communication department

Volume XX Number 6

Public Relations Documents: Templates to Use for Your Community Publicity Plan

By Garret Romaine, Associate Fellow, Willamette Valley Chapter, and Rachel Houghton, Member, Nominating Committee, and Senior Member, Willamette Valley Chapter

In our January Tieline article, we outlined the steps to take to create a community publicity plan (including premeeting planning, team building and goal setting, and staying organized) and some recommended items to prepare (a publicity contact list, sample press releases and templates, photos of community officers, a generic publicity plan for a community meeting, and a list of community activities requiring publicity).

Now that you’ve done the groundwork for your publicity plan, it’s time to plug all your information into a publicity plan document and put your plan into action.

Publicity Plan

At a minimum, your publicity plan document should include the following information:

Goals. These should be as specific as possible to create measurable objectives.

Objectives. Include one to three objectives per goal, and make sure each objective is measurable.

A plan and timetable for the current year. Create a table with the following information:

• Meeting and event dates
• Dates to target for marketing each meeting or event
• Marketing strategies (press releases, e-mail or Web site announcements, and so on)
• Audience (members, media, colleges, etc.)

Your publicity manager should be the driver of the plan, but it takes a team effort to publicize effectively. The program, SIG, and event managers are the most important people in this effort. They need to make this information available to all parties in plenty of time. A lot of media outlets have a three-week lead time, so it is important to know the dates for the publications or venues you are targeting.

You can see an example of an effective public relations plan on the STC Web site.

Press Releases

Press releases are an important part of any public relations effort. The intent is to convey information succinctly and concisely, with minimal extraneous text. This is key to holding the audience’s attention.

Your press release document should include the following:

• Chapter, SIG, or other community logo
• Contact information of the publicity person (including name, phone number, and e-mail address)
• Attention-grabbing headline
• Date and location (city, month, day, year)
• Information to be released about event or meeting
• Information about STC and the community you are in

This is where having an updated list of publicity contacts comes in handy. If your list is not updated, this is a great chance to recruit a volunteer. Make sure you don’t forget about online business and meeting calendars; while you may not be able to fax or e-mail contacts at these Web sites, having your information updated regularly for meetings and events is a good idea.

Don’t forget to follow up on your press releases. Recruit volunteers who receive the target publications to cut out or photocopy listings and/or mentions, and send these to the publicity manager. Doing this on a regular basis also makes it much easier to put together your entry for the public relations competition. You should also ask your meeting or event attendees to identify where they are hearing about your activities. These numbers can show where your publicity is most effective, and help set objectives for the future if you are not getting the response you intended (see the “Publicity Plan” section). You can see examples of press releases for both print and e-mail on the STC Web site.

Media-Tracking Report

The media-tracking report works hand in hand with the press releases and your list of publicity contacts. Once you’ve identified your list of contacts, generate a report with the following information:

• Date of communication and date sent
• Publication venue (e-mail, program, Web site, newspaper, newsletter, etc.)
• Topic (meetings, special events, workshops, calendar)
• Circulation (this makes the numbers you collect from your members mean that much more)

This report will make documenting your efforts for the public relations competition much easier. If you’ve gotten into the practice of tracking everything publicity related, it’s a snap to write enthusiastically about the measurable benefits you’ve received because you’ve got a plan in place. You can see an example of a media-tracking report on the STC Web site.

Publicity Contact List

As previously mentioned, your publicity contact list is the cornerstone of your publicity effort. Without this information, you have a haphazard communications strategy. If you’ve got a list already, you’re ahead of the game. Just make sure it’s current (a good time to update the list is when the office of publicity/event manager is transferred). If you don’t already have a list, create one with the following information:

• Media outlets (all local and semilocal newspaper and television stations)
• Professional organizations: American Society of Indexers (ASI), American Society for Training and Development (ASTD), and the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), to name a few
• Online business meeting/event calendars
• Other chapters or communities in your region

You should have an e-mail address, a phone number, and a contact name for each contact on your list.

All examples were generously provided by Aiessa Moyna, former publicity manager of the Phoenix Chapter STC. You can also see the templates at the STC Web site.