Whilst the media is notoriously unreliable and is often more prone to spin, bias and subscribing to a pre-ordained agenda than public relations professionals, an Orica Chief Executive quote in a recent Australian Financial Review story, if true, revealed an approach that will do nothing for Orica’s stakeholder management or reputation-building efforts. It’s a quote that belittled local communities and the ‘man in the street’ (prioritising ‘big’ or ‘important’ stakeholders in its thinking).

Five critical topics that public relations and marketing communicators need to know about and be adept at leveraging are content marketing, optimising online real estate for search, the value of 3RD party brand advocates, the subtleties of media relations and evaluation and measurement. This post touches on all five, referring you to some excellent PR and marketing bloggers who have recently explored these issues.

The value of employer branding is becoming clearer each day as the battle for workplace talent gets increasingly fierce. Australia, for instance, is going through a severe skill shortage crisis in key areas. Yet many organisations are lagging in their thinking and application of employer branding, including how public relations can be incorporated into this quite specific, and generally marketing-aligned, business communication activity.

The CEO is (or should be) the most prized communications asset at a company’s disposal. He or she drives corporate strategy and gives voice to performance and progress. The CEO establishes the building blocks of corporate culture and is often the public face of the company. They exemplify all that is good, bad, promising or disheartening about an organisation, so whether or not they are the spokesperson for an organisation in crisis is a question of fundamental importance for corporate communicators.

The most common thought that is contained within crisis management literature is that somehow a crisis is just an external event that can be managed with the right level of resources and preparation. Paul Ritchie, author of Stay On Message, says this is incomplete and it misses the most dangerous variable in any crisis and that is the way a spin doctor actually responds to the issue.

Whilst ex-journalists are not qualified and do not have the relevant experience to suddenly become the head of the organisational public relations function, they also have the potential to be great PR function heads, for a number of very valid reasons.

When formulating round tables, public relations professionals need to decide whether to invite media to attend and whether to offer media exclusives. It is generally the major objective of a white paper process to gain positive media coverage for the ‘sponsoring organisation’, though there are a plethora of mechanisms through which the white paper content can be leveraged.

Round tables help public relations professionals achieve positive media coverage, enhance relationships with important organisational stakeholders and strengthen organisational positioning. The white paper, produced from a round table, resources issues-driven media campaigns (of which opinion pieces are likely to play a leading role), direct mail and online communication campaigns.

In the B2B environment, op-eds (opinion pieces) can be much more effectively leveraged than in the B2C environment because they can be placed multiple times across different industry sectors. Op-eds are a valuable part of public relations and media relations strategies because of the media coverage they can generate.

Op-eds are a valuable part of public relations and media relations strategies. This is because of the media coverage they can stimulate and the positive positioning, through thought leadership, they produce. An additional, and extremely valuable, characteristic of op-eds is that the content generated as part the op-ed scoping process, can also be used to create more than a single media placement.