Guest post by Shonali Burke, ABC
“Don’t sweat the small stuff.”
It’s a mantra we’ve heard for ages. Not just self-help gurus, but women’s magazines (yes, I do read my Good Housekeeping), life coaches, work coaches … everyone will tell you to not worry about the minutiae of life as a way to deal with our increasingly complex world. And it is certainly a way to get past the moment and focus on what really matters.
But it seems to me that good PR practitioners do sweat the small stuff.
Today, the term “PR” invariably conjures up visions of flashy promotions, “ink” and one of my favorite words-to-dread, “buzz.” Let’s remember, though, that public relations is really the practice of building and maintaining mutually beneficial relationships between an organization and its “publics.”
Who makes up those publics? People. And people care about the small stuff.
It’s the reason between 5,000 and 10,000 new accounts are being opened on Twitter every day. Sunday’s “Twitter kindness party” was a top trending topic that evening; people thanking people for small, every day kindnesses, most of whom have probably never met in the “real world.”
It’s the reason smart brands like Zappos and Comcast are deeply invested in social media. They build, and in some cases, mend, relationships that increase the goodwill for their organizations.
I’m not asking you to ignore the fundamentals of PR planning, or the variety of tactics you can deploy—in fact, I think a well-constructed plan is critical to getting your efforts off the ground. But if your plan doesn’t get to the heart of the small stuff, my guess is that it’ll fall short of your goals. Wouldn’t that be a colossal waste of time?
Figure out the small stuff your publics—your people—care about. And you’ll be on your way to good PR.
Shonali Burke, ABC, is an accredited, award-winning communication consultant based in the Washington, D.C., area. She blogs at Waxing UnLyrical.