Here at Bright One, we’re regularly approached by charities and not-for-profit organisations who are looking for tips and advice on how to put together a PR strategy.

They’re often aware of what PR is, how it works and the impact it can have on an organisation, but actually taking the first steps in creating a strategy to make this happen is a mystery to them. So just how do you go about creating a PR strategy for your organisation?

Well, we’ve put together a step-by-step guide to help you do just that. And as an added bonus, we also got a few top tips sent in by Twitter!

Step 1: Draft your key messages
What is your organisation’s mission? What cause are you supporting? What is different about the way your organisation addresses those challenges? How will you change the world? Asking yourself these key questions and others will help you determine what messages you want to communicate to your audiences and help you to focus your PR strategy.

Step 2: Determine your audience
How do you want to reach? Who will want to hear about the news you have? Who do you want to influence? For charities, this might be donors, government organisations, the general public, NGOs, volunteers, or other sources of support and funding. This may be a long list, but try and narrow it down to the key groups that you want to hear about your organisation’s activities.

Step 3: Find the best channels to your audience
This tip was sent in by Stephen Waddington, Managing Director of Speed Communications. Make a list of all the publications in your target market area. These will most likely be national newspapers, local newspapers, freesheets (such as the Metro) and radio and TV stations. You might also want to create a list of news sites and blogs, or even bypass the media altogether and communicate directly with your target audience through social networks such as Facebook or Twitter. Different channels will be more suitable for your organisation than others, so take time researching which are the most appropriate for you.

Step 4: Brainstorm PR topics
Are you releasing a new product, making an announcement, communicating a change in employees or services, stating an opinion or launching a piece of research? Is your information newsworthy (timely, relevant, interesting)? If you can come up with 12 PR topics, that means you can send out one news announcement every month for a year, which is a very healthy news flow. Plot these into a timeline to see how your PR activity over the year plans out.

Step 5: Find your influencers
This tip was sent in by Heidi Siefkas, a strategic PR professional based in Florida. Influencers are people who have a large following, either through traditional means such as holding a position of influence or in the online world if they have a large number of followers and fans. Influencers are important because if you manage to get them to spread the word about your organisation’s activities for you then you’ll be able to reach a larger audience who trust what those influencers say.

Step 6: Analyse your competitor’s success
This tip was sent in by David Child, a PR at Lucre. What are your competitors doing to promote their own organisation and activities? Where are their messages appearing? Who is giving them attention and support? By watching what others around you are doing and emulating their approach, you’ll be more likely to achieve a similar success.

So that’s a few steps to creating a PR strategy, which should give a great start to any organisation looking to create their own plan. As you can see, most of them are around undertaking solid research. As Mark Pinsent,  a communications consultant based in France, says: “good strategies become obvious with the audience and market insights that research brings. Otherwise, you’re  guessing.”

What tips or advice would you add to those above? Let us know in the comments below and we’ll add them in!