Whether your business conducts your own PR activities or you hire a PR agency, you can still involve your employees in your PR strategy.

As many business owners are very busy it can be helpful to delegate some of your PR activities to other employees to help ease your workload.There are many benefits of involving your whole business in your PR activities including finding more stories within the business, having another person available for media interviews, more media opportunities, creating a unified message and team building.

Here are some ways you can encourage your employees to be more involved in your PR activities.

Write an article
Ask your employees to write an expert article about a topic related to your business or industry.  The article can also focus on the specific role an employee has at the business. For example the marketing department could write about marketing in your industry while the legal department could write about legal restrictions in your industry.

Once you or your PR agency have edited and approved the article it can be sent to a relevant journalist asking if they would like to publish it.

If employees are reluctant to write an article they could send their expert information to your PR agency or talk to them over the phone. PR professionals could use your employee’s information to write an article on behalf of the business and aim to have it published in a relevant publication.

Be interviewed
Depending on the size and structure of your business, you could encourage key employees to take part in media interviews to promote the business. This may help you generate more media opportunities by having another person available to speak to journalists.

However, not everyone in your business will be suitable to conduct media interviews. You should choose only the key people in your business with an extensive knowledge of the business and their area of expertise. This could be a senior department manager, another director or business partner.

These employees should also be able to speak clearly, answer questions under pressure and communicate effectively. You could also provide these employees with media training to ensure they represent your business correctly and be able to communicate its key messages.

Get information and insights
Employees working across the business can be a source of interesting information, news and insights that could help develop newsworthy media angles and article topics. Employees from all areas of the business can be consulted as they will likely give different perspectives of the business, hopefully leading to interesting media stories.

Encourage your staff to feed information to the PR team on a regular basis to help create more media topics and opportunities for the business.

Team building
You can encourage your employees to have a greater input in your PR strategy by holding a team meeting to discuss it or including it in your annual team strategy sessions. Involving your employees in an activity like developing the PR strategy helps to get employees more involved in the business and fosters a more cohesive environment.

Inform your employees of the PR activities you are already doing and then ask for their opinions on how to improve it. Getting different perspectives and ideas from your team may lead to more ideas for your strategy.

Unified message
Every PR strategy should contain key messages, which are important pieces of information the business wants to communicate with its target audience. You could discuss these key messages with your employees and encourage them to use them when talking or writing about the business. If your employees are using the same key messages it will create a unified message and brand image for your business.

Involve your whole business in your PR activities and discover the benefits for your business today.

How have you encouraged your employees to participate in PR activities? 
Sydney Public Relations Agency, CP Communications provides specialist media, traditional and online PR strategies that get amazing results. Contact us today. For more PR tips see www.PublicRelationsSydney.com.au.