Strategic PR and the value chain, pt 3

Yesterday I mentioned the concept of strategic PR and linked it to relationships. What did I mean?

At the core of any enterprise, particularly nascent ones like startups, are a set of relationships. The owners or managers of the business have to build relationships with funders, employees, various media, government, third party regulators, and many others, of course.

Most business people haven’t necessarily baked the management of these relationships into their initial business plan. Generally, they use their human intuition and charisma to to drive these relationships, which is really putting a lot of trust on intuition.

In every other aspect of a business plan, we try to push intuition out and replace it with projects and plans that are based on facts, proven models and professional experience. Why should the planning of relationships and their management be any different?

In fact, relationships are a key strategic business asset. PR professionals deal in relationships – it’s PR pros’ responsibility to learn enough about the other areas of business so that they can use the language and logic of business to make the strategic value of relationships clear to business people – beyond intuition and charisma.

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