Managing a public relations PR) campaign takes a lot of hard work and effort. To ensure success of your PR campaign, you should avoid these seven common PR campaign pitfalls or mistakes.

1. No integration

A PR campaign is more than a news release. Most successful PR campaigns know how to take advantage of a multi-channel approach. This strategy includes online and offline PR tactics, including developing a media kit, writing a blog post, producing a video, creating a podcast, or organizing an event for key stakeholders. If all the components of the PR campaign don’t integrate together, the campaign has a lower chance of success.

2. Lack of alignment and availability

Think about your key stakeholders in your organization. How are they going to be affected by this PR campaign? Is your key spokespeople, who may work in another department, available to talk at moment’s notice? Can he or she answer questions on a blog or via traditional media?

3. Lack of proper positioning

There is nothing worse than not understanding how a PR campaign fits into your overall marketing strategy. Therefore, market positioning is very important for a product, brand or organization. What is your company’s identity? How will this PR campaign reinforce an image that has been branded into the minds of your target audience? How will this PR campaign help with search engine optimization (SEO)? In other words, does the PR campaign highlight all the keywords that your audience may type into a search? Therefore, it is important to position this campaign correctly for your brand and your target audience.

4. Too self-centered

Make sure that you solve your customer(s) problem(s) with the PR campaign. How will this PR campaign help your target audience? By understanding your target audience, you will be more successful. And on top of that, a journalist is more likely to write about something if the PR campaign can help its audience.

5. No newsworthy components

As a PR pro, you need to put on your journalist “hat” and think like the media. How would they think about this campaign from a fresh perspective? Why should anybody care? What is in it for them and their audience? By understanding what they care about, you can be more successful. Therefore, it is important to find out what makes a story newsworthy. It is very important that you read, listen and/or watch the media outlets you are pitching for the PR campaign.

6. Not sustainable

Often a PR campaign is great at creating initial buzz but is forgotten months later. As a result, you should create what is called the PR long tail on the Internet. Therefore, it is important the content you write today can still be applicable in some way tomorrow is important for long-term success of the campaign. Also, ensure the concept of the campaign is created in a way that it can be adapted to many different audiences.

7. Don’t know target audience

Who is the audience for your PR campaign?  Make sure that you not only know what target audience you are trying to reach with the campaign but what media outlets or online influencers would most likely be interested. Do your homework.

What common PR campaign mistakes would you add?

What would you add to this list of common PR campaign pitfalls?