Basics Concepts for Public Relations Writing

Read this post by Aug. 21, 2024: Being effective at public relations requires, first, that you clearly understand what public relations is.

PRSA logo from its web site.

The student branch of the Public Relations Society of America (a major national organization of the PR profession) defines it this way: “Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.”

A “public” is any set of people who share some characteristic that is relevant to an organization. Publics are both internal to an organization and external. For example, at Mount Mercy University, students are an internal public. And “student,” like most “publics,” can be broken down into more discrete publics. There are traditional vs. nontraditional, graduate vs. undergraduate, students from the immediate geographic area and students from father away—a “public” is not a set, unchanging thing, how you think about public depends on who you are trying to reach with what message. Some examples of externa publics for MMU are prospective students, neighborhood community members, potential donors and many others.

Anyway, to have an impact, a message must be communicated. And that’s where writing comes in. Effective public relations writing is helpful to a public, informative and persuasive.

I want you to remember some basic concepts about public relations writing:

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  Wikimedia commons.
  

  Good PR writing is like journalism. It requires the same media writing skills as journalists use. We’ll discuss this several times this semester—PR and journalism are closely tied. PR writers use the media to reach many external publics. For example, a primary purpose of a news release is to get the news media to use its contents to give your organization free publicity. The goal of a journalist and the goal of a PR writer are different—a journalist reports the news; a PR writer advocates for an organization. But they should understand each other. And PR writers must function as journalists within their organizations. They have to identify and interview credible sources, accurately quote relevant documents, know how to write compelling, informative items that draw attention and communicate. In short, the goal of PR writing contrasts with the goal of journalism; but the skills and tools of both professions are very much the same. You must be comfortable cultivating a journalistic frame of mind to both deal with journalists as a PR rep—and to effectively write many PR documents.

• Effective PR writing is professional in its content and approach. One key point: Professional writing is meant to be shared and to be commented on. It requires an organization and boss’s approval. Many people become writers because they love self-expression, and that’s a valid reward in PR writing, too. But PR writing is not about the self—it’s about the organization’s need to reach publics with compelling messages. If we write a poem and others tell us it sucks, it hurts us deeply and personally. Or it makes us all warm and fuzzy if fans like the poem. It’s a mistake to have the same reaction if your professor (or boss) tells you your news release sucks (I hope in somewhat more polite and professional terms). It’s not about you and your creativity—it’s about you doing the work to craft words that could reach the appropriate audience (public) with the appropriate information and message. And PR writing must always be correct—to conform to style and grammatical rules. Using “to” when you mean “too” is too bad—and not allowed in PR writing because bad grammar (word choice issue in this case) makes your organization look bad. Make a good impression, always, by attending to both feedback from others and details of your writing.

• Ethics are important in PR writing. A PR writer is attempting to form relationships with publics on behalf of whoever they represent. Healthy relationship—in both life and PR—reflect a high degree of trust and mutual benefit. If you are perceived as not being honest and ethical, neither the media nor publics you're trying to persuade will trust you or your organization. The best way to appear ethical is simple: Be ethical. Understand what the ethics of your role are. In all communication—marketing, PR, journalism, all of it—the main ethical rule is “do not lie.” If you lie to achieve a short-term goal, you’re pretty much always doing yourself more long-term harm, and that’s no lie. It is important, since PR is advocacy, that you advocate for organizations and causes that you believe in—it will better for your soul, your mental health and your PR writing. While AI writing tools are becoming more common, it's important, too, both as a student and as a professional writer, to never represent computer-generated text as your own work. AI will become an increasingly important tool and will aid both the research portion of PR and the generation of routine copy (words), but you must NEVER turn in a ChatGPT block of text for this class because it represents your abdication of your opportunity to grow as a writer—and it's base, vile and evil cheating, too. Which means it's not ethical and not good PR for you as a student.

• Public relations writing reflects good use of rhetorical tools. In much of PR writing, especially news releases, the persuasion should be subtle and come from the truthful reporting of relevant, newsworthy facts. In other forms of PR writing—white papers, web site copy, blogs, ads—the advocacy is more overt. But all PR writing seeks, either overtly or subtly, to persuade. The ancient Greeks (who developed democracy and thus, in a way, the idea of public advocacy and therefore PR) articulated the main rhetorical principles of persuasion in three concepts you want to use in your writing today. The three pillars of persuasion are:

Logos—the facts and logic. Your writing should “add up.” What you say is a fact should only be what you have verified is factual. Good data is more persuasive than bad data. And information needs a structure—you need to draw your public along a well-considered logical route to your destination.

Dr. Todd Olson, president of Mount Mercy University, speaks. It's opinion, but I think, for the most part, he has good ethos--people at MMU generally find him credible. (Style notes: president, if not used in place of or before a name, is not President, and Mount Mercy is never Mt. Mercy, except in its web URL)

Ethos—persuasion is only effective if the public sense that you’re credible. This credibility comes from many sources. Partly, it is just the confidence with which you can assert something—as long as it does not sound crazy, people tend to believe confident sources who project internal credibility through their behavior. In writing, however, it’s mostly from two other ideas. You boost ethos by the audience sensing that you understand them and have their best interests at heart. And the audience relates to different sources in different ways—citing the Mayo Clinic for advice on how to avoid a disease is better than citing your crazy Aunt Maude who was a lumberjack her whole life. In other words, ethos is the sense that you’re credible, and use of credible sources helps. Credible, of course, means respected by the public you’re trying to reach.

Milkweed in bloom, MMU, summer 2020. Image cutline is link
to video that can make me cry.

Pathos—human brains are powerful organic computers, but our brains aren’t just filled with logical circuits like a silicon chip machine. We’re animals, governed by hormones, emotions, environment—by pain and love and lust and hunger. Pathos is the appeal the emotions of the audience. It’s easy to do badly—ineffective, over-the-top emotional appeal even has a Greek name, too (bathos), but pathos is important. If you don’t reach your public on an emotional, organic, human level, you don’t reach your public.

The balance of logos, ethos and pathos varies depending on the information being communicated, through what medium by what sender and to which publics. But persuasive writing uses all three tools in an appropriate mix for its public and its message.

• Writing that has impact always reflects understanding the audience. It’s easy for a writer to get carried away with their own writing. But PR writing—in fact, all professional writing—must meet the needs of an audience (public). Always read your own writing from the point of view of your intended audience. Make your message clear to the ones who you want to reach. Understanding your audience, by the way, also means not stereotyping them—not assuming you know them all too well. Don’t look down at a public. Knowing an audience requires a heavy dose of empathy—the ability to see things from that public’s point of view.

• Good PR writing is art. It has a sense of storytelling, of plot, of character. It touches the heart and the head. It is poetic and artistic even as it is professional and bottom-line oriented. Good PR writers thus have to be readers—because good writing requires both a technical knowledge of language and an intuitive, artistic feel for what draws readers and engages them which you can gain only by being a reader. Why did Harry Potter grab the literary world by storm in the 1990s? It was great story telling—and even if you’re just doing a product brochure, a corporate thank-you note, an announcement news release—if you’re a good PR writer, you are a storyteller and a poet, too.

So, welcome to this semester-long rumination on public relations writing. Along the way, you’ll demonstrate and experience lots of forms of writing. You’ll create numerous news releases, media alerts and other specific PR documents. You’ll create a web site to display your writing skills to the world. You’ll hone media writing skills as a reporter for the “Mount Mercy Times.”

I love writing and writers, and I hope you’ll enjoy this journey that we’ll be on together.