Flexibility is Key in 2021 PR Planning

By: Maddie Skains, Public Relations Specialist

If we haven’t already learned from 2020, the ability to be flexible is a critical component of a successful end result – this is especially true when it comes to planning your 2021 PR calendar. When creating your PR calendar for the new year, it’s imperative to ensure your calendar leaves room for adaptability to the ever-evolving landscape of PR.

A thoughtful PR calendar built around your company’s yearly goals and initiatives with today’s unpredictable news cycle in mind will help ensure a successful start to the new year. Alternatively, a calendar without flexible strategies and ideas may potentially leave you in a bind and unable to make good on expected deliverables.

What is a flexible calendar? In PR, it is a timeline of ideas and overall monthly themes based off your company’s initiatives without the development of full-fledged, detailed pitches ahead of time. It’s ideal to develop pitches in real time to help ensure they are actually in line with and relevant to your local news market, national news, industry news and even your own company’s news. As we all know, plans can change at the very last minute and your PR calendar needs to be able to adapt and flow with those changes.

Building a PR calendar based off themes can include high level-messaging concepts, buzzwords to include in your media outreach, assets that are timeless or currently in the zeitgeist and a general approach to carry out messaging via pitching, guest interviews, etc.

Another way to ensure you are building a flexible PR calendar is to build a 6-month rather than a 12-month calendar. This will further safeguard your calendar’s flexibility as it will be more up to date with your company’s initiatives should they or the news cycle unexpectedly change direction. There is a great chance that what you are planning for in August of 2021 in a 12-month PR calendar will change, leaving you to develop strategies and themes all over again for the rest of the year – a 6-month strategy will ultimately save you from stress down the road.

A PR calendar that can navigate the unprecedented changes and news the new year is sure to bring is key to a successful PR year for your company. A flexible mindset and, in turn, flexible strategies will enable you to effectively maximize your company’s initiatives in the most efficient manner.

Connect with us today to find out how MassMedia can assist you.