When giving, I believe it should always be altruistic, and it should benefit the recipient as its primary motive. But just like the quote about corporate philanthropy above states, I agree that benefiting the recipient doesn’t have to be the only motive of giving. At times people can give without expecting anything, but when dealing with businesses, public relations and the media, building relationships, and maintaining a good reputations is extremely important. Strategic giving can both benefit the recipient as well as the person giving,

An example of the way strategic giving can be helpful is with Home Depot. Home Depot volunteers use materials from their stores to build homes for Habitat Humanity, By doing this Home Depot is showing how its resources the store provides can be helpful, while also building its company a positive reputation. By helping build a home for people, Home Depot is keeping its charitable work relative to its source of business, and once again constantly promoting itself along the way.

Exxon/Mobile demonstrates strategic giving as well, but in a different way. Their advertising logo, Tony the Tiger has gained wide popularity throughout the nation, and in turn Exxon/Mobile donates large sums of money each year to protect tigers and their environments. Even though Exxon/Mobile is not using its own resources to help an environment, it is using charities pertaining to tigers, to help promote its logo, and essentially the company. Even while giving, Exxon/Mobile has not forgotten the importance of finding ways to promote its reputation, and build relationships.

Many other companies follow in the footsteps of strategic giving, besides the two previously mentioned. McDonald’s Ronald McDonald House Charities, gives millions of dollars every year to programs each year promoting the well being and health of children everywhere. By doing this they hope to promote themselves as a company.

Strategic giving can be seen everywhere throughout different companies and businesses. Hoping to keep their businesses going and successful, strategic giving presents a way for the recipient as well as the one giving to benefit.

Creative Commons is a set of copyright options that explain how people can use other peoples work. There are 6 different types of licenses; they are Attribution Share Alike, Attribution No Derivatives, Attribution Non-Commercial, Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike, and Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives. PR practitioners can benefit from these different types of licenses in three different ways.

• It promotes PR practitioners to work with others
• It helps PR practitioners to stay creative
• It helpes PR practitioners stay within the rules of copyright.

These are three major ways using a Creative Commons license can be helpful. This license helps individuals or large companies grant permission for other people to use their work. Not only being efficient, it makes the process simple, easy and it allows people to modify their license at any time.  

The Creative Commons license also gives PR practitioners a chance to collaberate with others, while also being creative. Staying within the rules of copyright, it is connected with many countries and accepted globally. Overall a Creative Commons license is extremely beneficial for PR practitioners, and public relations.

With millions of websites on the Internet, there are some that have grown more popular with PR practitioners than others. Here I’ve listed 5 websites that I find the most useful for PR practitioners and the field of public relations.

1. Blogger.com-Blogging is an essential part of public relations, and the website Blogger is a very useful and popular site where you can blog, as well as view other peoples blogs. Similar to wordpress.com, Blogger has many features that help you blog easily and efficiently.
2. Facebook.com-  Growing in popularity, Facebook is a website that helps people stay connected everywhere. It is a networking tool that can help with promotion and marketing of organizations. This website can help PR practitioners get their organization publicity, whether on a local, national, or international level. Facebook is used in different countries around the world, and is becoming the quickest and easiest ways to connect with people.
3. Youtube.com- Becoming one of the top entertainment and media outlets, You tube has become a website known all around the world. You tube shows everything from movies, t.v. shows, music videos, music, and practically any clip anyone wants to upload on the Internet. This website is a huge source for PR practitioners, in different areas from research to crisis management. You tube has videos on about almost anything, which is extremely beneficial for PR practitioners.
4. Epinions.com- This website is more for consumers, and their reviews and opinions on different products and services. This site can be a helpful tool when researching on an item, listening to reviews of customers, and grabbing a better understanding of a product.
5. Myspace.com- Another more popular media website, Myspace offers a wide range of events, promotion, and information for PR practitioners. Myspace connects people all around the world as well. This website is a great method for networking, promoting events and organizations, especially ones geared towards entertainment and music.

While all these websites differ on their uses for PR practitioners, they all are helpful in different ways. Ranging from blogging websites to networking websites, the Internet overall has opened a door full of opportunity and information for PR practitioners, that can only help the field of public relations itself grow.

At times some crises can be beneficial to an organization, but these circumstances are extremely analyzed.  Issue analysis is part of a process in identifying, analyzing, planning, and evaluating an issue. But while issues may be beneficial at times, a minor issue can easily become a crisis. A major crisis is much harder to influence, and crisis management becomes difficult and unpredictable.

However there are things a PR practitioner can do during a crisis that can help them manage the crisis efficiently. Here is a list of three things a PR practitioner can do to help crisis management:

• Take full responsibility. An organization should take up the responsibility of solving the problem.
• Be honest.  Don’t try and mislead the public. You need to put them first.
• Constantly monitor the news, telephones, internet, or any form of media coverage.

While these points may not be all the necessities a PR practitioner may need for crisis management, by following these three things, it will help a PR practitioner communicate better with the organization and its publics. While PR practitioners can not determine when a crisis may occur, they can try and strengthen the tools they have in order to manage it efficiently.

Agenda-Setting Theory states that the media tells the public what to think about, and not necessarily exactly what to think. Using headlines and selection of stories, the media highlights agenda’s and brings it to the attention of the public.

Uses and Gratification’s Theory explains that the audience choose which media to receive. People are not victims of the media, but rather choose which messages to receive in order to gratify some personal need. It also includes the idea that the audience has influence over the media themselves, instead of the media controlling them.

These two theories differ from each other in many different ways. The Uses and Gratification’s Theory places more power in the audience and their influence over the media, as to where the Agenda-Setting places more power on the media, and its effects on the public. Agenda-Setting Theory states that the media sets the topics or agendas and the public decides what’s important. In the Uses and Gratification’s Theory the audience sets the topics and agenda’s of the media, and they decide whats important.

In each of these theories PR practitioners play a major role. In the Agenda-Setting Theory the PR practitioners are responsible for deciding the agenda’s to bring to the forefront of the public. Where as in the Uses and Gratification’s Theory the public decides what the PR practitioners should bring to the attention of the public. Even those these two theories play different roles, both of these theories help explain the role that public relations plays on the media and how it affects the public.

Public relations may not seem as flashy as advertising, or as selling and buying based as marketing, but public relations is just as important and useful as both of these fields. PRSA’s goal is to get the public more informed about PR and what it has to offer its community as well as the country. By raising awareness here in America, PR can gain the credibility it deserves and branch out throughout the world. The PRSA will take up the challenge of promoting awareness and informing the public on the importance PR plays in 2 major ways.

First, PRSA will increase its public awareness of the organization by 30% beginning on January 1, 2010. Using the media, PRSA will promote the importance and credibility that the PRSA holds. With fact sheets, news releases, media kits, and interviews, PRSA will provide information on how its organization is continuously growing nationwide, and how it has been a strong foundation for PR practitioners all around America. By creating awareness about the organization itself, PRSA hopes to gain credibility for the field of public relations and PR practitioners.

The second way PRSA is going to promote awareness and credibility is by throwing a nationwide event. On February 1, 2010 PRSA will throw an event called “The future of PR” in 20 different major college cities.  This event will be held at colleges around the nation that have PRSSA organization within their campus. By having this event the same day, but in different cities, PRSA hopes to show people how PR practitioners are everywhere sharing the same goals, ideas, and commitment. PRSA hopes to show college students around the US how PR is growing and through the PRSA and the PRSSA college students and PR practitioners can all grow together.

By promoting awareness and information about public relations PRSA hopes to educate more people about the field and show them the impact PR can make, and how it is important, beneficial and credible. By having nationwide events and using more media coverage PRSA is trying to build a better foundation for public relations in the upcoming years, and to help it gain the credibility it deserves.

American Marketing Association defines marketing as the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. Marketing includes a bit of advertising, public relations, and many other fields that help promote and provide goods and services that inturn benefit both consumers and producers.

It is important to understand the functions of these three fields and exactly who they target, in order to understand how useful they individually are.

Advertising’s main role is bringing a product or business to the attention of potential and existing customers. Advertising is a non personal method of promotion. Different methods of advertising range from brochures, commercials, and bill boards. Advertising is a form of marketing, and is extremely useful because it’s concentration is solely on the consumer.

The role of public relations though not as direct as advertising is just as useful. Public relations goal is to promote a positive image on the product, business, or company that is in the public eye. They are responsible for keeping negative aspects the business or product is involved with out of the media. Public relations does more than target the consumers, its goal is for a good public image, and PR practioners achieve this by charity events, press releases, and many other events to help branch the product or business gracefully out into the public.

While understanding all the different roles that advertising and public relations perform, they come together to form the process that is marketing. An article written by Laura Lake on About.com sums it up best.

She writes, “The best way to distinguish between advertising and marketing is to think of marketing as a pie, inside that pie you have slices of advertising, market research, media planning, public relations, product pricing, distribution, customer support, sales strategy, and community involvement. Advertising only equals one piece of the pie in the strategy. All of these elements must not only work independently but they also must work together towards the bigger goal.”

I disagree with the statement that everything should be listed under the umbrella of public relations, but I also do not believe that we should fore go how important each field is individually and how though they work differently but simultaneously come together to form marketing.

While many may not know, the field of public relations is not actually a profession, but a trade. A trade is a field of work in which no certification or license is needed. And since PR falls under this category, accreditation is a helpful step taken to show businesses, and organizations that the person they are trying to hire is capable of pursuing public relations and have had their skills and knowledge tested and approved.

The PRSA can and should carry out more methods to show how much accreditation can help further ones career in public relations. I believe they can achieve grabbing more attention and positive feedback with accreditation in PR by these three methods.

By promoting to different PR practitioners the extra effort and commitment APR shows, and how the program shows the steps that each individual took further their career by going the distance and getting these extra credentials. If businesses saw how many more people were constantly getting APR approved and how many practitioners were striving for just more than a degree, they would take the approval more serious, and with time it would grow to become more necessary.

The PRSA in recognition that public relations is a trade, they should remember how important being a PR practitioner to organizations really is. They should try and make it mandatory that the APR program should be taken while students are getting a degree in PR, maybe as the final test or as an extra credit towards the students graduating credit. This would make students more eager to take part in the program, as well as show businesses how young practitioners are going the distance to be successful.

And lastly the PRSA can even stretch the barrier by trying to make it mandatory that any member that is in the PRSA and is currently out of school and practicing public relations take the APR program. And though some may not be able to afford the fees that accompany the program, they could even lower the prices of the program, allowing everyone to be able to take part in it. If the PRSA were able to make this program mandatory it would show business leaders how important it actually is, and how it can only help further your career and polish your resume.

Though some of these methods may not seem practical, they are just a few ideas to help promote the importance of the APR program, and how it can only help your future in PR, and how more people should see the importance behind it.

• Impact Inc – Forthworth, Tx.
• Executive Sports- Pittsburg, Pa.
• Public Relations- New York, Ny.

These jobs ranged from Fortworth, Texas, all the way to New York, and they all had a common goal; face to face selling and event promoting for different businesses such as hotels, golf courses, sport teams, and entertainment industries. These public relations companies were hired by the businesses to promote, and positively publicize what each business had to offer.

The posts these companies put out searched for hardworking, young, knowledgeable, and eager people who were ready for a first hand experience. They expressed that they wanted people ready to deal with face to face interaction with cliental, whether it was event promoting or idea pitching. The company Impact Inc. in Forthworth, Tx had been established for more than 50 years, with a cliental of at least 60. They wanted energetic people, and made a point to express that they wanted people who were willing to take the job serious, and find a career within it.

While reading all the different job postings, I was eventually able to pick out the skills I found to be the most essential. And while a PR practitioner may never have enough skills, these were the ones that seemed to be the most necessary and influential to efficiently get the job done.

• Having great communication and interaction skills
• Creative, especially with pitch ideas
• Being a team player
• Computer and media knowledgeable
• Constantly determined and motivated

These jobs wanted people who were confident, and enthusiastic when approaching a client. They stressed the importance of communication in public relations, and the need for teamwork. In PR working as a team will help you achieve goals, and objectives easier and more efficiently then by working alone.

Creativity is also important because it is your job to reach different publics and help them understand how important this specific business is and why it is needed. Blogs, web posts, online articles can all help you get the name out for the business or company you are promoting, but that is also why it is important for a PR practitioner to be computer and media friendly.

Advertising’s main role is to bringing a product to the attention of a certain group or public. Advertising companies try their best to achieve this message through brochures, signs, commercials, and many other quick methods of attraction.

Marketing’s job on the other hand is to also bring attention to the product, but to keep the attention of the desired public. While marketing includes a bit of advertising and public relations, marketing is making sure the needs of the consumer and the producers  is continuously met.

The role of Public Relations in all of this is to make sure the company has their preferred public image. Public Relations firms throw events, and activities to help mold their desired image to the public, and to help branch their companies successfully into the media.

While understanding all the different roles that Advertising, Marketing, and Public Relations play, one must wonder how they work within their companies and different organizations. I feel as though that Public Relations and Advertising work together to perform marketing. Marketing is after all reaching the consumer through different methods, and to inevitable keep the consumer satisfied and wanting more. Whether they must go about it through advertising methods or public relations method, marketing hopes to guarantee benefits for the consumer and the producer. I do not believe that everything should be listed under the umbrella of Public Relations, but I also do not believe that we should fore go how important the field of Public Relations is, and how public relations builds relationships with the public that simply advertising cannot.

A Career Center explains it best saying, “The marketing department of a large organization is like the center of a wagon wheel with each spoke connected to other departments (in- and out-side the company) including sales, production, research, advertising, etc.”

(https://career.berkeley.edu/Article/021011a.stm)