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How to Maximize Your City’s Public Relations
by Patrick Slevin
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City leaders are embracing the notion of public relations as a new approach to maximizing their abilities to reach, communicate with and inform the people who live and work in their communities. As we will explore, proactive public relations is not only enhancing existing city communications, but also creating new models for educating a broader audience through the news media in cities both large and small throughout Florida.
What is Public Relations?
Many experienced communicators would define public relations as a means of getting the attention of the media to gain publicity in the press, while others would say that public relations is about developing a message that persuades a targeted audience. Both answers are correct and true, but they don’t quite hit the bull’s-eye.
The core meaning and ultimate goal of public relations is building and maintaining relationships. As a public official, you’re already engaged in various public activities to maintain these relations, such as delivering a speech to a local civic club, issuing a monthly newsletter, participating in downtown events and officiating countless community activities. However, these traditional modes of communication are limited – they do not successfully reach the majority of the city’s population.
If you’re not getting the word out about your city’s policies, projects and accomplishments, then your programs will go unrecognized like the proverbial tree falling in the forest with no one there to hear the sound of the falling timber.
The Local News Media Holds the Key
A majority of Americans look to their local newspapers, radio and the 6:00 evening news to find out what their government is up to and what’s happening in their community. What this means is all public relations today is truly local, and your hometown media offers a tremendous opportunity to deliver your city’s message to the public.
City officials already enjoy established relations with local reporters who cover their city’s beat. However, the majority of the city’s news coverage is owed to reporters taking the first step and contacting city hall to get the story.
“Public officials are the gatekeepers to the city, and they shouldn’t wait for the reporter to come to the council meeting to learn about a new bond issue or code. If city officials were more proactive and called the reporter, it would greatly increase the likelihood of generating more news coverage,” said Dean Ridings, executive director for the Florida Press Association.
“Our job in the press is to cover the news in the community, and a very important part of that is knowing what the city is up to – if we don’t know about it, then the public won’t be informed. Unfortunately, countless stories never get reported due to public officials who didn’t see the value of picking up the phone or sending out a press release,” said Ridings.
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A Tale of Two Cities
A growing number of city officials are finding new ways to leverage their local news media to generate positive publicity to expose, promote and define their city’s quality of life. The explanation for this emerging trend is city leaders are discovering what public relations can actually do to improve their communities. Let’s look at the City of Fort Myers and the Town of Lake Park.
Mayor Jim Humphrey of Fort Myers knew his administration would need a public relations homerun to sell his tax increase proposal. His first public relations campaign had to deal with the task of educating the people of Fort Myers about his intent to increase the city’s ad valorem tax by 36 percent. “If it weren’t for our proactive efforts to get the word out to the local papers, television and radio, the tax proposal would have been D.O.A.,” said Mayor Humphrey. “What made the difference was that we had our supporting facts and message packaged for the news media. The end result was the media helped us get the word out and the measure passed with overwhelming support from the community that we wouldn’t have had otherwise.”
The first step a city must take to start a successful public relations program is establishing relationships with reporters, editors and news directors. A large number of city officials are reluctant to do this because of other demands on their time, or because they don’t possess a comfort level when dealing with the press. In short, take the reporter out to lunch, meet his or her editor, and begin the process of forging relationships that will create access and dialogue that will pay you dividends down the road. This approach made a difference in Fort Myers, as well as in the Town of Lake Park.
Town Manager Jason Nunemaker of Lake Park knows the value of media relations and how proactive public relations is getting his a small town (pop. 8,500) media coverage. “Our town has been subject to bad press in the past, and we decided to turn that around by reaching out and contacting the media. Once we solidified our contacts, we then began to look for aspects of the city that we thought would be of interest to the press, and the results have been very positive,” said Nunemaker. “If you don’t pick up the phone and send out a press release, you can’t spin the coverage you want.”
The Public Relations Strategy
After you have begun building relationships with the media, then a strategy can be developed to pursue the news media for positive and frequent coverage.
A good start for developing your city’s strategy is identifying annual events and city celebrations that involve the community. An effective public relations strategy will consolidate annual festivals, holidays, anniversaries and special projects into a media-event plan, which will help you find community themes, emerging messages and opportunities for publicity.
Another feature of a public relations strategy is finding or creating the story that will be informative to your constituents, while still peaking the interest of the media. For example, a city’s annual Christmas parade may not generate headlines, but a press release announcing the council’s appointment of the Christmas parade marshal as a result of his or her outstanding civic achievements would not only amplify the event for the community, but draw a reporter’s interest of the marshal, with the parade serving as a backdrop to the news story. The result is publicity that offers a human story symbolizing the qualities that make up the community, which in turn positively influences the city’s image and reputation.
In your city’s public relations plan, determine how city hall will handle the incoming calls from the media in response to a story, and who will be assigned to speak on behalf of the city.
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An Effective Press Release
Once your strategy is mapped out, then the city can prepare to roll out and deliver its public relations objectives. The biggest weapon in your arsenal is the press release. The press release is one of the staples of effective public relations, because reporters and the public aren’t always in a position to reach you. The press release bridges gaps in time, geography and awareness. A good press release captures the essence of brevity by communicating in the lead paragraph the who, what, where, when, how, and why – just like you see in a typical news article – followed by a quote from a city official to characterize the facts and deliver the intended message.
The press release offers several benefits:
1) It proactively sells the media.
2) Community papers typically reprint the release verbatim.
3) It can be posted on the city’s Web site or bulletin board.
4) The press release can be used as a direct mail piece to inform community leaders.
5) It serves as a script for the assigned spokesperson during media interviews.
Once you have established your media relationships, prepared your media event plan/public relations strategy and designed your press release templates, then you will be in position to utilize other tools, such as an interactive Web site and partnering with other sectors of the city to maximize your city’s public relations campaigns.
The way a city communicates helps determine the quality of life for those who live and work in the community. The city that is out in front with a public relations approach can maximize its ability to connect to, communicate with and educate a far greater audience.
Patrick Slevin is a former mayor of the City of Safety Harbor. He is the founder and president of MediaMax Campaigns, a public relations consulting firm based in Tallahassee. He may contacted at www.mediamaxcampaigns.com.
Reprinted from Quality Cities November/December 2002
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