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Book Review: Strategic Planning for Public Relations

Book Review: Strategic Planning for Public Relations

For a Strategic Planning class at Quinnipiac University, we were required to read Ronald Smith’s Strategic Planning for Public Relations.

And so it was … okay.

In all honesty, I do not expect public relations textbooks to be laugh riots or thrill rides.

However, one area ended up being rather frustrating.

On page 95, Smith writes, “… goals are general and global while objectives are specific.” On pages 93 – 94, he writes, “Strategy is the organization’s overall plan.” And on pages 225 – 226, he says tactics are the visual elements of a public relations or marketing communications plan.

What Are You Saying, Mr. Smith?

First of all, to my mind, I saw great deal of overlap. Hence I feel that much of the book could have been better condensed. And essentially, I feel, the strategic planner or public relations expert wants to follow an organization’s general goals. For example, an organizational goal could be to get more exposure.

Plus they want to achieve this with special attention to specific objectives. Such as, they might want to increase awareness by 6% during calendar year 2017. And then they would want to add the nitty gritty of tactics. That is, the strategic planner might believe they can accomplish this by tweeting every other day following a particular plan. And that seems more or less to be it.

However, it did not take me over 400 pages to tell you that, now, did it?

However, in all fairness, there were some good parts in the book. Furthermore, the sections on SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) and PEST (political, economic, social, and technological factors) analyses were very good. And you do not have to be in the public relations field in order to be able to use that information. But man, it could sure use some editing.

Ten Years Later, How do I Feel About It?

About the same, if truth be told. While I can see the importance of planning and the point of it for work, this work does not seem to get into the nagging details of how you might actually go about doing just that.

How do you plan the quarter? A calendar? Spreadsheets? CRM? With a task management system like Asana?

I have found way too many ways to do these things and accomplish the same end result, even if my methodology wasn’t the same as other people’s.

Plan stuff. Don’t leave it all to chance.

Egad, I don’t need a book to tell me that.

My review still stands.

Rating: 3/5 stars.

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