PR glossary: essential startup communications terms

These definitions cover the planning, media, measurement, agency, and reputation terms a startup team is likely to encounter. The PRSA glossary provides a broader professional reference. Contract language and newsroom practices can vary, so define consequential terms in the relevant agreement or conversation.

Strategy and stakeholder terms

Audience. The people who receive a communication. An audience can be broad and passive.
Stakeholder. A person or group that can affect the organization or is affected by it. Customers, employees, investors, candidates, partners, communities, journalists, and regulators can all be stakeholders.
Public. A group connected by a shared issue, interest, or relationship with the organization. In PR usage, a public is more specific than the general public.
Business objective. The organizational result a program is intended to support, such as adoption, retention, hiring, risk reduction, or policy change.
Communication objective. A defined change in what a stakeholder knows, feels, or does. A usable objective states the group, baseline, target, and date when the evidence supports them.
Strategy. The governing approach that connects the current condition to an objective. A tactic is an action taken under that approach.
Message. A priority idea the organization needs a stakeholder to understand. A message should be supported by verifiable proof.
Positioning. The intended place an organization, product, or idea occupies relative to alternatives in the mind of a defined stakeholder.
Reputation. The judgments stakeholders form from the organization's conduct, communication, and third-party information over time.

Channel and content terms

Earned media. Attention or distribution granted by an independent third party without the organization controlling the final decision or framing. Reported coverage is one form.
Owned media. Channels the organization controls, such as its site, newsroom, documentation, and email list.
Shared media. Communication shaped by participants and a platform, such as social networks and online communities.
Paid media. Distribution or access purchased by an advertiser or sponsor. Material connections may require disclosure.
Native advertising. Paid content designed to resemble surrounding non-advertising material. The FTC explains when clear and prominent disclosure is necessary.
Thought leadership. Evidence-backed ideas and analysis attributed to a person or organization. It can appear in owned, earned, shared, or paid channels.
Byline or contributed article. An article published under the named contributor's authorship. The publisher's editorial process and any assistance or sponsorship should be understood before publication.
Boilerplate. A standard company description used in releases and press materials.
Press kit or media kit. A maintained set of company facts, biographies, images, contact details, source material, and usage information for media or other stakeholders.

Media-relations terms

Media relations. The PR practice of maintaining useful relationships with journalists and providing information relevant to their audiences.
Media list. A working record of journalists, outlets, beats, recent work, contact preferences, relevance, and relationship history.
Pitch. A concise proposal for a journalist to consider a story, source, data set, interview, demonstration, or other editorial input.
Press release. An official written announcement from an organization. It can serve as a source document or be distributed through a wire, but it does not require a newsroom to produce independent coverage.
Newswire. A paid service that distributes or hosts releases through a defined network. Syndicated release copies should be distinguished from independently reported stories.
Placement or hit. Informal agency terms for a published item. Reports should identify the outlet, link, date, format, editorial or paid status, and degree of company inclusion rather than relying on the label alone.
Mention. A reference to the company, product, or spokesperson within a larger item.
Feature. A developed article, segment, or profile. Newsrooms use the term differently, so evaluate the actual work.
Syndication or pickup. Republication or redistribution of an existing item. Separate duplicate copies from original reporting when counting outputs.
Embargo. An agreement that information may not be published before a specified time. A reporter must agree before receiving information under an embargo.
Exclusive. Information or access offered to one outlet under negotiated conditions. Confirm what is exclusive, for how long, and what each party has agreed to do.
On the record. Information may be published and attributed to the speaker.
Background. Information may be used under attribution conditions agreed with the reporter. The term does not have one universal newsroom definition.
Off the record. Information is shared under use conditions agreed with the reporter before disclosure. The term is not a unilateral instruction and its meaning can vary. AP's news principles require an explicit discussion before anonymity arrangements.

Measurement terms

Activity. Work performed by the communication team, such as research, writing, training, outreach, or briefings.
Output. Material produced or distributed, including coverage, releases, events, posts, and meetings.
Outtake. What a stakeholder noticed, understood, remembered, or felt after encountering the communication.
Outcome. A change in stakeholder attitude, intention, behavior, relationship, or condition.
Impact. The organizational or social effect the program contributed to. The AMEC Integrated Evaluation Framework connects objectives and baselines to outputs, outtakes, outcomes, and impact.
Potential reach or impressions. An estimate of the audience that could have encountered an item. It is not a count of people who read, understood, or acted on it.
Share of voice. The organization's share of a defined set of coverage or conversation. The result depends on the competitors, sources, search terms, period, and weighting rules.
Message pull-through. The extent to which defined priority ideas appear in communication outputs. Presence does not prove that stakeholders understood or accepted the message.
AVE or advertising value equivalency. A conversion of editorial coverage into a hypothetical advertising cost. AMEC's Barcelona Principles 4.0 reject AVEs as a measure of communication value.

Agency and commercial terms

Agency of record (AOR). An agency formally assigned primary responsibility for a defined communication function, geography, or business unit.
Retainer. A recurring fee that reserves an agreed service or capacity. The contract should define scope, staffing, expenses, reporting, term, and exit rights.
Project fee. A fixed or staged fee for defined work, deliverables, assumptions, and timing.
Pay for placement. A fee triggered by publication. The buyer must determine whether the mechanism is independent earned coverage, disclosed paid distribution, syndication, or vendor-controlled publication.
Scope of work (SOW). The document that defines services, deliverables, responsibilities, timing, assumptions, exclusions, fees, and acceptance or review rules.
Key performance indicator (KPI). A measure selected to track progress toward a defined objective. A metric becomes a KPI because of its decision value, not because a reporting tool makes it available.

Use the monthly PR reporting template to apply the measurement terms and the agency vetting scorecard to test commercial definitions before signing.