It’s that time of the year again when you can look back and reflect on your projects and glance towards the future to think about what you want to achieve the following year.

Putting together your PR plan for the year is an essential part of being organised. Those people who start their plans before the start of the year give themselves an easier transition into a busy first quarter.

Here are a few things you can already start adding to your plan:

Events

Once an event has finished, the date for the following year is usually available. Even if you’re not 100% sure about attending an event, it’s useful to get the date on your calendar. This will help you plan your budget and decide which events fit around your other projects.

Ketchum’s Stephen Waddington rounds up some of the PR events happening next year – http://wadds.co.uk/2017/11/19/public-relations-calendar-2018/

Awards

There are hundreds of PR awards that happen each year but if there are some that you really want to enter it’s best to get them in the diary early. Ensure the deadline date and date of awards ceremony are both added to your calendar. Decide which of your PR campaigns you’d like to enter, get all your evidence together and start writing your application. Applications should be tailored for each award but can be adapted and used for multiple award entries throughout the year.

Take a look at some of the awards happening across PR and Marketing next year – https://awards-list.co.uk/uk-awards/marketing-awards-pr-awards-event-awards-and-advertising-awards/

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Forward features

Add all the most important and relevant features into your PR plan. These can be found by looking on each publication’s website, contacting the outlet directly or by using a database like our Media Contacts Database. By setting up alerts when new relevant features are added to the database you can add these to your plan as they appear.

Find out more about our Media Contacts Database by requesting a short demo.

Large-scale campaigns

Get any large campaigns or company/client events into your plan. If you already know that you’ll be running large PR campaigns for clients next year then block off time straight away to avoid overlap. You don’t need to be specific on the dates if these are not booked yet, but it’s important to plan when you’ll need to be focusing on those projects.

Trends and challenges

PR and media industries move fast so it’s important to stay on top of media changes and trends.

Stay informed of media moves by signing up for our Media Bulletin daily newsletter.

PRmoment outline some of the challenges for PR professionals in 2018 – https://www.prmoment.com/category/pr-insight/the-biggest-challenges-facing-pr-in-2018

Twitter provides some trends that can help with your strategy for next year –
https://business.twitter.com/en/blog/6-pr-trends-to-check-out-in-2018.html
https://business.twitter.com/en/blog/most-important-media-PR-trends-2018.html

How’s your 2018 PR plan going? Can we help you achieve your PR goals next year? Contact us to chat about our range of smart services for PR professionals.