They say that, in love, to go with your gut. The more you act on your inside feelings rather than your head, the better off you’ll be. Supposedly going with your gut means you’ll make better decisions over the long term – some may be bad decisions, but overall you’ll be in the clear.
Does the same work for your public relations efforts? Can you trust your gut to make the right decisions for your business or should you take more time thinking about the consequences? Honestly, both methods have their pros and cons, and they’re both worth looking at.
Gut Feelings
Sometimes you start up a campaign and just know something is going to work out. Or you have an amazing campaign and just get the sense that it’s going to go off the rails. There’s no physical evidence – you just feel it somewhere in your stomach.
This comes from just knowing your business and knowing your customer base. You’re not thinking about things from an analysis perspective anymore, just purely on feeling and past experiences.
If you really do know your business and customers your gut most likely isn’t going to let you down. You’re running on instinct at this point – it’s like the customers are your family and you know what’s best for them. You generally don’t have to think too much when it comes to your family, right?
But sometimes you do. Your grandmother has an established routine of always going to a certain bagel shop every week so you buy her a gift card there for her birthday. If you had thought about it, though, you would’ve remembered she has needed help with her dog’s vet bills. She appreciated the gift card, of course, but paying off some of her bill would’ve been way better.
Taking Your Time
So is taking a step back and thinking about things a better way to go? Should you ignore your gut feelings, take your time, and consider all the options you have before making a decision?
There’s no denying that considering how a public relations will affect the public can do some good. Your gut might be telling you that you should go with a Facebook heavy campaign, but that gut feeling might be coming from the fact YOU like using Facebook most of all. Or it could be due to the fact your customer base came from Facebook – but if you’re trying to stretch out to new customer bases, why would you do the same thing as before?
On the other hand, there’s definitely a danger of overthinking things. You can weigh options and imagine scenarios all the live long day. If you never actually take any action, though, the gut feeling versus careful consideration debate is pointless. You have to make the jump at some point and overthinking things can prevent that.
So like most things, it seems like a mix of going with your gut and being careful to think about the consequences is the way to go. Your gut knows your business and your fans and your head can imagine the real world reactions you’ll face. This combination should get you through all of your PR decisions.
Do you depend more on gut feeling or careful consideration with PR decisions?
This article is written by Mickie Kennedy, founder of eReleases (http://www.ereleases.com), the online leader in affordable press release distribution. Download Five (5) Free PR and Press Release eBooks ($67 Value) here: http://www.ereleases.com/offer/bundle.html
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