1. The kind of practice that we call today public relations is more the 100 years old. There were many definitions of them during their historical development. The public relations developed from press agentry and publicity. The shortest definition was formulated in the year 1988 – “Public relations helps the organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other”. Thus it brings harmony to private and public policies. Public relations serves many kinds of institutions, different businesses, trade unions, voluntary associations and groups, government agencies, foundations, schools, religious institutions and so on. To achieve their goals they have to develop relations and connection to their audience, i.e. to their members, customers, shareholders and with the whole society as well. So we could separate the following functions of public relations:


- anticipating, analyzing and interpreting the public attitudes, opinion and matters that might influence either positively or negatively the plans and work of the organizations.

- Management of all levels of organization, taking into account policy decisions, ways of actions, communications, the social responsibilities of the organization.

- Constantly researching and evaluating the programs for action and communication in order to present the facts to the public so that they are easily understood and thus the main aims of the organization should be achieved.

- Planning and implementing the directions in order either to influence or to change the public policy. This includes as well all the necessary steps to achieve it such as for example: planning the budget, recruiting and training the staff, developing facilities and managing the existing resources.

2. In order to understand what stakeholder relations mean, we should first give the definition of the notion stakeholder itself, stakeholder – “is anyone or any organization a stake in how well your company performs. A key vendor is a stakeholder; rumors that you are financially shaky may cause them to restrict your credit terms.” (3). To stakeholders we also relate top consultants, board members, sales representatives, distributors and so on.

It is hard to say which relations are more important as both stakeholders and public relations do play vital roles. They usually call for different skills and strategies but they can be sometimes used together simultaneously. But from the other hand there is a technique which teaches us to pay more attention to stakeholders, for example to provide your excuses for some screw-ups they all know about. Sometimes stakeholder and public relations are in conflict.

3. There are two big groups of public relations objectives:

- awareness/informational objectives – they are rather common and easy public relations objectives that can be achieved, but it is rather difficult to measure them

- motivational objectives – they are not so easily to achieve, but from the other hand they are also easier to measure, they are “bottom-line” oriented and based on some clear results. It is easier to see the behavior than cognitive effects, but it is not so easy to prompt it.

Objectives are to be clearly formulated, for example it is useless to say “to increase awareness” or “to change attitude”, the way how it is supposed to be done and by whom is to be included into these objectives. These are the main points that are to be taken into consideration when managing the public relations objectives:

* “the nature of the intended change
* the target public
* the outcome to be achieved
* the amount of change desired
* a target date for achieving the outcome” (1).

4. Fame is usually considered to be a good force for commerce. In order to make the goods or services more attractive and better accepted by the audience famous individuals or their names or their voices are used. This practice was invented in the nineteenth century already, so it is not new nowadays. In order to take the attention of the potential customers and buyers from the rivals many advertisers and merchandisers used it. The names and personal profiles of actors, singers, and sportsmen and so on are widely used. This explains why individual’s public reputation is really important for entertainment and sports spheres as well. Most people pay great attention to sports, and are even real fans of some certain kinds of sports, no wonder, that the reputation of sports starts is important.

5. There are some special ways of implementing the public relations and promotion for small business. The main goal of them is to attract customers and to make your business noticeable. There are a great number of events that can be connected with small business promotion, such as open houses, educational seminars, and sport events and so on. The scheme to develop the successful promotion starts with setting some clear goals for the event. Then the target audience is to be carefully selected. There should be an in-house coordinator for the event. Some of your business partners could be a great support. Public relations “will always focus heavily on publicity, but today it includes community participation, bylined articles, public speaking, media commentary, relationships with local area reporters and development of good professional citizenship” (4).

6. Usually journalists do not like to make copies of press releases as they state that this is a wrong judgment. For example, if to take the following direct phrase of a Senator Smith “This is the most fiscally irresponsible bill that the Congress has passed since the Buy Everyone A Mercedes Act. – in this case a journalist may copy the quote verbatim into the story, although ethical reporters prefer to try soliciting an individual quote from the speaker before filling the story” (2). The professionals of public relations think that their press releases help journalists, but they certainly leave them the choice to decide whether the material verbatim provides the correct information and the real story or it doesn’t. People busy with public relations are usually more concerned with the opinion that the journalists are about them, journalists in their turn seem to care not really much about the attitude of the public relations builders.

7. A written statement which is distributed with the help of media is usually called a press release. The text is usually written in a form of news story, the headline should be eye- catching and the text itself is written in the so-called inverted pyramid style. The people practicing public relations write releases that “encourage as much lifting as possible” (2). The Internet brought the new sort of press release called optimized press release. This version is presented not only for journalists, but for all people visiting online news portals. Most specialists are supporting the point of view that public relations skills are to adapt, no matter what is going on with print media.

8. “Now more than ever, the ethics, morality, and judgment of the mass media are on our collective mind… And we all talk knowingly of the “spin” that public relations efforts put on everything from disaster relief to breakfast cereal.” (6). Most of the techniques that public relations firms use are taken from the institutions and practices of democracy. The main ways for the individuals to express themselves in a society are persuasion, advocacy and education. This is used by public relations firms as well, as they also are engaged in practices which are as well beneficial, for example they are talking about scientific researches about promoting charities or show awareness about public health. The only but in this case are the so-called – front techniques, a bright example of such a technique could be the promotion of CO2 emissions and global warming as positive facts for plant growth and thus being beneficial.

9. It would be next to impossible for the people practicing public relations to cope with their professions, achieve their goals, work out the techniques for their work, if they had no access to scholarly researches. Within the last 30 years the specialists in public relations In the United States and in the whole world were developing the comprehensive theory of public relations and actually made public relations parts of such important professions like medicine, law and education. The International Association of Business Communicators Research Foundation provides funds for the researches made by public relations departments. So, “…without research, those who administer public relations, public affairs, promotional, and related communications programs and activities for their organizations would be operating in the dark, without any guidance or clear sense of direction” (5)

10. As time passes public relations develop from having simply technical communication functions to having management functions. Public relations are nowadays less concentrated only on the mass media and they become global instead of put into the borders of one company only. The successful work of the company is certainly connected with its customers and business relations with other companies, exactly for development of these spheres public relations do play their vital role. Reputation, profitability of the company and even its continued existence can depend on the degree to which its targeted “publics” supported the goals and policies of the organization. These are the main reasons why they play such an important role for the success of an organization.

Sources:

1. Solving Pr’s Identity Crisis Could Unlock Our Potential, Matthew S. Zimmerman, 1998, pp. 14-32

2. Public Relations Unscrambled, Ron Arp, 2000, pp. 2-6

3. The Difference Between Public Relations And Stakeholder Communication, Anna Haynes, Peter Sandman, 2003, pp.1-10

4. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2006-07 Edition, Public Relations Specialists

Custom essay writing services ESSAY-911.com. Buy essay online!