Public relations in a nutshell – er – Tweet

This morning while on Twitter, I challenged myself to quickly develop – in 140 characters or less – a definition of public relations that I might use if I had to explain it to clients in everyday, non-esoteric language.

In about three minutes, I landed on the following definition with one character left to spare:

PR is the strategic process of creating awareness among specific individuals or groups to help everyone achieve mutually beneficial goals.

I then Googled “definition of public relations” and within minutes saw the Public Relations Society of America’s definition, interestingly, in 140 characters:

Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.

In 2012, PRSA accepted a few thousand PR definition recommendations before landing on its current version. With more time, I’d revise my definition to clarify just what PR creates awareness about, like products, services or causes. Even so, in a few minutes of work, I was pleased that my definition aligned with PRSA’s, namely in highlighting:

PR as a strategic process: PR is a strategic process that involves clearly understanding the problem we’re trying to solve or the opportunity we’re trying to leverage. It then involves understanding which specific individuals or groups (key audiences) are mission-critical to the effort and how we’ll communicate to them.

PR as a mutually beneficial process: Successful PR is never one-way. It’s not just about pushing out messages about our products and services. That’s spamming. It’s about pushing through messages that help both our key audiences and our constituent organizations achieve mutually beneficial outcomes. Public relations answers how my product or service benefits you (saves time, money, is virtuous, etc.) in achieving your goals.

That’s PR in a nutshell -- or a Tweet.