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.

Figuring It Out On Your Own

Garth Beyer

Sorry Tim Ferriss. Sorry Michael Ellsberg. Sorry to countless of thousands of other people who made a map to success. Sorry to everyone who made a strategy, a game-plan, a step by step process to reach any goal.

Flipping through a folder of all my projects, I came across a printed out version of Tim Ferriss’s/Michael Ellsberg’s blog post 8 Steps to Getting What You Want… Without Formal Credentials. Basically Ellsberg covers the present circumstances of degree required positions and how to get them without a degree; basically referrals. Knowing people who know people.

He communicates that employers require skills, not degrees and it’s up to you to show you have the skills by “creating your own damn credentials”. After giving all the background information and the reality of becoming successful without a degree, he challenges you to follow his 8 step process. Here they are. (View the full post here)

Step 1: Choose Your New Field of Learning

Step 2: Showcase Your Learning

Step 3: Learn the Basics of Good Networking

Step 4: Within Your Budding Social Economy, Start Working for Free

Step 5: Develop Case Studies of Your Work

Step 6: Develop Relationships With Mentors

Step 7: Learn Sales

Step 8: Sell and Deliver your Services Within Your Social Economy

Reading through all of his steps, they will definitely work. I’ve experienced each one of his steps, in my own way of course, and the results are tried and true. The thing is I read this blog post over a year ago. I read it a few times actually, and never implemented it directly. I didn’t sit down and take it step by step to get where I am today. Maybe if I had then I would be much more successful. I’m not. I’m happy though and I have a lot more real experience and attachment to the journey I’ve taken to get where I am.

See, these 8 steps are just one game-plan in a billion. Think of all the different phrases you can search in Google to find step-by-step procedures on how to become successful, how to get noticed, how to monetize something, how to reach a goal, how to become a real artist in your trade. There are billions of proven plans.

Yet, we don’t take them.
Some part of me thinks that Ellsberg even knows this but still puts out a book of how to become successful without a formal education. We desire to know and that makes him and countless others a profit. However, and what I find most fascinating, is that we desire to figure it out on our own much more. We simply learn and practice certain segments of all these game-plans until we create one ourselves and it’s successful. Then we write a book about it, preach it, and sell it to others. In turn, they do the same thing.

Following the plan doesn’t make progress, creating an entirely new one does.

 

Stay Positive & Do What Works … For You

Garth E. Beyer

Getting Your Client To Take A New Angle

Garth Beyer
Maps: Making Exploration Even More Interesting

Maps exert a powerful pull on the public psyche. That same pull can be – and at times, must be – made with your client.

Just because you’re the professional does not mean that you don’t have to convince your client to follow through with your plan. Especially when your plan entails risk, trying something new, and exploring different angles.

The most effective way to persuade is to create a map, a picture journal, a story of exploration.

What we have seen since the original mapmakers is that maps create a sensation, a desire to explore. Maps lead to explorations which are then turned into stories. When you combine maps and stories you receive an overwhelming amount of support and investment to draw more maps and make more stories.

Maps are defined as a symbolic depiction highlighting relationships between elements of that space such as objects, regions, and themes. Can you see the simplicity of its connection to Public Relations?

You may think your client will go with your plan simply because it shows that treasure will be found if it is followed. In reality, they may already be finding treasure and with most clients you will discover that it isn’t so much about finding more treasure that is the problem.

The wonderful aspect of creating a map for your client is about making the map interesting. Anyone can find treasure, but it takes an expert Public Relations Specialist to design a map that is more invigorating than the profits to be made.

Turns out it’s a win-win situation.

The more enthusiasm a map creates, the greater the reward.

Choose, Don’t Cheez-It

Garth Beyer
Vote for Cheez-It? No. I vote for something entirely new!

If you’re going to create something – as everyone must during some point of their lives – don’t create a new variety of something that already exists. Create something which you can create a variety from.

Creating a new flavor of Cheez-Its won’t get you far. I’m not even sure it will get you anything except a snack to munch on while you contemplate your next “genius” idea.

Maybe after a few new flavors of Cheez-Its you will decide to create an entirely original cracker snack instead. In which case, you can showcase all your new flavors with your cracker snack.

If that’s the case, or rather, if that’s the box, then I’m in. Just because something has 20 different flavors doesn’t mean I’ll choose it.

You know what people (you included) love? New. They love change, mishmash, and variety – after all, it’s the spice of life! The illusion is that they love a variety of originality. They don’t.

I’ll cut to the point and stick with the Cheez-It theme:

If you were given the choice between a new flavored Cheez-It or an entirely new cracker snack, which would you choose?

There is always more of a craving for something original than a new flavor, new type, new color of something already invented.

 

Stay Positive & I Call It The Flavor Of Originality

Garth E. Beyer

Set For Life

Garth Beyer

A of couple months ago I was freewriting and an odd thought popped in my mind. True to the nature of the writing I was doing, I wrote it down.

A lot of people dont’ care about you, they just feel if they get enough people to just like them, that they are set for life.

I think I may have been upset that so many girls in high school led guys on, or that you can spend one wonderful day with someone, but never catch up again. The instances in life where you feel a connection with someone, but nothing happens after it are endless.

It’s a trick, whether conscious of it or not, and a very successful trick at that.

Its success is based solely on the precept that if they ever talked to you again, ever ran into you on the subway, or bus, or bike path, that you two could pick up conversation like you were long-time friends and can play catch-up.

I am no psychologist, although at times I like to think I am, but there is some psychological barrier that prevents you from despising the person that left you hanging, prevents you from completely ignoring that person when you see them again, and prevents you from acting like they screwed you over.

Want to be successful? Get a billion people to like you. It’s not hard; meeting someone once will do. While you may not “benefit” as much from leaving (not cutting) a connection you made than if you were to do the upkeep on the friendship, the connection is still there.

The way it ends up benefiting you is when you do run into that person who you shared a great experience with (get your mind out of the gutter), when you play catch-up and you find out that they had started a similar business to yours, or write on your beat in the features section of a well-known magazine, or are part of some influential group, you can pick up the connection you left as if it were just waiting for you.

So No. The majority of people, when they meet you, don’t care about you, no matter how great of a time you share or how connected you may feel to them. When they leave that connection, they don’t mean to insult you, they don’t even mean to use you (that comes later). Their focus is making connections and as many as possible.

As should your goal be. After all, the thing about these people is that they are set for life. They have all the connections they will ever need, whether they utilize them or not, they are there. Where are yours?

 

Stay Positive & Make, Leave, Then Leverage Your Connections

Garth E. Beyer         hey, it works

Media Literacy

Garth Beyer

Garth Jowett, professor at University of Houston, on propaganda, media literacy, cognitive dissonance, Fairness Doctrine, media conglomeration, and absolute truth.

To watch the video, click here.

Enjoy.