Communications Toolkit
As a professor of communication studies at Halifax’s Mount Saint Vincent University, some students tell me they were attracted to the public relations profession by Kim Cattrall’s character Samantha Jones on Sex and the City. The Samantha Jones character is concerned only with event coordination and organizing parties. These students quickly learn that the public relations and communication professions are much more than that and, like any other profession, there is a great deal of contemplation, planning, research and work associated with any of the profession’s components.
Here is a selection of “tools” to assist with the planning and implementation associated with the profession’s work:
There are journalists with whom you have regular and routine contact and with whom you would like to keep in contact. This is a form that will permit you to develop a profile about journalists who report on your organization. Click here for the “Journalist Profile” form .
Keeping track of your stakeholders is too important to trust to your memory. Here is a form that will allow you to develop a profile of the people and groups that you need to know about. Click here for the “Stakeholder Profile” form .
When you invite news media to an event, it is always wise to have them register so that you know which news agencies attended and who represented them. Click here for a news media registration form .
Communications strategies, programs and plans inevitably lead to activities and operations, each of which needs to be tracked and costed. Here is a simple form that you can use by simply filling in the blanks .
When a journalist requests information, you should record the details of the question, the components of your research and your response. Click here for an inquiry documentation form .
Whenever you are asked to participate in a media interview there is a series of questions that you should ask in preparation for your “meeting” with the journalist who is to interview you. These questions are available here .
News interviews are among the most demanding situations in which you can become involved. Here is a pocket guide that may be of some assistance .
News releases are frequently maligned by the writer and the journalists who receive them, however they are frequently the first page of history, an organization’s public record and fundamental and essential information for the reader. Click here for the guide to writing news releases: The Humble News Release.