Creating a Writing Plan for PR Strategies

Writing plays a big role in public relations campaigns. Whether that means writing press releases, emails, social media content, website copy, or simply articles for a company, there’s plenty of writing involved. However, writing doesn’t always come easy for some people.

In those cases, creating a plan before creating any type of content works best. When PR professionals plan out campaigns for businesses, they create PR plans. The same rules can be applied when creating PR content for those companies.

Researching

The first step in creating any type of content is to first understand the topic that it’s  going to discuss . This is relatively easy to do when a PR team works in-house with a business, but in an agency setting it becomes more difficult as PR professionals have to work with multiple clients across different industries. Oftentimes, that means not all PR teams are going to have in-depth knowledge of a client’s topics of interest.

That’s why the first step in creating any type of content, but especially in written content, should be researching the topics. PR teams should know details such as statistics and data points, and then ask the client questions that will help them truly understand the company’s perspective. Additionally, researching the client’s as well as their competitors’ opinions or insights into the same or similar topics can also be helpful in getting   a baseline of knowledge and understanding a given  topic.

Outlining

The next step in creating written content for PR strategies is to create an outline or even a common framework that can be used across similar topics. Plenty of PR professionals are already familiar with how this works, and content outlines can be as simple or as detailed as preferred. 

Although outlines are useful for shorter types of content, when creating long-form content, they’re especially crucial, as it’s helpful to not get lost in a topic when writing about it. Outlines are also helpful in keeping PR professionals focused on which points they should address when creating the content itself.

Writing

Of course the third step is always the writing step, which can sometimes be the most difficult one when creating any type of content. Although a blank page can be intimidating, even putting down a few sentences can be enough to get started. Fortunately the previous point– the outline– is especially helpful when writing content. Although the entire piece still has a way to go before its finished, the outline is a great starting point and  transition into the following step.

Reviewing

Finally, once the content has been written, it’s time to take a short break. After that, it’s important to go back to the same piece of content, review and edit it with fresh eyes, and make it perfect. When reviewing and editing content, it’s not just important to look for grammar mistakes and typos.

It’s also essential to address any transitions, improve weak points, rework sentences, and strengthen the entire piece overall. This should be done at least a couple of times, to make sure the content that’s distributed is the best it can be at the end of the day.