Consider for a moment Home Depot’s donation of building materials to Habitat for Humanity. Not only does Home Depot receive the positive press for doing something to benefit those than cannot afford proper dwelling, but it also reminds everyone that Home Depot stocks everything necessary to build a home. It is basically free advertising for their home construction materials. On top of that, there is a minimal cost to the donation for Home Depot because all of the products they are donating were purchased at wholesale cost.

There are other tactics to strategic giving other than simply promoting the good or service that your company provides. Exxon Mobile for instance would not receive great press for donating oil or gas to people because the product has a negative implication here in the United States. Instead, the company donates money to protect tigers and their environment, linking their donation to their company logo. Anytime a person sees a story about Exxon Mobile and the tigers they are helping out, that person will think of the company logo. As a result, the company is using donations for tigers to build brand equity.

Sometimes a philanthropic action can be perceived as too strategic, and in most cases it will have a negative impact on the publicity of the company. In the year 2006, Columbus Children’s Hospital accepted a $10 million donation in exchange for naming their new emergency department and trauma center after the clothing company Abercrombie & Fitch. In response, 15 organizations protested to the hospital that the money should be returned. Abercrombie & Fitch received a substantial amount of negative press from the situation, furthering their already established perception as a shallow company.

5. WordPress – Basically any blog site will do, but WordPress is one of the best available. Maintaining a blog that is regularly updated allows consumers to follow a company’s progress, as well as feel more personally connected to that company. In the past, the larger a company gets, the harder it was to maintain a personal appearance to the consumers. Unfortunately this is still true today, though blogs help to minimize that barrier.

4. Facebook – The site was not created with the intention of catering to the representation of businesses, but in the last two years it has adapted to the demands of the market. Through groups, fan pages and events, Facebook has managed to allow individuals and business to communicate and form relationships on a very personal basis. It provides a forum for instant feedback from consumers to businesses, and is definitely not a venue to be overlooked.

3. StartPR – A fairly unknown site, StartPR is a diamond in the rough for public relations. The site searches through all types of social networking sites including Twitter, blogs, Technorati, forums, and postings. Basically anywhere in webspace where someone has mentioned the name of your company, StartPR will find it. It makes the job of tracking consumer opinions about a company much, much easier.

2. Wikipedia – Yes it seems simple, and yes, it also seems like the least credible source to find information about anything. Anyone can edit any page at any time. Regardless, aside from Google, it is arguably the most commonly used search device on the web, and is widely trusted by the younger demographic. Usually, when a Google search is conducted on almost anything, if a Wikipedia page exists it will be in the top three results. People know and trust Wikipedia as a source, and will naturally gravitate towards reading the Wikipedia page before anything else.

1. Google – Optimizing a website to match the Google search algorithm is the most important thing that a public relations practitioner can do online.  In the year 2009, Google on average performed more than 200 million searches per day. If an individual does not know the exact URL of a website or they are looking for a specific event, story or video regarding a company, Google is the first place he or she will go.

• Uses and Gratifications Theory
  • Under the perception of this theory, a member of the audience already has a set of beliefs or ideas, and he or she seeks out portions of media that will reinforce his or her preconceived notions. The more people need their ideas to be reinforced by media, the more important media will become to their life. In response, the media will sometimes cater to the preconceived notions of the audience in order to gain viewership.
• Agenda-Setting Hypothesis
  • An audience does not usually approach a news source with prior knowledge of what stories are relevant and important. Under this hypothesis, audiences will recognize the importance of a story once it has been deemed important by multiple mass-media sources. This theory explains that a member of an audience will become less skeptical of a story if it is carried by major news sources.
• Theories in relation to one another
  • The two theories can have a direct relationship to one another, depending on their perception by the audience. If the mass media decides to carry a story that the majority of viewers can easily identify with, then they will get an instant audience from the people who already believed what the story is explaining. Subsequently, if multiple news sources decide to carry a story for the purpose of instant viewer-ship, other audience members will notice the prominence of the story in mass media, and will deem the story newsworthy or important in response.
• Role of Public Relations Practitioners
  • The recognition of the effects of both of these stories is important to any public relations practitioner. He or she must realize that if a story is carried by a major organization, or multiple major organizations, the story will automatically be perceived as major. This influence must be recognized and practitioners must use the power responsibly. Alternatively, practitioners must also recognize that if a story fulfills or reinforces a certain belief or idea, an audience group that identifies with this idea or belief will be more prone to accept the particular piece of media.

1. The Facts
   • The information and situations that each subsector often deal with in a working environment are a major discrepancy in the fields. Effective public relations are based almost entirely off of fact and people’s perception of real situations. Advertising is often based off of exaggerations and surrealism. Marketing, like public relations, is based on facts, but they are usually statistics and facts on a page rather than situations that have, are or will be occurring.
2. The Message
   • CNNmoney.com contributor Kathleen Ryan O’Connor believes that the main difference between advertising and public relations is how the audience receives the message. In a “Small Business Blog” article, O’Connor argues that “When it came to communicating depth of information, public relations was more effective.” This is also true for relationships between the audience and the product she says, “But with advertising, the message was much easier to control. With PR, you not only can’t guarantee placement, you have little say in what comes out on the other end” (http://smallbusiness.blogs.cnnmoney.cnn.com/2009/06/17/advertising-vs-pr-what-pays-off/).
3. The Medium
   • While the mediums and demographic used by all three groups are almost identical, who pays for that medium is often a difference in the role played by public relations compared to advertising. For instance, if a person buys a Forbes business magazine and reads an article about a successful startup company, that article is within the realm of public relations work. The buyer of the Forbes magazine is paying for the content of that article. However, if the same company places an ad in that same Forbes magazine, the company must pay for it.

It is very hard to rank the three components in importance to a company, and in many ways the three are constantly crossing each others boundaries. At the end of the day, advertising reigns over all other mass communication efforts in the business world. Exxon spilled over 10 million gallons of oil into the Prince William Sound. Their public relations team followed this event with one of the worst reactions in 20^th century business. Last time I checked, Exxon was still one of the most profitable oil companies in the world. A bad advertising campaign won’t necessarily put a company out of business either, but advertising is so directly linked to sales that a company can see an immediate response in revenue from one good or bad campaign. Public relations is capable of such immediate results, but it is not their sole purpose. It can be argued that without marketing, the demographics for both public relations and advertising would not be realized. As you can tell from Table 1 below, advertisers are paid the most in company hierarchy, followed by marketing and public relations as a close third (http://www.bls.gov/oco/cg/cgs030.htm). Even though the other two fields would not be nearly as accurate without it, marketing is still probably the least necessary. Public relations follows marketing in terms of necessity, although advertising could easily be exchanged for it.

Table 1. Employment of wage and salary workers in advertising and public relations services by occupation, 2008 and projected change, 2008-2018.

(Employment in thousands)