to them. And solve this problem, so they would start talking good about us. And that's the whole new approach, not the new approach, it's the whole new reality of public relations crisis communication per se. So, we have a new theory course on that topic. We also do Industry relationships. We have to build relationships with our industry partners, with our B to B partners. We have to understand what the competitors are doing because our competitors, a lot of times, they are our partners as well. Investor relationships. This is relevant for publicly traded companies because they have investors, they have shareholders, they have stakeholders. And those people, they have a right to know what's happening in the company. And they have to be ensured that they put their money in a safe place. So, as a publicly traded company, you have to ensure, and you have to build, you have to ensure your shareholders are feeling good, they're confident, they're satisfied. And you have to build a investor relations, you have to have this function in the company. Government relationships. Well we live in a society. We live in countries and every country has a government. And we have to build a relationship with a government as well. And, one of the functions also is that public relations sometimes, often, they do lobbying. So we come to the organizations and we come to the governments and we lobby, interests of the societies, of the communities, of the organizations, some public policy we're trying to change it. So, government relationships are also important. Marketing communication. Well this is what we talk about when we build relationships with the client, with the consumer, with those people who buy our products, right, with the customers. It's one of the important relationships for us. And really, it depends on where you are working. If you working in the publicly traded companies, so probably for you investor relationships are going to be the key. But if you are working for a corporation that sells their product to the consumer market, probably marketing communication is going to be the key for you. Corporate image management. We work on corporate reputation. We create our reputation management strategies. We could create a brands. We have to understand those things, and we have to know how to do it. We also conduct all kinds of special events and we do consultancy. So, we provide all kind of consultancy services, job management, at all levels of the organization all in regards of the polls decisions, courses, in regards of the product development, reputation, image and so on and so on and so on. Next, so, we have all those functions, ll the stuff we're doing. What's the skills we have to have? The skills are multiple, there are very many of them. I'm going to list just a few. The first one and the key one is writing. Really, if you want to get the step into the public relations department, many times you just have to know how to write. And first public relations professionals, they came from journalism. So, they were journalists at first and then they were public relations professionals. So writing is a key. You have to write good, you have to write fast and you have to write with regards to your audience. Research. As I already said, we do all kind of research, critical thinking, asking questions, saying no, I don't think maybe this is good, maybe this is not that good. Let's try it again and let's see, maybe something we can do better. Now, problem solving as i just said, crisis management, You have to know how to solve problems and we have to be ready to solve problems. Public relations is one of the most stressful professions out there. So, we have to have the skills to be able to get yourself together and go over there and solve the problem. We have to know how to listen. We have to develop empathy. And from that, we also have to understand the context around us. And since the world is becoming more and more globalized, we have to understand other cultures, we have to understand other languages, the globalized context. Everything is interconnected right now, and there are no separate points out there, so we have to understand that they have to develop this understanding, listening empathy skills as a professionals. Now we're finally moving to Public relations theories. That's the point of our lecture today. So I already said the functions, we defined what public relations is, we talked about the skills. But, really, to be able to put it all together in the structure, we have to understand what the theory is, and how public relations theories work. There are multiple public relations theories. We're going to discuss only six of them. And they say that there's nothing more practical than the theory because theory helps you to do your job better. Public relations is a very applied communication. We work, we do things, but, theories helps us to do this and helps us understand why we're doing it and why we can do with better.
