Hi, and welcome back. You've now set your objectives and learned all about your target audience. If you went to build a really miserable and impactful PR strategy, you now need to understand the context in which you're operating. I find that the best way to do this is to conduct a SWOT analysis. A SWOT analysis is where you look at your organization's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. It's a really useful exercise because it helps to keep you focused on the most important elements of your PR strategy.

In a typical SWOT analysis, you have four quadrants strengths, what is your business really good at? What assets Do you possess? What do you do better than anyone else? weaknesses, where are you not so good, and what areas should you avoid? opportunities? what's changing in your industry that presents a particular opportunity to your business.

This could include events legislation, competitors going out of business, a whole host of things, threats. What obstacles do you face? What are your competitors attitude that might negatively impact your business? Understanding your business's strengths and weaknesses, as well as the opportunities and threats that it faces will really help you to build out a successful PR strategy. Once you've got this context, you're now in a position to build your key messages. And that's what we're going to do in the next lesson.