How to Create an In-House PR Team

One aspect that every corporate marketing communications team concedes is that corporate storytelling has had a seismic shift. You may credit this to the increasing fragmentation of media. Well, that is a discussion for another day. Today we are going to consider the immediate impact of this sudden change in PR.  The one that stands right up front is the fact that CMOs are re-evaluating their PR activities and moving many elements in-house. In fact, if we go by the recent survey and our interactions with industry stalwarts, this is just the tip of the iceberg. More and more corporations are now looking to build in-house PR teams. 

However, creating a PR team is a critical task and you need to get a few components right from the start.

A mix of talent

To create a well-rounded team, you need members from diverse backgrounds. You need people with an in-depth understanding of the field and who have strong relationships and a knack for storytelling. To get started, look to create a mix of content writers, communications managers, public affairs, PR professionals, and graphic designers. In addition, your team members must possess an understanding of your landscape and consumer base. This will help them align their PR activities with your business mission. 

• Content writer: Creates content for the company for different platforms. Someone who can write inter-disciplinary articles.
• Corporate communications specialist: Creates marketing and promotional materials for internal and external usage. He/She is usually a person who can handle multiple projects, collaborate & coordinate, is social media savvy, and is a storyteller.  
• Public affairs: One who regularly monitors government regulations and shapes the company’s efforts among the policymakers.
• Media relations/PR professional: One who has a keen eye for stories and can optimize relationships with different stakeholders. 
• Graphic designer: One who is skilled in tools to bring stories to life via graphs, images, motion, etc.
• Global Communications Manager: One who has expertise in leading the communications needs of the company to support expansion and growth across geographies. 

Get the right PR product

The growing communications requirements have necessitated teams to equip themselves with technology that helps them monitor their brand’s landscape. Thus, boosting your PR campaigns.

The days of PR professionals working on excel sheets, indulging in random follow-up calls with journalists, and acting on their instinct are long gone. Today corporations swear by metrics to evaluate the value each team adds, including PR. As a result, the most important part of creating a PR team is first having a product in place that enables media monitoring and outreach, collaboration, coverage analysis, and output measurement. With products like Wizikey, you can do all of these and much more. By harnessing the power of AI and data, companies like Wizikey are able to deliver real-time media intelligence.

Components of a great PR Product

There are three things that you need to watch out for while zeroing down on a PR dashboard. Firstly, media monitoring — does the platform offer you insights into the trends of your landscape? Does it give a clear picture of your positioning in line with your competition? Importantly, you ought to know what is being said about your brand in comparison to others.

It is equally paramount to keep a keen eye if the PR product you decide to choose enables you to gather insight on any potential risks. Thus, helping you prepare a mitigation strategy in advance. Again, are you able to gather deeper insights on your brand mentions vis-a-vis your competitions? For instance– the changing narratives, the attributes they resonate with, etc.

Second, comes media outreach and engagement. The major challenge of an in-house team is access to an up-to-date and inclusive media database-backed with an intelligent CRM that enables fruitful engagement. You have to arm your team with a product that leverages journalists’ data.

And, third and the most important is the measurement of the PR efforts. Measuring PR qualitatively is old school and fails to give an accurate picture. Companies have to acclimatize and use the power of data and tech to predict success and failures. For example, Wizikey’s features like Share of Voice reflect on the success of your proactive PR efforts.

Similarly, the campaign metrics give you an understanding of your media reach outs along with the reach that you have been able to garner. In addition, the Analytics section on the dashboard of Wizikey gives an overview of the number of reporters opening your email, open rates of campaigns, total media, and publications reached. 

PR-digital synergy

The entire exercise of creating a perfect PR team will fail if your digital team is not aligned with the PR team. Simultaneously, you also need a strong digital team that has the skills of amplifying your PR coverage.

Both the teams cannot function in silos but have to be integrated from the very beginning. Despite having different sets of goals, channels, and resources, both teams have to ensure messaging and themes are consistent across forums. Therefore, you have to ensure both teams work together to find areas of collaboration to yield successful results.

Time to begin

Now that you have a clear idea of creating your dream PR team, don’t wait, you may be missing many lucrative PR opportunities. Identify the key objectives in line with your business objectives and you are good to go. To reiterate, a good mix of talent, the right tools, and integration with the digital team are the three ingredients that you ought to keep in mind. If you need further assistance, reach out to Wizikey and we may just make your task a tad bit easier.