Three of public relations’ best practice pillars are either commonly not applied to their potential or, worse, not applied at all. These pillars, the Holy Trinity of public relations – thought leadership, 3rd party credibility and strategic alliances – should be default characteristics of any public relations strategy. This lack of application, and the minimal amount of discussion on them, prompted me to produce a free white paper on the topics.

With the preponderance of social media in the form of blogs or ‘mini-blogs’ (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, even Pinterest) there is an opportunity to revolutionise traditional media’s approach of taking a negative, divisive and conflict-fixated approach. Of course, it has been observed that conflict is what interests people, but that doesn’t always need to be the case. Not being negatively oriented would provide a marketable POD.

The triple treat of content marketing, inbound marketing and brand journalism should be a default inclusion in any holistic organisational public relations strategy. This is because the internet is where people go to for information and where they are influenced; the relevance of SEO; social media helps drive SEO and viral word-of-mouth; it facilities content generation; increasingly mixed reviews on media credibility.

Gaining editorial media coverage will be a key tactic in generating awareness and support of infrastructure projects, but its primacy will be determined by market research and internal stakeholder liaison. The application of strategic alliances will also help give credibility to the project and expand its communication ‘footprint’.

Whilst I strongly believe that marketing plays a central role in business and that PR can and must support the brand, I also believe that PR and marketing must remain two distinct responsibility centers: PR must not answer to marketing, period. They must work closely together – marketing centered on the brand, PR centered on the relationships. Or, put another way, marketing centered on the consumer and PR centered on the citizen.

There’s a never-ending debate about who’s the leader – PR or marketing – when it comes to getting an organisation on the map. Ford Kanzler argues that marketing is the ‘brains’ of the outfit’. That it provides the direction for all communication. PR is the helpmeet providing the support. If there was no marketing, there would be no organisation. Ford takes this further in saying an organisation’s “essential reason for being is marketing.”

Marketing should be the brains of the outfit, including a deep concern for customer relationships. Marketing, in an ideal scenario, should provide clear direction for any communications function, including PR.

The PR industry globally is undergoing one of its biggest changes since social media boomed across the web – it’s called content strategy and it’s rocketing through the traditional corridors of marketing and PR.

All public relations has positioning inherent within it, but positioning itself is often thought of as being marketing-specific. Three main manifestations of how PR impacts on positioning, however, are narratives, language and, perhaps especially, the fluid negotiations that take place between an organisation and its stakeholders to create meaning: a ‘contested space’.

Marketing communication has the potential to be, at least partially, an application of effective issues management. This is essentially because marketing communication is a proactive, ‘friendly’ mode of communication and may not necessarily raise suspicious hackles from stakeholders.