How to create a public relations plan

I was driving on the way to the airport to pick up my sister when I thought about what to blog. Then I thought about the word 'relations' in PR and how that pointed to building relationships.

So for the sake of my own amusement, I Google searched "How to make public relationships". Here was a snapshot of the website I found:

The article from the website was titled "How to Create a Public Relations Plan" actually had some useful information. It talked about the key points to know like finding a person in the organization to represent the company; developing a media contact list; determining your organization's key messages; knowing your company's key audiences; support the key messages by using effective tools like news releases and corporate events; and finally, have a plan for crises.

Was this how public relation-ships were built? By doing all these things effectively?

When I was interviewed for a seasonal position last Christmas, I was asked why customer service was important. I replied:

"I think customer service is important because there are a lot of companies competing for the same market these days (in retail). I think companies should focus on having excellent customer service values to retain the store's customers. It is more expensive for companies to acquire new customers than to retain the ones they already have. By having excellent customer service, you build loyal customers, and loyal customers are repeat customers. Customer service is important because it builds relationships."

I thought this was a different approach of building relationships. In some cases, the sales representative was his or her own company and the method he or she did to make the customer interaction a memorable one was the PR tool in the plan. What I meant by this was that a sales representative might use the tactic of answering questions properly and well. The sales representative could also make the customer's shopping easy by being their personal assistant in the store - not so much as tail them around the store but being available when the customer needed assistance and anticipating that opportunity when the customer might need it.

This blog post was not to educate people about how to be better sales representatives but to emphasize that relationships must be built in order for public relations to be present.