QUESTION: How does the average PR professional conceive, execute and measure a PR campaign?
ANSWER: Whether an "average PR professional" exists can be debated, but a new survey on the nonprofit side of the PR world provides insight on which tools are being
used. The survey, conducted by PR News and Vocus, polled nonprofit PR professionals about how they go about their work-often on a shoestring.
When asked what percentage of PR employee time is devoted to manual and/or administrative PR tasks (ranging from researching media lists to distributing press releases to
tracking hits), the majority of those surveyed (41%) devoted 11 to 20 hours per week. The remaining professionals devoted either 21 to 30 hours per week (28%) or 10 hours or less
per week (23%).
The nonprofit PR professionals preferred, on the whole, to release and follow-up their press materials without outside assistance. A two-to-one majority did not use a wire
service to distribute news releases (68% to 32%) and nearly two-thirds did not use a news monitoring/clipping service. The hands-on attitude extends to the Net: 95% of the
respondents were responsible for managing the content of the press room on their organization's web site; the remaining 5% gave that duty to their in-house IT staff.
Gary McNeil, vice president of marketing at Vonus, credited the use of PR management software for this degree of self-sufficiency. "Companies that use PR management software
get their news brought directly to them," he says. "There have no need to go to external news monitoring services when you have PR management suites."
Contact: Gary McNeil, 301.683.6918, [email protected]