PR: Ouch! Tells the Tale. Achieve Your Health And Fitness Goals By Getting SMART.
Ever get the feeling that your public relations program isn't doing much about the behaviors of your important outside audiences? Those audiences whose actions have the greatest impacts on your business?
Chances
are your PR effort is focused primarily on communi- cations tactics and not on the process needed to really move those key audience perceptions, and thus behaviors in your direction.
Which means you've missed out on the sweet spot of public relations.
Ouch!
That sweet spot can be summed up in just two sentences:
People act on their own perception of the facts before them, which leads to predictable behaviors about which something can be done. When we create, change or reinforce that opinion by reaching, persuading and moving-to-desired- action those people whose behaviors affect the organization, the public relations mission is accomplished.
Now there's nothing wrong with communications tactics. They are necessary "beasts of burden" that fit in nicely at the proper time, as you will shortly note.
So, if you believe it finally may be time to utilize that PR sweet spot, you could start this way.
Just who are your most important outside audiences? Customers and prospects, of course. But what about employees, minorities, residents, political and labor union leaders, the trade and business communities, among others?
Rank them in order of importance to your operation and let's work on your #1 external target audience.
Nothing can happen until you know what members of that audience think about your organization. And that means interacting with them while asking lots of probing questions and monitoring their perceptions. Have they heard about your company, its products or services? What do they think about them? Do you detect negativity, inaccuracies, misconceptions or even disturbing rumors?
With that kind of information, you're ready to set down your corrective public relations goal. Examples might be to counter that rumor with the truth, or correct an inaccurate belief, or clarify a hurtful misconception.
Now, you need the right strategy, one that gets you from here to your goal. Happily, there are only three strategies you can use in dealing with an opinion challenge like this: create perception (opinion) where there may be none, change existing perception, or reinforce it. Your goal will lead you to the correct strategy choice.
It's time to put on your writer's hat and prepare a really responsive message for delivery to the target audience. Above all, you must be convincing when you state that the unfortunate misconception, inaccuracy or rumor is untrue, and then lay out that truth creditably. Strive for clarity, persuasiveness, believability and, if at all possible, a compelling tone.
Your "beasts of burden" are standing by patiently ready to carry your message to the attention of your target audience. Because there are so many such tactics, you must choose carefully, and check just as carefully that each tactic has a proven record for reaching people like those who make up your target audience. Tactics range from radio and newspaper interviews, newsletters and press releases to emails, op-eds, speeches and many, many others.
What about progress? Are you making any? Best way to find out is to re-monitor perceptions/opinion in that target audience now that your communications tactics have been underway for six to eight weeks. Interact again with target audience members using the same questions you used the first time around. What you want to see are perceptions beginning to reflect the corrections in the message carried by your communications tactics. In other words, you are looking for opinion/perceptions that have been altered in your direction.
Talk about early-warning systems! When you pay attention regularly to your most important external audiences, you will be continuously aware that certain behaviors may be getting ready to exert negative pressure on your business. Which gives you time to spersuade the stakeholders who make up that target audience to your way of thinking, thus moving them to take actions that lead to the success of your organization.
Please feel free to publish this article and resource box in your ezine, newsletter, offline publication or website. A copy would be appreciated at bobkelly@TNI.net.
Robert A. Kelly © 2003.
About The Author
Bob Kelly counsels, writes and speaks about the fundamental premise of public relations. He has been DPR, Pepsi-Cola Co.; AGM-PR, Texaco Inc.; VP-PR, Olin Corp.; VP-PR, Newport News Shipbuilding & Drydock Co.; director of communications, U.S. Department of the Interior, and deputy assistant press secretary, The White House. mailto:bobkelly@TNI.net. Visit: http://www.prcommentary.com.
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Get SMART to Get Fit
I'm not sure who was creative enough to make the acronym work, but work it does and it can fit in quite nicely with your fitness goals.
If you want to succeed you need to get SMART about your goals.
SMART is a great way to help you stay on track and achieve your goals.
The S stands for specific. Be specific about the goals you want to achieve. Forget things like, "I want to get in shape", "I want to add muscle", or "I want to lose weight", or "I want to increase my bench press."
Instead try things like "I want to run a 6 minute mile", "I want to add 10 pounds of muscle", "I want to lose 20 pounds of fat, or "I want to add 40 pounds to my best bench press."
The M stands for measurable. This ties in very well with specific. You can't measure 'getting in shape", but you sure can measure 'running a 6 minute mile'.
With a pair of trusty skin fold calipers, you can also measure pretty accurately adding 10 pounds of muscle or losing 20 pounds of fat.
And of course, you can easily measure the poundage increase on your best bench press.
The specific and measurable aspect can be broken down even more to bring you closer to achieving your goals. For example, if you want to add 10 pounds of muscle, what other specific and measurable things must you do to reach your goal?
One could be that you must eat 6 high protein meals a day.
A second could be that you must eat 3,500 calories and 300 grams of protein every day.
You must train with weights three days per week.
You must add weight to your exercises at least every other workout.
All of these are specific and measurable. The more specifics that you have, the more likely you will add your 10 pounds of muscle as quickly as possible.
You can make a list of your daily, weekly, and monthly goals that you must do in order to meet your top goal of adding 10 pounds of muscle.
Each day, place a check mark next to each measurable and specific goal you achieved that will help you conquer your top goal. Obviously, the more checks you have, the more likely that you will achieve your goal.
In addition to specific and measurable, your goals must be A, or attainable. The R stands for realisitic. As I've said before, it's important to set challenging goals.
Challenging, but attainable, that is. A goal of a 50 pound increase on your bench press max in 12 weeks would be a challenging goal, but also one that is possible.
However, setting a goal of bench pressing 300 pounds in 4 weeks when you currently bench press 75 pounds will do nothing but set you up for failure and frustration.
Obviously, weight loss is on the minds of many people, which is why so many fall victim to promises like "lose 30 pounds in 30 days without getting hungry and without exercising."
As a reader of this newsletter, you know that the above is neither timely nor realistic. But many people do fall for such things because they want results NOW! They are setting themselves up for failure. Please don't join them.
The T stands for Timely. If you do everything previously mentioned, it's still not enough. You must give yourself a deadline to achieve your goal. More importantly, if your goal is attainable and realistic, but also long term, break it up into smaller goals.
If you wish to lose 75 pounds, start with losing just 10 pounds in 2 months. Reaching that goal will motivate you further and before you know it, enough time has passed that you've lost the 75 pounds.
But if you focus solely on losing the 75 pounds, which could take a year or more to accomplish, your motivation and discipline could wane, and you could fail to follow through on what you need to do to make your goal a reality.
Making goals timely hold you accountable and creates a positive sense of urgency.
You may think twice about eating that piece of cake when you know you are having a body composition test and pictures taken in 2 weeks.
In addition to getting smart, celebrate your successes. And I don't mean that you should allow yourself to dust off a gallon of ice cream in one sitting because you lost 10 pounds. That would be self defeating.
But you could treat yourself to a movie, or a pair of jeans you've had your eye on, or an extra hour of sleeping in on the weekend. Don't sabotage your wonderful efforts by giving yourself destructive rewards for accomplishing your goals.
Gregg Gillies is a speaker, consultant, fat loss expert, trainer and author. He teaches fitness via his articles, books and courses at his web site http://www.buildleanmuscle.com . He is the author of two books: Complete information on his books, along with lots of free articles are available at his site. And while there, don't forget to sign up for his free newsletter, "Fit Physique".
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