Some things to consider before embarking on your PR campaign.

Whether you have an in-house public relations professional, a PR agency working to help represent your bank, or if you're attempting to generate some new attention on your own, here are a few ideas and things to keep in mind about before you embark on your efforts.

First, what is public relations? There are many definitions--many are accurate, others not. Generally, PR deals with how we manage "relationships" with our "publics"--the audiences that we communicate with because they matter to our bank.

A bank has various publics/audiences that we need to keep in touch with if we want to be as successful as we can. The first one, obviously, is our customers. The others include: prospects, our staff, our shareholders, our board of directors, the government, businesses, maybe schools or nonprofits, perhaps industry associations. The list can go on.

It's helpful to look at each audience individually because each requires different messages, and each is reached in different ways. Some are reached via news media, others with social media, through the mail or email, from a podium, in a board meeting, at a baseball game.

Some audiences want to hear about rates, some about assets, some about dividends. People want information about productivity, or strategic plans, or recent growth. Some want freebies and a...