I presented to a group of Omaha business owners recently. During the Q and A, an attendee asked, “What is the biggest PR mistake made by companies who are trying to be successful at public relations?”

I glanced at my BlackBerry and was disappointed to see that I only had a couple minutes left to answer his question.

For me, the PR fatal flaw is to view public relations as a tactic that you can turn on and off like a faucet. When some companies want to increase their visibility, promote their brand or even ward off a crisis, they think they can push the PR easy button.

It doesn’t work that way. To be effective at public relations, you must commit to it long-term and make it a part of your business plan. The key word in public relations is relations…and these are best developed over time.

Claire Celsi makes a similar point in her blog post about three PR words she wishes would go away (buzz/spin/placements). All of these words support a short-sighted, “quick fix” approach to public relations.

Companies that take a short-term view of public relations typically experience one or more of the following:

• They are disappointed in PR because they try to measure public relations using the same yardstick they apply to tactics such as email blasts. If your company receives a favorable mention in The Wall Street Journal but you view it as a failure because you experience no direct sales as a result, then you don’t fully appreciate the power of public relations.
• They never receive the full return on their PR investment as a result of starting and stopping. It is difficult to brand yourself as the industry expert if you drop off the PR radar for stretches of time.
• They give up on PR altogether because the results aren’t coming fast enough. Aaron Kwittken makes this point in his article titled, “7 stupid reasons to hire a PR agency.” Reason No. 6 essentially says it’s not wise to hire PR agencies for quick results; quality results happen over time.

Some of you were probably expecting me to say that the biggest mistake companies make is not having a public relations plan. And you’d be right, that is a big mistake. However, the larger misstep is not making a long-term commitment to PR because, without that, you’ll never have the staying power to implement a PR plan.