Publics, audiences and stakeholders

To be honest, this may be the first time that I really enjoy the “theory” section. Because it is useful indeed!

In today’s class, Michaela's presentation introduced several general stakeholder identification and positioning models that can be applied to help me think about the concept of “stakeholders”, which is a new word for me.

Although I learned something similar before in the Marketing model, there are three ways to identify an organisation’s stakeholders in a PR context.

I’m happy that I was in the ‘9 segments’ group when we did our stakeholder analysis exercise, because it was much easier to identify your stakeholders.

These 9 segments are:

Demographic

Psychographic

Geographic

Organisational membership

Covert power

Role in decision making

Influencers

Opinion formers

Decision makers

Ha-ha, I love theories now.

In theory as well as practice, PR can be considered as “stakeholder relations”. Please Mind that the gap between Publics, Audiences and Stakeholders is necessary in order to achieve your target.

In my view, this is especially true in the new media environment, because you need to know your audience as well as your stakeholders.

Though a project or campaign may only target one main segment, the actual base may extend beyond to include friends, family members, associations and other interested parties or only opinion formers (e.g. Bloggers).

Involving stakeholders is a tough task. The more you get key stakeholders to understand involved, the more successful a project will be. Stakeholders should get involved during every part of the program or campaign’s life cycle.