UW Madison

Two Important Notes I Need To Make

Garth Beyer

I watched Oscar-nominated actor James Cromwell get arrested on the UW Madison campus the other day. I’d like to amend my Pen and Journal post and add a video camera!

The second note is a little explanation/realization of why I haven’t been writing so much on PR. It’s definitely not an excuse, although it has a lot to do with excuses.

In the past, after any presentation I’ve watched, any PR guru that I met with, or any dinners I’ve had with PR professionals, I have wrote about the lessons they provided, suggestions, and bits of advice they gave me.

The reason for the recent lack of my writing isn’t because I’ve stopped learning from the universal sphere of PR influencers or that I’m not passionate about sharing with you all that I learn. No. It’s that you can’t keep coming back to my blog to read about what you should be/could be/must be doing if you want to be a PR professional.

As of lately, every PR professional seems to be reiterating all the same pieces of advice, nuggets of knowledge, and lessons they learned. (Of course, they present it in different unique ways, but the gist is still the gist.) PR is something that you can research a bit, but then you have to go out and do it.

Preparing to enter the world of PR is 10% research and educating yourself.

The other 90% is going and entering it.

How To Grow A Tribe (Not Numbers, Quality)

Garth Beyer

It’s 6 degrees out and I decided to go for a run. While out, running through town, I saw a cluster of black, red, and white colors moving up Bascom Hill. Heading that way myself, I came to find that it was UW Madison’s Women’s Rowing Crew.

When I go out running, I always hit Bascom Hill once. This time, I found myself trekking up it 3.5 times with the crew. After 3 times some of the crew were stopped while others were finishing up. As I was running past those standing, I shouted, “You guys [should have said ladies] are kicking my butt!”

After that, a few girls hollered and a stampede started. They all started running with me and with all the other girls who were finishing up. The pride these girls had, the encouragement they handed each other, and the determination each had to finish as a team was insurmountable.

That alone is a less than good tribe.

They didn’t stop there though. What makes a good tribe is being open to the influence of others, connecting with like-minded individuals (me) or tribes. Even more so, what makes a great tribe is placing yourselves where you can have a challenges from inside and outside the tribe.

Building a tribe isn’t about unity, about definitive togetherness, or about exclusion. The best way to grow a tribe from within, is to grow from out, from the surroundings, from all the people around you. You’ll never know what challenges you’ll get … or give.

 

Stay Positive & Inclusion Isn’t Vital, But Awareness Is

Garth E. Beyer

Identifying Publics For Beginner PR Specialists

Garth Beyer

Mr. Grunig and I have something in common. Other than the fact we (you included) are all fascinated with studying Public Relations, Grunig and I share a relationship with UW-Madison. Grunig received his Ph.D at UW-Madison and knowing this made writing this topic for you ever more interesting.

If you’re not yet aware, James E. Grunig is a Public Relations theorist and guru. He is well-known for creating the four models of Public Relations. Before I elaborate on those four models, you must understand a little about your public. After all, the public must be important since it is in the career Public Relations.

You probably haven’t had any experience running a Public Relations campaign. So what? Whether you are researching how to identify your public for your first campaign or hundredth, it’s always positive to review the basics.

We may define public, in simple terms  to mean a group of people who having something in common. According to Broom, author of Cutlip and Center’s Effective Public Relations, public is defined as “people who are somehow mutually involved or interdependent with particular organizations.”

Let’s identify a public by looking at the public of whose in charge in the restaurant industry. You have a broad categorical in-charge public of Employer. Within that public there are Managers, the CEO, Stockholders, and other decision makers. Inside that public, there are more in depth ones. Managers for example is a public made up of Regional Managers, Assistant Managers, Store Managers, and so on. Categorically defining people is what it means to identify your public.

However, it goes much further than simply sorting skittles by color. This is where Grunig steps in and begins to build his four models of public relations.

Grunig had examined how specific publics behave toward issues and the messages that communicate them. In doing so, he identified four types.

 All-issue publics are active on all issues.
 Apathetic publics are absentminded and abeyant on all issues.
 Single-issue publics are active on a rationed number of issues.
 Hot-issue publics are responsive and participative on an issue after being exposed.

Believe it or not, Grunig goes even further to define publics. (Hey, he got famous because he kept defining publics after people were satisfied.)

Latent publics are flatly unaware of their relationship with a situation.
Aware publics understand the importance of an issue and how it relates to them, but have not produced any action.
Active publics are taking action on a particular issue.

Once you can define your public or in other words, your audience, to this level of depth, you are ready to decide which of Grunig’s four models of public relations you are to implement. Here they are.

I could go on to explain each model thoroughly but I have found this resource to help with that. You know it’s an extremely helpful source since he uses Seth Godin as an example.

Cheers.

 

Broom, G. M. (2009). Cutlip and Center’s effective public relations (10th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.