A new year, a new strategy: PR and social media planning for 2014

From defining your goals to evaluating the challenges and successes you experienced in 2013, here are six things to consider when thinking about your strategy for the year ahead.

1. Review last year’s strategy
Start your PR and social media plan for 2014 by reviewing your PR strategy from last year. In this review you should analyse the challenges you faced and then develop solutions to overcome them this year. Note down any mistakes you made and talk about the lessons you learnt from them.

You should also think about your successes from last year and what contributed to that success. Think about what success will look like for 2014 and how you can achieve it.

By understanding and evaluating what worked and what didn’t you can help to create a stronger PR and social media strategy geared for success.

2. Define your PR and social media goals
Write down the goals you want your PR and social media strategy to achieve this year.

As CEO, maybe you want to increase their speaking opportunities by 40% in the next six months. Maybe you want to hit 10 new media targets to reach a new audience. Perhaps you want to increase engagement on Facebook by 20%.

Make sure your goals are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely (also known as SMART). This will help you to achieve your goals and measure your success.

3. Get the team involved
Hold a meeting with your team to discuss your PR and social media plan for the year. In this meeting you can discuss your goals, review last year’s strategy, brainstorm for new ideas and assign employees to specific tasks.

Involving your employees in your PR and social media plan is a great way to gain new ideas, keep them informed and encourage ownership over PR and social media activities.

4. Position your business
Think about how you want to position your business in 2014. This involves thinking about the key messages you want your target audience to hear and receive.

For example,  you may want your target audience to see your business as the number-one point of contact for products or services in your industry. You then need to determine how your key messages will reflect this and how your target audience will receive this message.

5. Select your media targets
Write down the publications you would really like your business to be featured in this year. Think about the publications you received media coverage in last year and determine where else your business can be featured.

Maybe you want to focus on a different sector of your target audience and will therefore aim to gain media coverage in publications which reflect this. Perhaps you want to focus on blogger outreach to get coverage in blogs.

Selecting your media targets is a great way to help you plan your media pitches for 2014.

6. Create content calendars
Content calendars allow you to plan the articles, social media posts and blog posts you will write for over the next few months.

You can put dates against your story ideas to schedule when they will be written or posted. You can also plan out where you will pitch or post them afterwards. This is a great way to help you organise all your story ideas and plan your content for 2014.

The sooner you start planning your PR and social media strategy for 2014 the sooner you can start achieving results.

What is your PR plan for this year?