According to research, companies that tend to organize their promotional efforts have higher rates of achieving success with those efforts.
That means companies that want to invest in public relations efforts need to create a public relations calendar first.
This calendar will include all of the strategies, tactics, and elements that are necessary for companies to pitch stories and secure positive media coverage for their public relations campaigns, and it’s used to break down campaigns into smaller tasks on a timeline.
Contents
The PR Calendar
Calendars in public relations efforts are a very important aspect of any sort of campaign management because they provide companies with more visibility regarding the deadlines that a company needs to keep track of.
That means including deadlines for any quotes or award submissions, and even when the company needs to start sending out pitches to outlets and journalists.
With a PR calendar, companies get to have everything planned out so that nothing gets lost in the crowd of events, and they also get to keep all of the publishing dates on that calendar, so that the business is able to promote any positive media coverage it gets, as soon as it’s published.
Creating a Calendar
There are three different tools that companies can use that are incredibly popular in terms of how a business can create its own PR calendar.
The first option is to use content editorial calendar software that has very specific features that allow companies to collaborate and organize everything.
These types of platforms are created for marketing, public relations, and content marketing efforts because it allows companies to integrate all the projects that they are working on, and collaborate between different teams.
Another option is to use spreadsheets, where companies can create a free and effective calendar inside of a spreadsheet.
This kind of calendar format lets companies map all of their public relations plans on it, and include as many details as necessary, but the downside is that there is no feature like a calendar view that makes it a lot easier to parse through the individual dates of a campaign.
The final option is for a company to use specific project management software that has personalized features like reminders and tasks but those types of platforms aren’t specifically created for public relations campaigns.
Essentials
The public relations calendar that a company creates needs to include every single strategy, activity, or tactic a company plans to execute, and each one of those needs to be further broken down into smaller steps that are more manageable.
For instance, instead of listing every single day that a company is going to be working on a campaign, every specific task for that campaign can be listed on the calendar.
Companies can have another calendar where they are able to track and analyze the performance of the content that the company is sharing, as well as the press coverage it has received, and it can be used as an additional calendar that’s going to be updated with more information with the original PR calendar.
Matthew Caiola serves as CEO at 5W Public Relations, managing the overall growth, direction and day-to-day business of the Corporate & Technology Communications Divisions and Digital Marketing.
With more than 17 years of PR experience, Matthew leads teams in launching and building high-growth tech companies, disrupting industries, building global brand resonance through thought leadership, C-Suite profiling, and speakers’ programs, as well as crisis communications across a variety of industries.
