The Public Relations Strategic Toolkit: An Essential Guide to Successful Public Relations Practice

The Public Relations Strategic Toolkit provides a structured approach to understanding public relations and corporate communications. The focus is on professional skills development as well as approaches that are widely recognised as 'best practice'. Original methods are considered alongside well established procedures to ensure the changing requirements of contemporary practice are reflected.

Split into four parts covering the public relations profession, campaign planning, corporate communication and stakeholder engagement, this textbook covers everything involved in the critical practice of public relations in an accessible manner. Features include:

• definitions of key terms
• contemporary case studies
• insight from practitioners
• handy checklists
• practical activities and assignments

Covering the practicalities of using traditional and social media as well as international considerations, ethics, and PR within contexts from politics to charities, this guide gives you all the critical and practical skills you need to introduce you to a career in public relations.

Alison Theaker has 30 years experience in public relations and taught public relations and integrated marketing communications in the UK and the USA . She is the author of bestselling textbooks The Public Relations Handbook (2012) and Effective Media Relations (2005). She is an elected Fellow of the CIPR and was its first Head of Education and Training. She has addressed conferences in the UK, USA and Australia about the future of the industry, developing teams and improving writing skills. She is now a PR coach for small businesses, running her own consultancy, The Spark, www.thesparkuk.com as well as being an accredited action learning facilitator.

Heather Yaxley is a hybrid public relations practitioner-academic, with over 25 years’ experience working in-house and a consultant. She is a CIPR Fellow and Accredited Practitioner as well as an honorary member and director of the Motor Industry Public Affairs Association Ltd. A lecturer at Bournemouth University, where she is studying for a PhD, Heather is also course director for the CIPR qualifications with Cambridge Marketing Colleges. She established Applause Consultancy in 2000 and has worked with clients including Nissan, Bentley Motors, Coca-Cola, npower renewables, Tata and General Motors. She is a PR pioneer in social media and can be found as Greenbanana in Twitter and other social networks.