When time is of the essence, planning ahead with your PR activity can pay dividends.

Indeed, life is complicated enough without making it worse, so a little time spent planning can help save a lot of time further down the road.

Today’s article looks at two factors to consider, with more this Thursday, so stay tuned.

PR Calendar

A PR calendar enables public relations activity for the year ahead to be mapped out, clearly and concisely.

After all, it’s all too easy to forget the most obvious things in today’s hectic and fast-paced world.

The good news is that there are various PR calendar templates online which can be downloaded.

Things to consider when mapping out your activity include industry events and conferences, sponsorship and speaking opportunities.

Don’t forget to also think of the wider world and note any annual occurrences that impact your business, i.e., Valentine’s Day. There’s also a whole raft of national and awareness days, in fact there’s one for about every topic you can think of, which you may be able to use for your advantage.

Perhaps most importantly, make sure to map out what is relevant to your business such as internal milestones and anniversaries, product launches, etc.

However, while a PR calendar provides structure for future activity don’t forget that some PR opportunities come out of the blue, so be prepared to have the flexibility to deal with them as and when.

Deadlines

Having a PR calendar as described above can be a great help but one important point to remember is media deadlines.

Many monthly magazines work two to three months ahead which means you need to start planning your angle ahead of that. Christmas planning lead times can be even longer.

Obviously, newspapers work to deadlines, whether they are daily or weekly, so make sure you know what time of day or day of the week is cut off time.

Next instalment on ‘Thinking of a master plan’ this Thursday.

For more information about a free one-hour PR audit for your business, or more guidance on ‘Thinking of a master plan’, please email chris@redmarlin.co.uk