Strategic Advising FREE e-book Now Available

Two weeks ago I mentioned that public relations inherently suited for emerging, social media. A (somewhat false) debate has arisen that, conversely, social media experts inherently know public relations.

It’s an assumption that must be granted some sympathy given the many illusions these technologies generate.

Despite public relations’ paradoxical brand problem, PR practitioners, those who understand that PR is not equivalent to publicity (which is really one subset within a range of expected core PR competencies) should be de facto experts in strategic communications planning, which entails the establishing of goals, objectives, key messages, target audiences, strategies, tactics, budgets and, finally, the evaluations of those plans.

Perhaps key to the planning process is generating a big idea, a core theme and vision that is unique, creative and sets your plan apart from the myriad others and makes yours the best of the best. It’s a tall order, and it’s what good public relations is all about.

Notice social media, media relations, video production, publications design, Web site creation, story pitches, products sales and so on are not listed in the above criteria for planning. The reason is simple. Although each of these are vital to have in many PR plans – one can make a living just pitching stories to the news media, for example – they are aspects of a larger public relations vision.

Presidential candidate John McCain rightfully criticized candidate Barack Obama for not knowing the difference between a strategy and tactic this past election season. It was one of few things McCain was right about. Knowing the difference is critical in military engagement. The distinctness between the two is also a key for understanding public relations.

Briefly, tactics are what we do – the actions employed to achieve objectives. (There’s a crucial difference between goals and objectives as well, both of which are often confused and erroneously used interchangeably.) Strategy is more general, basically a larger view of the playing field that generates ideas from which tactics are generated. Strategy is an art unto itself. The use of social media in a campaign is strategic. Twittering and putting photos on Flickr is tactical.

It is with this in mind that my first e-book is about the strategic dimensions of advice giving. In this book, I discuss, in a Q&A format, with crisis management expert Jim Lukaszewski the art of strategic advising. (Well, he does most of the talking.)

It is my hope that discussions such as these can help inform the nuances of good public relations practice, in particular to hopefully elevate the strategic mindset.

The book may be downloaded here.