FAQs

Prepared by public relations practitioners and included in media kits and on Web sites, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and their corresponding answers help explain new or technical products, services, mergers, and special events or issues to journalists and other target audiences. Prepared in a question-and-answer format, FAQs are a variation of the traditional fact sheet, and they often accompany news releases, photographs, and related materials to provide additional information that journalists may need to produce stories or that other audiences may need to better understand some product, stance, organization, service, or issue. FAQs can also supplement fact sheets or technical specification sheets.

In the early days of the World Wide Web, a simple FAQ page was placed online to answer questions about companies, products, and services, but today's Web-based FAQs often incorporate embedded links to guide audiences to more specific information about a particular question and answer or to graphics, animation, charts, or video or audio files. Although standby statements and media advisories also incorporate a question-and-answer format, FAQs serve different purposes than those communication tools.

When developing FAQs, public relations practitioners should place themselves in the minds of the target audiences to identify the questions a typical journalist, consumer, employee, or other stakeholder would pose. If possible, questions can be further identified and honed by using focus groups; inquiring informally with members of the target audience; pretesting the information by distributing it and following up with the target audience to see how well the information was understood or if there are additional questions or areas of confusion; and drawing upon previous audience queries for related products, services, or stances to identify likely questions or areas of confusion and to develop the corresponding answers.