PR Advice for Professionals

The Importance of a PR Calendar

by Gloria

Calendars are important to everyone, but they are a crucial item for PR professionals. We must constantly be on our toes, aware of important events and holidays. We have to know oddball things, such as when it is “Administrative Professionals Week” or “Alcohol Awareness Month.” At MMI, our office calendar is always marked up with notes that remind us of what to pitch and when to pitch it, the start and end dates of campaigns, major sports and entertainment events, and deadlines for awards and media articles.

Grab yourself a calendar and start marking it up with dates and information important to you and your personal PR plan. What awards are you going for? Mark them on your PR calendar. When is your next networking event? Write it down, and find out who else is going to be there. Which board meetings do you plan to attend? When are you distributing news releases? And so on.

Every publication has an editorial calendar, which shows the main themes and features the publication plans to cover in the upcoming weeks or months. Because publications depend on advertising dollars, the editorial calendar provides the advertising sales department with a roadmap of which companies with particular products or services to target at which times.

For your purposes, a specific publication’s editorial calendar allows you to assess opportunities to pitch yourself, your knowledge, your product or service to that editor. Some publications are sketchy with what they provide in an editorial calendar, while others are thorough and helpful. Focus on those publications read by your target audience and think about how you can best reach that audience with your message.

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