Mike’s Points - Based in Toledo, Ohio/SE Michigan since summer 2005, my goal is to provide “points,” comments & links about PR, journalism, social media, branding, marketing & other items of interest. Maintained by Mike Driehorst, president & founder of Diamond Communications, specializing in PR & social media. » 2009 » March

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Getting back to the basics — but what are the basics?

By Mike Driehorst

Whether you are a manager or a coach, in a business, association or sports team, you need to know the basics to be successful.

What are the basics?

The basics are those things that you should do to be successful — and do them well. The no-brainers. The duhs. The things you really don’t have to think about. You should know them and they should be automatic.

One basic — a fundamental, must-have-no-matter-what basic — in public relations is high-quality writing skills. That is, if you want to be successful.

But, what about tactics?

A post by Lee Odden at TopRankBlog.com got me to thinking about basics, and what they are. He asked readers, “What 3 digital marketing channels & tactics will you emphasize in 2009?”

I posted my three — social media monitoring & outreach, blogger relations, and online contests, giveaways — because I thought at least the first two were among the basics any company should do in its public relations efforts. I’m a firm believer that, while you don’t have to actively participate in social media, you do have to monitor and listen.

And, because blogger relations is so similar to media relations (though different approaches) and media relations is a common PR tactic, I naturally see blogger relations as being a basic for many, if not most companies and organizations.

But, then I posted the survey and sought feedback at Social Media Breakfast-Toledo’s own network. The two responses showed that others have their own “basics.”

While there are some fundamental skill basics, as the example I mentioned above for PR pros, the marketing communications basics differ depending what you want to accomplish.

Successful PR and other marketing communications goes a step or two above the basic tactics. The true basics are determining the objectives (ideally, measurable objectives) of what you want to accomplish. Once you have these objectives in mind, then you set the basic tactics.

For those objectives, they can be driven by the overriding, 30,000-feet-view strategies for the long-term vision of a company, or they can direct the short-term needs of a campaign. Regardless, it is the process of correctly setting and communicating the objectives that is the basic.

-Mike