Glossary

What is public relations?

The Chartered Institute of Public Relations (www.cipr.co.uk) defines PR as:

Public relations is about reputation – the result of what you do, what you say and what others say about you
Public relations is the discipline which looks after reputation, with the aim of earning understanding and support and influencing opinion and behaviour. It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics

Every organisation depends on its reputation for survival and success.

Everyone who comes into contact with an organisation will form an opinion about it. The opinion may be right or wrong, good or bad.

These perceptions affect decisions about whether they buy from, want to work for or generally support these organisations.

Customers, suppliers, employees, investors, journalists and regulators can have a powerful impact. They all
In today’s competitive market, reputation can be a company’s biggest asset – the thing that makes you stand out from the crowd and gives you a competitive edge. Effective PR can help manage reputation by communicating and building good relationships with all organisation stakeholders.

PR in practice

Public relations takes many forms in different organisations and comes under many titles, including public information, investor relations, public affairs, corporate communication, marketing or customer relations. To add to all the confusion, not all of these titles always relate accurately to public relations, but all of them cover at least part of what public relations is.

At its best, public relations not only tells an organisation’s story to its publics, it also helps to shape the organisation and the way it works. Through research, feedback communication and evaluation, the PR practitioner finds out the concerns and expectations of a company’s publics and explains them to its management.

GLOSSARY OF PR TERMS

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

ABC: The Audit Bureau of Circulations provides an independent verification of circulation figures for publications.
@username: A public message on Twitter aimed at a specific person, but which is also available for anyone else to see. Twitter calls @messages ‘mentions’.
ACE/AEV = Advertising Cost Equivalent/Advertising Equivalent Value: The Advertising Cost Equivalent or the Advertising Equivalent Value indicates how much an editorial piece would have cost if it had been paid-for advertising. ACE or advertising cost equivalent is the industry standard and gives PR a monetary value.
ACE/AEV PR value: Unlike paid-for advertising, unpaid-for editorial is thought to be of higher value. This is because the reader sees the product as being endorsed by the publication or TV programme in which it appears. The PR industry considers ACE PR value to be approximately 2.5 times greater than that achieved by advertising.
Advertising: A form of communication that tries to persuade potential customers to purchase or to consume more of a particular brand of product or service. Clients usually pay for their advert or advertising content to be placed in newspapers and magazines, on TV, radio, cinema and online. In exchange for payment, the client has editorial control over the content of the advert, where and when it is to be placed and the frequency of publication.
Advertorial: Advertorial is a paid-for feature that has the 'look and feel' of an editorial. Some publications may write the copy themselves whereas others may let you write it yourself. The article will have the words 'promotion' or 'advertorial' at the top of the page.
Agency: A company in the business of creating PR, advertisements, packaging and names for products and services, as well as providing marketing and merchandising advice, general business and promotional counsel to its clients. An example of one type of agency is a PR agency.
App: Widely-used generic term for an application that performs a specific function on a computer or handheld device eg the iPhone.

Biz blogs: These are blogs which are written by companies and organisations as a modern means of communicating with their customers and stakeholders.
They will offer information, advice and opinion, and often encourage customers to engage in a conversation about a product, service, or latest news announcement. Many companies now have publicly accessible blogs built into their websites.
Blog/Blogging (see also Biz Blogs): Short for web log, a blog http://outwrite.sigmaweb-dev.co.uk/blog is a frequently updated personal online journal, kept by a blogger. If created by a business it is known as a biz blog. By tagging key words this can help your blog be picked up by internet search engines. Blogs can be a useful way to get information into the public arena quickly.
Blogger: Someone who blogs
Blogosphere: Everything to do with the world of blogs.
Brainstorming: A form of ideas generation involving group-thinking. Members of a team or everyone involved in a particular project will get together and swap ideas about how the goals can be achieved. The best ideas can then be determined and worked upon by the team. This is a stimulating, energetic process which often throws up new and original ideas which might otherwise have not been contemplated.
Outwrite is always looking to help your business PR strategy develop, often by suggesting ways of moving forward which may not have been considered.
Brand building: A brand is the identity of a specific business, product or service and comes in many forms such as logos, names, symbols or signs. Brands are targeted to be relevant to a target audience.
Crucially, a strong brand enables people to recall and recognise the brand name and Outwrite's of specialists can work closely with you to build your brand.
Brief: Clear instructions given by the client to the PR professional about how he or she envisages a project unfolding and the terms of reference for achieving the end goal.
A brief can also be given in-house by a manager of a PR agency to an account handler, laying down the remit for how a particular PR campaign should be directed.
It should include contact details and potential media/stakeholders who need to be addressed.
A brief should summarise the campaign, but it should also be clear and provide precise instructions so that the account handler is never confused about the client’s ultimate vision for a project. A brief can be given verbally, with the account handler taking his or her own notes, or it can be a written brief.
Broadcast interview: An interview which will be broadcast on radio, television or online. It can either be live or pre-recorded to be broadcast at a later date.
Business to business PR (b2b PR): Communications strategies to promote a business to other businesses, as opposed to between businesses and consumers, which is called consumer PR.
Consumer PR promotes a client and/or his products to the general public.
Byline: Identifies the name of the journalist or author of a piece of editorial. Usually is placed just under the headline. If several stories have appeared about your company in the same place, it helps you to identify whether they were written by the same person or different people.

Campaign: A campaign is the planning, implementation and analysis of a PR plan of action.
CIPR – Chartered Institute of Public Relations: The UK's leading public relations industry professional body that looks after pprofessionals working in the public relations industry in the UK.
Circulation: Circulation refers to the number of copies distributed of a printed publication. Independently audited circulation figures are available for all major publications. (See ABC). This is not to be confused with readership.
Client: A client is the person, business or organisation that engages a PR firm such as Outwrite, to provide public relations services.
Cloud computing: The practice of internet-based computing whereby users have no need for an office-based server. They can access and share data, reports, software and information from anywhere in the world simply by using their laptops and logging in.
Communication: PR uses communication to achieve its aims. Therefore, good communication is crucial in PR. Skilled communications, or PR, professionals will carry out communications that foster common understanding and trust on behalf of a client organisation.
contact now to talk about how we can help you and your business.
Consumer relations: Consumer relations is one of the different tactics of public relations. It is directed at specific targets such as individual consumers and their representatives, whether those be private individuals, companies or public sector organisations. Consumer PR concerns itself with product reputation and enhancement of the value and quality of a product in the consumer’s eyes.
Conversation post: A response to someone else’s blog post, aimed to provoke conversation.
Copy: The written editorial text produced by the PR company professionals for a press release, newsletter, website or brochure.
Reporters on newspapers and in digital media – (social media), refer to their stories as copy.
Copywriter: A trained specialist writer with a direct and succinct writing style. Copywriters have a high level of knowledge of English grammar and punctuation. This term also applies specifically to advertising copywriting.
Copywriting: The writing of text for use in publications, websites, advertising, marketing materials press releases and news stories.
Corporate social responsibility or CSR: CSR is the responsibility of organisations for their use of resources, both environmentally and socially. It is the role of public relations to communicate the CSR strategy – both internally to employees and externally to members of the public.
CSR comes from the idea that trade brings obligations and responsibilities and a company needs corporate accountability and transparency.
Coverage: Coverage is the number and extent of ‘hits’ or media items achieved by a PR campaign. Outwrite achieves consistent coverage across both the traditional and digital media
Crisis PR: Formulating a PR strategy which a client can use in the event that anything goes wrong to help minimise any negative publicity/ill-feeling. Crisis PR includes provision of professional advice and guidance to clients about handling potentially adverse publicity. Examples include and incident such as a fire.
Crowdsourcing: Where an organisation harnesses the skills of external contributors who volunteer time to contribute content to their website, solve problems or otherwise help the organisation.
Cutting or clipping: A copy of an editorial item that has been published in a newspaper. This can be an item generated by the PR company on behalf of a client or another item mentioning the client but which has been generated from another source.
It is literally cut out of the paper and filed for reference. In digital terms, the link or pdf can be downloaded or forwarded to the client.

D username: Used to send a private message directly via Twitter so that it cannot be read by anyone except the named recipient.
Digg: A social news site that lets allows users to view content from anywhere on the web.
Double page spread: An article spread over two facing pages in a publication. It usually incorporates a series of press-style photographs relating to the article. They can be very eye-catching to the reader.
Download: To save a file from the web to your computer.

E-newsletters: Electronic daily, weekly or monthly newsletters emailed to subscribers and/or downloadable from an organisation’s website. Some organisations publish different versions, or editions, of an e-newsletter, with content tailored to different markets or stakeholders. Outwrite PR produces e-newsletters.
Editing: Tailoring of an article to suit a specific style, checking for accuracy, re-writing to correct it or make it more grammatical. Editing can also involve cutting copy to the required length without losing the key points or distorting the sense of the piece.
Editor: Person who decides news content/design style policy and makes the final decision on what will be published/broadcast in a newspaper, magazine, online news site, TV/radio programme.
Also the name for a person who edits copy, as above.
Embargo: Some organisations issue news to the media in advance of the announcement date. An embargo is a warning to the media not to publish the item until the date specified.
Event management: Using the specialised resources and expertise of an agency to help a client plan and run an event.
It may include elements from generating ideas and sourcing venues to identifying and booking celebrities or VIPs. It can also include branding, publicity, in-house communications, inviting guests, drawing up the itinerary, arranging catering and entertainment and checking all is running to plan on the day. Outwrite PR can deal with all aspects of arranging your event so contact us now.
Exclusive: A news story that initially appears only in one outlet eg newspaper, news site, radio or television programme. Exclusives are often front-page stories. Once the story has appeared, it is likely other media will follow up on it.

Facebook: A social networking site with more than 500 million users. First launched in February 2004, it was traditionally used by individuals and groups of friends. Nowadays, many businesses, and other organisations also have Facebook sites, which they use as marketing tools.
Feature: A feature is an in-depth, longer editorial item. Often, they are given more space or airtime than straight news items. A feature is frequently less time-sensitive, meaning if it is held over til the next edition or broadcast it won’t be out of date.
Features often look at the human angle behind a big news story of the day.
Flickr: A leading photo sharing and hosting site launched in 2005. Its members have now uploaded more than three billion photos.

Grassroots marketing: Developing communications with stakeholders or representatives to make them enthusiastic about your product or service so that they become advocates, spreading the word about it and becoming an additional sales force.

Hashtag: Descriptive word, acronym or code used often on Twitter. It aggregates Tweets from numerous different users around a mutual topic of interest.
Eg #BBC might be used to discuss the television broadcaster. By using a hashtag for searching it’s possible to see all the Tweets on that topic without having to follow all the individual users who are discussing it.
HTML: Stands for hyper text markup language, the predominant mark-up language for web pages.

In-house newsletters: These are often in the form of annual quarterly magazines or monthly news-sheets or e-newsletters circulated within an organisation.
They include a mix of corporate and workforce news and are an effective means of communicating with employees about the achievements of fellow staff and issues affecting the company and its employees . They are often produced by the PR team.
Integrated campaign: A multidisciplinary approach which uses a number of PR and marketing communications techniques in order to deliver a consistent set of messages. The aim of an integrated campaign is to achieve seamless communication with defined audiences.
Internal communications: The framework for formal communication between different departments/individuals in an organisation and the system of conducting that communication.
Internet newsroom: An area of a business or other website that communicates corporate messages, facilitates the demands of the news media and, sometimes, offers information to the public.
These newsrooms can include press releases, company fast facts, videos, podcasts, photo galleries, results of surveys, discussion forums and online marketing material.

Keywords: Specific words or phrases, often introduced into a press release or website. Search engines such as Google operate on the basis of searches made using keywords. Many web-users employ keywords in order to search for specific publications or features.

LinkedIn: LinkedIn is a social network for businesspeople. It allows users to create a professional profile, list their present and past employment, and link up with former and current colleagues. It also allows users to stay in touch with clients, vendors, suppliers and other business contacts.
Many professionals now regard it as a modern-day alternative to business networking by attending actual events.
See Outwrite’s Linked-in profile here
Lists: A group of Tweeters whose Tweets someone might want to browse through intermittently while not following them directly. It is also possible to follow the ‘lists’ of other people.
Lobbying: A branch of PR which involves establishing direct relations with influential statutory bodies, government representatives or other organisations which can affect the outcome of a client’s project.
Lobbyists use intelligent argument backed up with evidence to endeavour to persuade influential parties to see their client’s project in a favourable light.
Logo: A graphic or symbol owned by and representing a company or brand. Typically, a logo appears on all of the organisation’s materials including stationery, website, brochures, exhibition stands and other marketing materials.

Marketing: The process whereby organisations promote their products and services to their customers in order to generate sales.
Effective marketing campaigns will increase growth, and enhance a brand or service provider’s prominence in a particular field.
Marketing manager: A person appointed to oversee the total marketing strategy or particular project. He or she will manage the creation and delivery of on- and offline tactics to ensure they are informative, creative and relevant and deliver the agreed results.
Media monitoring: Thorough, regular and reliable checks of media sources for press articles, online items and TV/radio broadcasts related to particular subjects and/or client organisations. It includes classifying and listing all mentions. It may include supplying the client with copies of cuttings or links to online sources of stories.
Media monitoring agency: A specialist agency that is commissioned to trace and supply copies of every article mentioning a client in the media.
Agencies will monitor all newspapers, magazines and digital media, collate articles and send them to the client or PR agency.
Cuttings help PR consultants track how a client company is being perceived and any trends towards towards positive or negative coverage.
Good PR agencies act quickly to try to reverse negative coverage through proactive PR ,which can help restore the client’s good reputation.
Media relations: Helping clients confidently build up good working relations with professionals in all areas of the media, with the aim of generating positive coverage for the client.
Media training: Training to help individuals prepare for potential encounters the media. They offer confidence-boosting techniques and dress codes as well as ideas for ways to respond, particularly during face to face/radio/TV interviews, press conferences and the issuing of statements at a time of crisis.
Moblog: A blog published directly onto the internet from a phone or other mobile device.
MySpace: An online social network similar to Facebook but more favoured by creatives including artists and bands, who like to create an individual look for their pages.

News conference: Is the live dissemination of news by an organisation to invited media. The format is usually a presentation of information followed by a question and answer session. This is also known as a press conference.

Online PR: Using the internet and digital technologies, such as podcasts and online videos to effectively communicate with client stakeholders and deliver the organisation’s key messages.
Open media: Video, audio, text and other media that can be freely shared.
Outro: When used in reference to a video, the final section of the video, usually including credits to anyone who helped make the film.

Permalink: Short for permanent link, this is a URL that points directly to a specific blog or other forum entry in the archives.
Pitch: The presentation of a recommended public relations programme by a prospective provider. Typically, an organisation will invite two or more PR agencies to pitch for its PR contract. Pitches may also be made internally, such as by a member of the PR team to company managers.
Podcast or videocast: An audio or visual file prepared to deliver specific information, give an example of a product/service/working style or simply to entertain.
Podcasts are made available on websites for members of the public to listen to or watch on their own PC.
PR agency: A privately owned and run agency that offers a public relations service to public and private sector organisations. Good PR agencies employ former journalists as they understand the media best and have most credibility among media contacts. A PR agency will represent a number of different clients.
PR contract: A signed agreement between a client and PR firm detailing the agreed terms of reference for a campaign, including the targeted goals, the amount of time to be spent on achieving those goals, fees for the work and standard of service expected.
PR journalists: Qualified journalists who have first-hand experience of working in the print/broadcast/digital news media and have now moved into the public relations arena.
Working as poacher turned gamekeeper, such specialists have the most in-depth understanding of how the media operates, the best way to write stories so they will get published and highest credibility among journalistic contacts.
PR manager: A person appointed to oversee the total public relations strategy for a particular client or client company’s project. He or she will manage the conception and delivery of on- and offline campaigns and ensure they are effective, informative, creative, and relevant to the targeted audience.
Press office: A dedicated department staffed by experts in media relations, who deal with enquiries and communicate approved company messages to off- and online media and broadcast news services.
Press pack/kit: A branded information pack handed out to the media by an organisation. It normally contains background facts, material, photographs, illustrations and news releases. They may be electronic or in hard copy format.
Press release: Statement or editorial for issue to print, online and broadcast media that is prepared in consultation with and approved by the client. Press releases can be used to offer information eg announce a new product/service/forthcoming event, give an opinion on a topical story, offer a statement of intent or provide a reaction to an event.
Proactive and reactive PR coverage: Proactive stories appear as a direct result of planned PR input. Reactive coverage occurs where editorial has appeared as a result of the media outlet’s initiative and the organisation’s PR department has responded to a request for a comment/information.
Product Placement: Since February 2011 Ofcom (the regulator for all TV except the BBC) has allowed companies to pay to have their products featured in television programmes. Naturally there are restrictions and the price will vary from programme to programme and from channel to channel. Contact our TV expert Gwyn Williams for further information.
Proofreading: Checking an article for comprehension as well as grammatical and factual accuracy.
Proposal: A proposal is a document outlining a proposed PR strategy or campaign, with budget, to an existing or potential client.
Public affairs: Handling of communications with organisations within the public arena, most commonly involving national or local government organisations or organisations funded by the taxpayer and accountable to them.
Publics: Publics are the audiences that are important to and organisation and with which it wishes to communicate to achieve its objectives.
They may include existing and potential customers, employees and management, investors, media, government, suppliers and opinion-formers.

Qik.com: People with video cameras on their phones can upload videos directly from the phone to Quik.com.
Quantitative and qualitative PR analysis: Quantitative analysis refers to the number of outputs from a PR campaign eg how many times a company was mentioned in editorial or how many column centimetres were obtained.
Qualitative analysis is the analysis of the quality of coverage about an organisation and its produce or service eg how much of it is positive or negative.

Reputation management: Using a mix of pro-active public relations and marketing strategies to develop and protect the good reputation of a product, service, individual client or company. This may include developing a name for quality, efficiency, effectiveness, value for money, leadership, integrity and honesty.
RSS: RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication: a way to subscribe to online content and have it sent to a user's desktop or web-based RSS aggregator, often called a news reader. RSS is suitable for keeping track of information feeds, such as news headlines, blogs, activity feeds, and any other content from a single source. Although it is not technically a social tool like Facebook or Twitter, RSS keeps these together and makes it easier to people to use different social communities at the same time.
Sign up for Outwrite’s RSS feed at: Outwrite's news feed

Search engine marketing: Specialist online skills employed within a strategy that, when used alongside search engine optimisation tactics, attracts an increased numbers of customers to a site, generates brand awareness and builds trust.
Search engine optimisation: Incorporation into a website of key words and phrases to give it the best chance of appearing near the top of search engine rankings. This is best developed at the stage where a website is being built, rather than trying to add on optimisation techniques once the structure of the site is complete.
SMS: Stands for Short Message Service. This is the text communication service part of a mobile phone, web or other mobile communication system.
Social bookmarking: On an internet browser you normally save a bookmark for a specific site. Social bookmarking allows users to save their bookmarks to a central website and to share them with other users. These tools are useful for keeping track of individual articles, documents and websites and for allowing you to easily find information that you may have previously read.
Social media: Media networks rooted in online social interaction between groups and individuals, including services such as Facebook, My Space and Twitter. Social media is highly accessible and often involves multi-way conversations between multiple users with the same interests or opinions.
Social media optimisation: Generating effective high-level publicity for an organisation through skilled and efficient regular use of social media, online communities and social networks.
Social media PR specialists: Experts proficient in using social media forums to promote products and services, by strategically and tactfully engaging target customers in conversation about what is on offer.
Social media PR specialists are skilled at getting to know the people within a website social group or forum, and developing an online rapport with their targets, before introducing any specific products or services into the conversation.
Social networks: Online communities of people who share similar interests. Influential social networking sites are Facebook, My Space, Bebo and, for professionals. LinkedIn.

Target audience: This is the group or demographic of people you are trying to reach with your message.
Target media: These are specific print, online and broadcast media with a reader or view profiles best matching the organisation’s target market.
Timestamp: The date and time when a blog post was published.
Trade press: Trade-specific publications that cover sectors of business or industry eg construction, personnel. They can be used to obtain coverage which is focused and in-depth for a distinct client sector.
Transcript: This is a written version of an item broadcast about a client.
Twitter: This is an increasingly popular interactive micro-blogging site.

Understanding (in PR): Understanding is a two-way process. To be effective, an organisation needs to listen to the opinions of those with whom it deals and not solely provide information. Issuing a barrage of propaganda is not enough in today's open society.
Upload: To transfer a video, pdf or other document from your computer to your own website or a sharing site, such as YouTube.
URI: Stands for Uniform Resource Identifier. This is a series of characters that are used to identify a name or resource on the internet.
URL: Stands for Uniform Resource Locator and it will specify where an identified information or data resource is available and the mechanism for retrieving it.

Viral marketing: A web-based strategy for marketing that relies on an ability to persuade others in the internet community to pass on a marketing message.
This is most often achieved via emails, specifically written in a way to create a buzz online so that they will be forwarded on from one user to another at a rapid pace, spreading the word about a new product, service or piece of news.

Web 2.0: Is a mix of technology and business processes that can facilitate conversational marketing.
Wikis: These are websites used to create and edit a number of interlinked pages via a web browser. They can be used as a means for people to collaborate on documents, organise projects, publish and update information of mutual interest.
WOM: Word-of-mouth/word-of-mouse marketing where people networks can be used to promote your message without outside influence or management.

YouTube.com: One of the most popular video sharing sites on the Internet.