OK, this is a bit lengthy but this is how the Chartered Institute of Public Relations explain it: "Public Relations is the discipline which looks after reputation, with the aim of earning understanding and support and influencing opinion and behaviour. It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics."

I'd say that influences not only what we do in marketing but also underpins what we do in business too.

Absolutely right. It should provide the backdrop to all our advertising and marketing and is key to developing word of mouth recommendations and contacts. It's also cheaper and more effective than advertising or marketing.

So how is PR different to marketing?

Probably the easiest way to describe it is that your audiences are different. With marketing, you are pretty much targeting a specific market to promote your product or service. With PR, the messages are a bit more subtle and are aimed at audiences, also called publics, that are important to the organisation. They include customers - existing and potential; employees and management; investors; media; government; suppliers and opinion-formers. PR is as much about internal communications as it about the external.

Isn't it also about image and what your business actually stands for?

Yes and that's another crucial point to clarify for listeners. Your image is what your business actually is, you can't project an image that isn't real. It has to be based in fact – you can't just make it up.

So what tools are traditionally used in PR?

Very similar to marketing actually. There are so many ways to communicate with your audience. For instance:

Local, regional, trade & professional Press

Videos

Posters / Literature

Personal contact

Direct mail

Blogs

Events

Newsletters

Advertising

And not forgetting your website, of course! That's the first impression most of your audience will have on you so it's so important the message is right. PR isn't just about Press Releases, is it?

Oh absolutely not! Obviously, Press Releases are what most people think of when you mention PR. Here's an interesting exercise that I used with my students on a recent PR course. Have a look at your local newspaper and see if you can spot which are the news stories written by journalists and which are PR stories submitted by businesses and organisations like charities to give you a really good flavour of the type of stories your local media are looking for.

I'm sure that's something our listeners will be really interested in. How DO they get local media interested in their story?

Well, the first thing to consider is whether the story is actually newsworthy.

How do you mean?

Is it a story that is going to interest the general public. A good rule of thumb is would it interest the writer if they read it about someone else. What's the angle? Is there any significance to a celebration or event? Is it a human interest story? People love those. Look for something that will really make it stand out.

So if a business is celebrating an anniversary or significant achievement, or if one of their staff has an interesting back story, these would make good tasty content?

That's exactly right. People love reading about people. Just like we were talking about in podcast 3 about Storytelling. Editors will be looking out for something that is different.

So if I'm looking to get a Press Release out, are there any basic rules to follow?

Yes, you can use something called the 5 W's. Who, what, when, where and why. It's an old PR term but very easy to follow. Make sure you get this information in at the start ...