Cross-promotion for greater PR impact
A highly effective way to achieve broad-reaching public relations impact is to leverage your efforts with other organizations or entities that share a similar objective. This is typically done surrounding a specific issue. Perhaps it is an event that is being sponsored by multiple entities. Another example would be a political campaign.
By leveraging your public relations efforts with other partners, all involved can increase their reach, hitting cross-sectional markets that you may not typically be able to reach in standard activities. This exposes new audiences to the messages and priorities of all the involved parties.
Event PR
Your event PR strategies should include a fair amount of collaboration with all involved organizations. By cross-promoting things like your press outreach and social media, your audiences will grow immensely.
For example, if a credit union is partnering with service providers like the police, fire stations, libraries, schools and other local organizations, there is a good chance that your media and social outreach has different boundaries, reaching different audiences. By including all the involved entities in all communications, each entity is experiencing a ripple effect in the public relations and social media reach.
This easy, but effective, work also builds better relationships for future partnership opportunities.
Political PR
A great example of this kind of collaboration is legislation. When there is a bill in the process of moving through either the state or national government, it is a prime opportunity to work together with other entities to help get it passed (or not, depending on your organizational position), and get publicity for it.
There are always numerous parties with vested interests in legislation. By reaching out and working with them, your organization can achieve its goals, and maintain a strong reputation as a good partner.
Media relations efforts can include writing letters to the editor, submitting op-eds to the editorial board, and pitching ideas and spokespeople to reporters covering the specific issues included in the legislation.
Entities can use their individual social media platforms to push the issue and encourage their audiences to ask their legislators to either support or oppose a bill (depending on the organizational viewpoint). By using simple hashtags and social media identities, different parties can easily include each other, reaching broader audiences.
If your organization has good relationships with legislators who either strongly support or oppose a proposed piece of legislation, you can be a great resource for them. You can offer background, help reaching their constituents via your social media platforms, and even help support their public relations efforts. Your resources might include credit unions or members of credit unions who are willing to be quoted in the press information being released by a legislator. This can be an extremely valuable tool for both you and them.
By thinking creatively, you can increase your public relations reach, while also improving the relationships of those outside entities you work with either daily or on specific events throughout the year.
