Setting PR goals

The thought of sitting down and focusing long enough to come up with goals can sound daunting, right? Well it doesn't have to. What will help is keeping your eye on the prize. Once you've set your goal and objectives, every single thing you do will be well thought out

The best place to start when setting goals is doing a quick review of the previous year's plans and activities. Assess what work, what hasn't and what you didn't get to do. Use those answers as a guideline for setting objectives and actions going forward.

If this is the first time you’re working on a new project or campaign. The questions you need to answer are: What is the point of all my efforts?  What am I trying to achieve?  The answer to these questions is your goal.  Your goal is meant to be your long-term dream or hope so it will be abstract. Look at ours: 'Making every moment a PR moment' as our approach to reputation management

Generally, there are 3 types of goals in PR:

1. Reputation management goals: deals with managing perceptions and opinions

2. Relationships goals: communication with stakeholders

3. Task management: achieving set tasks

The easiest way of setting effective goals is to make sure that they are SMART:

Specific: clearly define your goal so you can communicate it easily to others. This will also help you clarify the purpose of your PR strategy.

Measurable: you should create objectives that can be measured. This will help you record your progress and determine if you achieved your goal. 

Actionable: break down your goal into short term objectives and set realistic time frames around them.  this will help you achieve your goal in a reasonable amount of time. 

Relevance: it's essential too to remember that PR efforts don't happen in isolation. Make sure the PR strategy is aligned to business/client goals

Time-based: set a final date for your goal to be achieved. Try to space out your objectives to make sure they are completed before the final date.