Public relations plan template

Public relations efforts build awareness and trust with your audience. That’s why it’s so important that your PR is consistent and organized, otherwise you come off looking messy at best, and downright chaotic at worst. But how do you manage this level of consistency in a large organization where you have “many cooks in the kitchen”? Answer: by building out a step-by-step guide for your PR planning process—also known as a public relations planning template.

What is a public relations planning template?

A public relations planning template is a saved outline of your PR planning process. This template serves as a step-by-step guide, enabling anyone on your team to create and build a PR plan where nothing falls through the cracks. 

Think of your PR plan template as an action plan for everything you need to do to pull off a successful PR campaign. By building your PR plan out as a template, you’re ensuring every media plan includes key details—like a media embargo plan, the publications and journalists you're reaching out to, and more. 

Why use a public relations plan template?

PR efforts are often cross-functional. While you (as the one responsible for PR) are in charge of building media relations and putting together a communication plan, you likely rely on other teams to assist in the process. Often, this includes coordinating with your company’s marketing strategy and plan to time content marketing with your PR campaign. Or, you might need to work with your product team to verify technical specifications. No matter what company you work for, PR work is rarely done alone.

And the steps in the PR process are often critical. For example, you might want to run all press releases by the legal team, or institute a content embargo that ends at 6 AM. By tracking all of these small—but essential—details in one place, you can ensure they aren't forgotten, regardless of who's running the PR campaign.

That’s why it’s so important to have a rock-solid process. Using a template for your public relations planning will help you coordinate across departments, while ensuring that every critical step is included.If you build out your public relations plan template in a work management platform, you can also connect directly with teams and keep a birds-eye view of what’s happening when. That way, you can track if any pieces are skipped.

What to include in your public relations plan template

Your PR plan template should encapsulate your specific team needs. When you create it, start with these sections below—then customize your template to fit your team.

• Resources: Include any information you’ve already gathered on your target audience, market research, and public relations strategy. This does two things: it provides easy access to documents you need throughout your PR campaign, and it shows how this plan ties into larger PR goals and initiatives.

• Assignee: Assign relevant sections and tasks to specific team members, so stakeholders know who is responsible for specific action items. This helps stakeholders send questions to the right people, so they can get answers faster.

• Media outlets: Include any platforms you’re contacting for outreach. This will likely include traditional publications, but you can also go beyond that. Are you running a social media campaign? Include influencers. Connecting with marketing communications teams at other companies? List them here as well. 

• Reporting: The last piece of your PR plan template should show how you’re going to measure success. Be specific—are you looking for rankings, awards, or short-term bumps? Each goal is different, and therefore requires different types of reporting.

How to use a public relations plan template

Your public relations plan template is more than just an outline—it’s a living document that protects your company from making critical mistakes in the public eye. In that sense, your template’s biggest—and most important—use case is that it acts as a step-by-step guide for your company’s PR process.

Depending on your specific situation, these steps may include:

• Contacting customers in advance of a release to confirm quotes.

• Vetting with the legal or executive team as necessary.

• Reaching out to journalists for media placements.

• Coordinating a media embargo on any news, so breaking information comes out at the right time.

• Using a press release template to craft key messages for new announcements.

• Timing your plan release down to the minute if necessary to ensure you’re sharing the right details, with the right people, at the right time.

• Funneling follow-up questions to the appropriate executives after large announcements.

• Gathering metrics to analyze the overall response to a campaign. 

Whether you’re new to PR or a seasoned professional, your PR plan template will help you produce the best possible public relations campaign, every single time.

Integrated features

• List View. List View is a grid-style view that makes it easy to see all of your project’s information at a glance. Like a to-do list or a spreadsheet, List View displays all of your tasks at once so you can not only see task titles and due dates, but also view any relevant custom fields like Priority, Status, or more. Unlock effortless collaboration by giving your entire team visibility into who’s doing what by when.

• Board View. Board View is a Kanban board-style view that displays your project’s information in columns. Columns are typically organized by work status (like To Do, Doing, and Done) but you can adjust column titles depending on your project needs. Within each column, tasks are displayed as cards, with a variety of associated information including task title, due date, and custom fields. Track work as it moves through stages and get at-a-glance insight into where your project stands.

• Timeline View. Timeline View is a Gantt-style project view that displays all of your tasks in a horizontal bar chart. Not only can you see each task’s start and end date, but you can also see dependencies between tasks. With Timeline View, you can easily track how the pieces of your plan fit together. Plus, when you can see all of your work in one place, it’s easy to identify and address dependency conflicts before they start, so you can hit all of your goals on schedule. 

• Goals. Goals in Asana directly connect to the work you’re doing to hit them, making it easy for team members to see what they’re working towards. More often than not, our goals live separate from the work that goes into achieving them. By connecting your team and company goals to the work that supports them, team members have real-time insight and clarity into how their work directly contributes to your team—and company—success. As a result, team members can make better decisions. If necessary, they can identify the projects that support the company’s strategy and prioritize work that delivers measurable results. 

Recommended apps

• OneDrive. Attach files directly to tasks in Asana with the Microsoft OneDrive file chooser, which is built into the Asana task pane. Easily attach files from Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and more.

• Canva. With the Canva for Asana integration, easily embed beautiful Canva designs to bring your Asana projects to life. From presentation decks, social media assets, wireframes, to videos, the Canva integration allows you to consolidate all your ideas and designs all in one place so you can seamlessly communicate and collaborate.

• Dropbox. Attach files directly to tasks in Asana with the Dropbox file chooser, which is built into the Asana task pane.

• Box. Attach files directly to tasks in Asana with the Box file picker, which is built into the Asana task pane.

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