,PR teams and agencies fight fires on a daily basis. While we all have grand ideas of proactive programs, most of the time, unless resources are unlimited, we end up focusing the majority of our time on reactive activities.

Particularly when someone new joins the PR team or a new agency is brought on board, it is way too easy to quickly share existing materials and have everyone hit the ground running. Jump into media briefings to build or maintain press relationships from previous roles. Start executing on new campaigns and pitches. All this, possibly, without knowing whether the company or product messaging is finalized, fully understanding the objective of the briefings, and in some cases without taking a step back and making sure the overarching messages and objectives still hold within those new pitch angles.

How often do we really take the time to review, taken inventory and update the fundamental materials needed for a successful PR program? (These are just a few of the typical fundamentals but they are dependent on the company's industry and PR program needs.)

• Key messages
• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
• Executive bios
• Company boiler plate
• Electronic press kit
• Product one-pager(s)
• Cadence calendar (more about this here) or blog editorial calendar

Whether your PR program is brand new, longstanding or somewhere in between, the end of the year is a good time to take inventory of your program. Here are a few key questions to ask when taking stock of your materials:

• Do you have a messaging framework in place?
• Does it reflect the existing direction of the business and its key objectives?
• What other PR materials already exist?
• Are those materials current and updated regularly?
• What critical materials haven't been created?

Does your PR team make the grade with your PR fundamentals? Or you need to take some time to create a stronger foundation for your PR program ahead of 2017?

The terms "soft launch" and "hard launch" have started to make their ways back into start-up vocabulary, particularly as they pertain to PR strategy, recently. 

For those that aren't familiar, a "soft launch" is when a product is made available with little to no fanfare, while a "hard launch" is when the company pulls out all of the stops to make sure everyone knows a new product has come to market. A soft launch allows the company to get feedback on the new feature or product as well as get an understanding of organic growth without putting a lot of marketing dollars behind the endeavor. With a soft launch, the company isn't trying to get much public attention or press coverage in this scenario so expectations tend to be lower. On the other hand, a hard launch usually is set in place for larger announcements and requires more marketing dollars and a stronger coordination between product, marketing and PR.

While these two types of launches mostly exist for companies from a product and marketing perspective, PR is an entirely different beast. From a PR perspective, a launch is a launch, whether it is "soft" or "hard." Once any information is publicly available, it is no longer considered news to most reporters. You can't ask a reporter to accept an embargo for information that can be found in an app store, on LinkedIn, social media channels or anywhere on the interwebs. 

PR can be incredibly important to the launching of a company or product. But it shouldn't be the one and only lever pulled for launch. And your launch timing and strategy should rarely hinge on PR. Rather, companies need to look at their business objectives to determine how a launch should work for them: Are you simply looking for user growth? Are you concerned about scalability? Is your product or feature truly revolutionary?

Depending on your answers to these and other questions, your launch approach will be very different and sometimes PR may just not be the answer. And that's okay.

It may only be early November and your company may still be in the thick of finishing out the quarter -- and the year -- strong. But in reality, with Thanksgiving and the winter holidays quickly approaching, there are really only 5 weeks left in 2016. 

We'll pause for a minute to let that sink in.

In addition to completing your 2016 objectives and programs, it's time to start the 2017 planning process. This can be challenging for the communications team if the business hasn't yet started the planning process. BUT IT CAN BE DONE!

Here are a few ways to get started on the 2017 communications planning process:

• Take stock of what worked/didn't work in 2016 -- This doesn't have to be long, exhausting exercise but it will help ensure that you and your team focuses on the activities that positively impacted the business. It will also make sure you don't repeat programs that just weren't worth it. 
• Identify top priorities/messages/themes -- Did the messaging and themes from 2016 work? If so, does it make sense to keep the train moving in the same direction? Or do there need to be some tweaks or an all-out overhaul for 2017? Once you have your overarching message and theme for the year, the programs can fall into place much easier.
• Create a cadence calendar -- This is a big (and relatively simple) one. And one that so many teams just don't do. Take a white board -- or you can do this digitally in a Google Doc or Sheet -- and write out all of the months of the year at the top. Along the side pull together all the activities that your team touches -- or is affected by -- throughout the year. Everything from blog posts and customer wins to industry events and competitive milestones. From there, start filling it in. You will very quickly get an understanding of where your team is overloaded during the year and where there are holes. You can then prioritize items or even move programs during months that have too much going on and identify evergreen opportunities during the months that are bare.