Relationship Management: Knowing and Communicating with Your Key Publics

Many organizations actively engage in ‘Issues Management.’ For most, this involves scanning the news, developing communications strategies around relevant issues and trends, and then communicating their messages back through the media.

But, effective communications is more than just managing issues through the media. Companies and organizations must also be aware of their external publics – the people and groups outside of an organization’s sphere that affect, or are affected by, what that organization does.

This is known as ‘Relationship Management.’ It is the discipline of identifying key publics and establishing strategies for construction and maintaining mutually beneficial relationships with persons publics.

Identifying External Publics

Like most organizations, there is a excellent chance you are already using media monitoring to track the issues that affect your organization. This is Communications 101.

You may even be taking it one step further and conducting some kind of media analysis, including assigning tones like clear, negative or neutral to news tales. And if you’re not, you should be. Without proper analysis and evaluation, your communications team is not doing its job properly.

But where it really gets appealing is when you take your existing monitoring and analysis and add another dimension to it. One of the best examples of this is tracking and analyzing quotation marks.

Tracking quotation marks helps you identify your key publics. You can see just so what they are thinking, what they are saying, what they are doing.

And by taking further small steps, such as cross-referencing tone with quotation marks, you can easily identify the type of relationship that exists between your organization and its different key publics. You can get a picture of what you are doing right and what you are doing incorrect, and, where necessary, develop a plot to change the relationship.

Obviously, the more clear the quote or article, the superior the chance that the person being quoted is an ally to issues favorable to your organization. Conversely, the more negative the quote or article, the superior the chance that the person being quoted is opposed to issues favorable to your organization.

Furthermore, the more times a person is quoted, the superior the chance he or she is an Attitude Leader – a person that knowingly or unsuspectingly influences attitude. It’s vital that your organization try to have an open and professional dialog with Attitude Leaders no matter what their position is.

Dealing with Key Publics

A lot of people feel the media ultimately control public attitude. There’s no denying they do have an enormous influence, but they are only one cut of the PR puzzle.

It’s vital that PR professionals not limit themselves to just the media. Sometimes it’s best to communicate right to the source, if possible. Remember, as a professional communicator, your primary job is to disseminate information, not necessarily to deal with the media or write news releases. How you get the information to your publics is not what matters; what matters is that they get the information. Using the media and writing news releases are simply a means to an end.

According to Statistics Canada, 61 per cent of Canadians belong to a group or organization, including organizations unions, religious groups, professional associations, etc. Attitude Leaders are a very vital component of these groups.

Once you have identified the groups and their Attitude Leaders, it’s vital to develop consistent messages that will clearly disorder your organization’s position on key issues. Without that consistency, you run the risk of looking hypocritical or insincere. The last thing you want is to be communicating different messages regarding the same issue.

If you want people to trust you and your organization, consistency is a must. Trust is the first step in developing a relationship with the Attitude Leaders and your key publics.

Honesty is Permanently the Best Policy

Remember, when it comes to any type of communications, honesty is permanently the best policy. Trying to manipulate the media or the public is a perilous game. If you’re honest, people might not permanently like what you have to say, but at least they’ll judge you and have a superior respect for you in the long run.

Monitoring the Media Helps Ensure Honesty Prevails

Monitoring the media allows organizations to ensure everyone is on thought, helping to prevent misunderstandings through inadvertent contradictions or an overly aggressive spokesperson. Also, upbeat media analysis can gauge how well key publics and other influencer’s, such as the media, are accepting your organization’s position on an issue.

Media Analysis is a Powerful Tool, but…

Media analysis can help identify miscommunication, and can also help identify the underlying reason for that miscommunication. It’s also an effective way of identifying key publics and attitude leaders, gauging where they stand on an issue and finding out what they are saying.

But, it’s vital to remember ‘Relationship Management’ is about dealing with people frankly. Media analysis is just a tool to help ensure your organization is communicating honestly and effectively – the same way the media are just a vehicle for delivering your thought.

But even if you have a top notch media analysis program in place, you should never stop communicating frankly with your key publics to figure out where they stand on key issues and how they view your organization. After all, public relations and communications are all about communicating effectively, and nothing is more effective than being paid your information straight from the source.