Don’t Reinvent the Wheel

Regardless of your industry, a collective body of knowledge exists. These best practices help to identify how like organizations have faced similar challenges.

How to find best practices:

• Identify the area(s) that you’re interested in exploring. Don’t limit yourself to simply your industry, but think about your target audience, your geographic reach or complementary products or services.
• Talk to your trade association. Many trade associations have research databases that provide a wealth of information on industry trends.
• For specific best practices related to public relations and marketing, industry resource sites such as MarketingProfs and Marketing Sherpa are terrific. If you’re a PRSA member, you can access the association’s knowledge base.

Best practices, however, shouldn’t stymie creativity or result in simply following the status quo, but provide inspiration and lessons learned.