Prep for The New Year with a killer PR plan
By Carolyn McMurray, SOCIATE’s Junior Copywriter & Blogstar
The PR world at Christmas…
Mulled wine, carols, and Christmas cheer – the festive season looks pretty jolly to everyone else but your agency. It’s that one time of year where you’re either incredibly busy (cue six extra PR projects and time-hungry clients) or a time where everything is grinding down to a dead-end halt (*financial panic sets in).
And while neither is quite wanted (a bit like an uninvited Christmas dinner guest) you sort of have to make do with the situation at hand. Whether you’re strapped for time or dying to kill time, there’s one thing that should be on your radar; your 2022 PR and communications plan.
Yes, you could just wait till January to fix the details but why not go the extra mile? A lot of PR firms will wait till the New Year, so plan ahead to beat the competition. While they’re faffing with plans and details, you’ll be off to an early start.
How do you do it? Our five-step guide will help you identify what things need to be set in motion, so you can get your ducks in a row for 2022.
1. Step up your PR pitching
While other PR agencies are slowing their pitching down, the festive season is the perfect time for you to step things up. Continue with your pitching efforts, maintain your relationship with the press, and make new connections. While you’re at it, do a bit of PR house-tidy and clean up any bits and bobs before you close down for Christmas.
Do a deep-clean of your inbox, chase up any final invoice payments, and update any news monitoring services that you currently use. It’s easy to put these things on the backburner in the run-up to Christmas, so clear them from your PR schedule so your ‘desk’ is clean in 2022.
2. Go festive on social media
The festive season is BIG on social media, so don’t wind down your socials just because the holidays are coming up. Go all Santa on your followers and redecorate your Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter with a festive sweep. Do a few Christmas-themed posts, update images and slogans with some festive touches, and think about getting your followers involved in some sort of Christmassy event. This could be anything from a festive-themed live to a secret Santa giveaway – just get creative with it! This kind of marketing might also attract new clients and get a few PR projects finalized for the New Year, so keep at it.
3. Reflect on your PR performance and get feedback
A perfect way to wrap up 2021 is with an end-of-year performance evaluation. If you’ve been letting this slide or waiting till 2022 to ‘look back’, now’s your time to switch things up! A performance evaluation will give you an inside look at what you’ve done well, what you’ve achieved, and where you’ve missed the mark with your PR efforts. Seeing this laid out neatly in a presentation or email will help you better understand where you can improve for the New Year, making it easier to develop a PR plan for 2022 that hits all the sweet spots.
Make sure you share this evaluation with the entire team and set up a 2022 PR plan accordingly. As well as using metrics to inform your performance evaluation, it’s also important to check in with clients and get their feedback. Ask them what they liked, what they didn’t like, and what they’d like to see more of. These are the people paying you to do their PR, so information from them is gold. If you recognize a pattern in the feedback, be sure to hone in on it and make definite changes to your PR strategy.
4. Keep posting
Don’t just keep your socials regular over the festive season – make sure you keep posting across all your channels. Since your specialty is in PR, you’re going to want to focus on your earned media content. As this year draws to a close, it’s the perfect time to wrap things up with a curation of all your achievements and PR wins. Not only will this give your content a bit of a boost, but it might also draw in potential clients and new business for 2022.
An easy way to do this is by focusing on your top PR project and client wins, separating them out into individual posts. Curate all the highlights, executions, and strategies used, putting them into a neat post to entice future clients.
5. Set objectives in response to your performance evaluation and client feedback
Once you’ve taken a look at your performance evaluation and client feedback, it’s time to carve out a set of goals, objectives, and KPIs that you aim to hit in the New Year. Identify areas of improvement and tailor all these goals accordingly. Roll these out to your entire team to ensure everyone is working towards the same objectives and purpose (this is especially important if you’re a global team, as you’ll inevitably have silos that will cause things to get lost in translation easily).
Make sure all these goals and objectives stay in line with your PR agency’s overall vision and purpose. Developing them around the ‘SMART principle,’ will help make your goals:
– Specific
– Measurable
– Appropriate
– Realistic
– Time-bound
And if you’re looking for a PR agency that always has their ducks in a row, look no further than SOCIATE. Ready to take on your brand and step it into the limelight, our PR Management services are ideal for businesses looking to take off in Dubai. Whatever your size, whatever your niche – we’ve got something up our sleeve for you.