Training Course: Intensive Communication & PR for Public Sector

Introduction

The "Intensive Communication & PR for Public Sector" course is designed to equip professionals with essential skills for effective communication and public relations in government and public organizations. Participants will learn how to craft clear messages, manage media relations, and engage with stakeholders to enhance transparency and public trust. This course provides practical strategies to handle communication challenges, promote positive public image, and improve public sector outreach.

Course Objectives

• Understand how the media are organised, and how journalists think and work.
• Engage confidently and effectively with journalists.
• Plan a communication campaign using practical tools.
• Apply and adapt 10 universal platforms for creative PR.
• Prepare venues, resources, materials, and spokespeople for a press conference.
• Navigate and manage interpersonal dynamics in important encounters.
• Develop enhanced PR writing skills to amplify the impact of everything that you write.
• Write powerful and memorable speeches.
• Manage your organization’s reputation in social media by shaping perceptions and conversations.
• Create an internal communication strategy for your organization.

Course Outlines

Day 1: Essential Media Relations

• The media landscape: how to map out the full range of forms of news media, and how to engage effectively with different media.
• Journalists: how to understand and work with journalists to influence and shape coverage.
• News judgment: understanding how journalists decide what makes news.
• Pitching stories: how to sell-in stories to journalists by creating and executing effective pitches.

Day 2: Creativity in Communications and PR

• Creativity in PR: principles of creativity and its importance for PR.
• Creativity showcase: a case-study-driven rolling workshop in which learners examine the key success factors behind creative PR campaigns and extract practical lessons.
• Facilitating creativity: a toolbox of practical creativity techniques and processes.
• Creativity in practice: an in-class creativity workshop that applies all of the creative concepts and techniques covered during the course.

Day 3: Strategic Media Engagement

• Creative news and media management: how to generate creative news angles and secure prominent coverage even for borderline stories.
• Innovative media engagement tactics: how to engage journalists using innovative techniques.
• Online media relations: how to conduct media relations on the Web and align your media relations work with online social media.
• Preparing and coaching spokespeople: how to brief and debrief spokespeople so that they perform effectively in media interviews.

Day 4: Media training

• Effective preparation for interviews.
• Body language, such as appearing engaged.
• Voice – including tone, projection, variation, and emphasis of key points.
• Confidence and clarity (ability to be understood and avoidance of jargon).
• Avoiding tricks, traps, and pitfalls.

Day 5: Press Conference Management

• Press conference planning: best practice in planning press conferences.
• When and how to use press conferences, based on case studies of successful and effective execution.
• Press conference preparation: how to prepare venues, resources, materials, and spokespeople for a press conference.
• Press conference execution: a practical primer on how to make a press conference happen.
• Press conference facilitation: the role of the PR professional in hosting, chairing, stage-managing, and troubleshooting a press conference.

Day 6: Advanced Communication Strategy

• Evidence-based communication strategy: how to measure and prove the value of communication.
• Advanced strategy tools and concepts: specialized techniques for developing complex PR strategies.
• Justifying strategy: securing management support: how to get support from the top for ambitious PR strategies.
• Rolling out and managing a communication strategy: the systematic process of creating and deploying a PR strategy.

Day 7: Speech Writing

• Speech planning.
• Structure and flow.
• The spoken word.
• Key elements and delivery.

Day 8: Reputation Management in Social Media

• Monitoring and engagement.
• Search optimization (SEO).
• Media engagement online.
• Blogging and content.

Day 9: Internal Communication

• Core principles and defining concepts that underlie practical and strategic internal communications.
• How to create an internal communication strategy complete with organizational systems and a practical action plan.
• Internal communication platforms and channels: a toolbox of practical internal communication techniques and channels.
• Internal communication campaigns and programs: a how-to guide to launching internal communication programs, based on case studies of award-winning campaigns from around the world.

Day 10: Advanced Communications and PR Management

• Strategic management for communications and PR departments.
• Operational communication management: policies, processes, and resources.
• Programme management, measurement and evaluation.
• Managing and leading a PR team.