Public RelationsEssay Preview: Public RelationsReport this essayPeople have many different definitions of what we mean when we say “public relations.” There is no best answer or single definition for public relations. From organizations and businesses to speakers and authors to everyday men and women, the definition of public relations will vary. Sometimes people confuse public relations with publicity and advertising. While publicity is a function of public relations it does not fully define public relations. Publicity is media coverage like news stories, feature articles, reviews, and so on. The big difference between public relations and advertising is that you pay for advertising. Advertising is generally not considered a public relations function. Personally, I believe that public relations are communications pure and simple. Communications between the company and their customers and communications between the company and the community. What public relations is communicating is who we, the company, are, what we, the company, do and how you, the customer and community, will benefit from us.
The definition of public relations that I found to agree with most because of its simplicity is “public relations is the management of relationships between an organization and its publics – groups on whom it depends for its success” from McGill University Online. The reason that there are so many definitions for public relations is that PR can have a different meaning to every individual person and every organization. For some people, public relations focuses on marketing for a company while others may feel that the whole concept behind public relations revolves around business relationships. While all should agree that public relations is a vital communications tool between an organization and its public, every organization may have a different perception of what it actually means or consists of.
The importance of being careful with the definition of public relations follows as you add more definitions:
One of the most common of the many examples that we see for public relations is at universities. I recently made another study to look at how many social media people are engaged by public relations & if it gets any more popular they have to start doing more of their public relations work. We saw many young people getting social media help at universities in different places all the time from social media, twitter or Facebook (if you want to talk about that). Our students were probably a bit more connected with students at a public school that they should follow because they were able to see different events & people on social media. One of our students asked his team in this way because of his social media and they were very much interested in studying the topic and he asked for their time to work on research that he could contribute to. With that, a team of four or five students attended a conference in Germany that he was attending which, by the way, gave them some interesting things to do. One of the things that they needed to do was find good content to spread & so they did.
One of the most important questions that we asked ourselves as people and about when we define public relations is ‘Can you explain the definition of public relations to someone who doesn’t know what it means?’ It is one that can be very difficult for any organization to answer. We know that in order for us to understand PUBLIC PR effectively, it is essential that we use a definition which is easily understood. I like to use a definition of public relations that we may find in a book or even in a seminar and will explain how it’s being used for other purposes. And since people need to think like I do, how can we explain public relations to the real people with no knowledge of PR to understand PR better? If we are talking about public relations as well as their use to get publicity we need to give some general definitions of public relations. I have always used the definitions in my research, my personal research as well as public relations groups at various colleges that used similar definitions which helped me on this one. One of the most important things that we see in the book would be that the definition of public relations is not just a simple concept, it is very specific and easy to understand and use. This is very handy for some organizations who need to know more about PR. The same goes for the definition of PR and the definition of PR groups.
As you start to understand the definitions for PR and the definitions of groups you will learn that they vary, but what is common to everyone is that each group wants to use their group’s brand recognition and brand marketing tools to get more publicity. There can be more than two groups in a brand or group, everyone wants to try some different things. It is the same basic concept. For some groups there can be multiple groups that want to promote their brand in different ways, there can be many different groups that want to create new social media outlets or social media brands. It is important to choose who will create these things, and what content gets to that audience quickly or not.
To help you understand the type of group to which the purpose of Public Affairs is defined, we’ll talk about a small group that we feel will benefit
Columbia Encyclopedia defines public relations as “activities and policies used to create public interest in a person, idea, product, institution, or business establishment. By its nature, public relations is devoted to serving particular interests by presenting them to the public in the most favorable light. Thus, the goal of the public relations consultant is to create, through the organization of news and advertising, an advantageous image for his client, be it a business corporation, cultural institution, or private or public individual; toward this end-the making of favorable public opinion-many research techniques and communications media are used.” Wikipedias definition of public relations is that “public relations is the business, organizational, philanthropic, or social function of managing communication between an organization and its audiences. There