An effective public relations campaign is vital to growing a business. PR can get the public talking about your company, your cause or what you’re selling. Ultimately, the right kind of publicity can help you connect with your target market long-term.

However, what should you do once you’ve gotten the campaign up and running? How should you reap the benefits of your PR results? It’s easier than you think. By integrating your PR materials into your other marketing efforts you’ll be getting the most bang for your buck.

Here are some ideas for making the most out of your PR efforts:

• Reprint relevant articles and other media hits and use them as supplemental copy in your direct mail packages, e-newsletters to clients or customers and potential investors. You can also use them as handouts at trade shows.

• If your company relies on a sales team, provide them with copies of some of your best feature articles, business profiles or guest columns so they can pass them along to customers on sales calls. They can also mail them along with a personal letter as a follow up.

• Use positive news briefs in your company’s advertising campaign to enhance credibility.

• If you don’t have one already, create a news room or media link on your company’s website. Here, you can post recent news articles and video clips for both current and potential clients to view. Remember to keep it updated often.

The need for increased visibility, elevated awareness and third–party credibility is what makes public relations a necessity. No marketing plan is fully realized in the absence of public relations.

Marketing is a rapidly changing industry, where evolution happens at breakneck speed.  In the world of PR, the message has always changed, now the messenger is frequently new, yet the need for the message is still the same – it’s vitally important.

Traditional public relations has a huge media coverage element.  The foundation has heretofore been print media – newspapers and magazines, and the electronic media – television and radio.  The past ten years has witnessed the rise of the Internet, where web stories are as valuable as their predecessor, and even more so as searchability becomes a priority.

New media is now part of the equation.  Podcasts, streaming video, blogging – these are all critical messengers to get clients news out into the public.  By ignoring these, PR practitioners are bypassing an important audience that could be influential in their market.  By the same token, ignoring the traditional media is also a mistake.

The fact is public relations is a constant.  It’s necessary and fundamental to the viability of any company, service provider and professional business. So we inaugurate our own new media with today’s blog.  Welcome.