Public Relations

Beginners In PR Trailblaze Their Way To Becoming True Specialists

Garth Beyer

You may be the Public Relations Specialist but, someone is almost always monitoring the direction you are going.

When you set out on a mission, when you formulate your tactics; where you will send your platoons of effort, you have a commander-in-chief approving it all.

Lucky for you, when you are just starting to become the professional PR Specialist you have dreamed about, you have a lot more freedom than you will once you become that professional. Unless of course, you take advantage of this initial freedom.

When you are starting up your PR career, you will be involved in mediums that may not matter too much to the world. Take for instance nearly any internship. You will typically be part of a group that gets told, “here are some ideas we have for you to work on, if you have any you would like to pitch, let’s hear it.”

The majority go off the ideas that are presented, a few build off them, and a rare couple actually pitch their own ideas.

(As a side note suggestion, pitch your idea on the spot, don’t wait. You will likely have a second idea once you acknowledge your freedom, so save that email asking to work on an idea you came up with for your second idea. Pitching your idea on the spot offers instant feedback, further awareness, additional respect, and special attention which is necessary for progression in the industry. Pitch on the spot, you won’t regret it.)

Those who pitch their own ideas and run with them – well, to put it blatantly – it doesn’t matter whether they turn out good or not. The point is that you are taking advantage of your freedom now in hopes that you will build your repertoire, your voice, your personal technique which will be so strong that when you enter PR professionally, you will be able to continue your work.

When starting up, you don’t get just one shot to enter PR professionally, you get one shot to trailblaze your way into it.

Progress While You Wait

Progress While You Wait

Garth Beyer

As much as we Public Relations Specialists pride ourselves with always being busy, there is a fair amount of waiting involved in every project.

It may be waiting for your source to tell you to come into her office, it may be waiting for the elevator to open for you (or the ride on the elevator), it may be a phone call that you absolutely can not miss, so you wait right next to it. The moments of waiting come in all sorts of variations of time, place, circumstance, and so on.

These moments of waiting are vital to your firm, agency, company, or organization you are representing. It’s in these moments of waiting that you are stripped of your title, any recognition people may have of you, and authority. To everyone passing by you, riding in that elevator, or wondering why you are hovering over your phone, you are just another normal blob in their world. You’re just another human being with nothing special to offer them. Or are you?

I just got home from the coffee shop. Waiting at the door of the apartment complex was a delivery person from a restaurant called Burrito (how original, but that’s not the point). We exchanged only a few sentences, but in those sentences, I could tell he made the most of his job, that he remained positive, that he was grateful for me even noticing him. He was sociable and wished me a great night.

You may be reading this and think that it’s normal. Is it though? When was the last time you actually talked to someone else’s delivery boy and left with a smile? It’s not normal, but it’s memorable.

Let’s jump back. What was the delivery boy doing again? Waiting. And no, I’m not going to order from the restaurant, simply because of the fact that I’m not fond of burritos, but what I will do (am doing) is talk about this experience.

Ask anyone in business which profits them more, one person buying a burrito, or one person writing and speaking to a thousand people about someone who works at the restaurant, basically promoting it? You obviously already know the answer, word of mouth is what makes businesses the most successful.

The delivery persons success could possibly be the same as anyone’s in PR. We all have to wait, but in that waiting, we can make a hundred little ruckus’, we can get people to talk about who we represent, we can very simply, provide an experience for them to remember – and of course the name of the company we are representing.

Next time when you tell someone you are waiting, don’t feel bad. Don’t feel that you’re not making any progress because you’re not working. Clearly, sometimes profits come more from waiting than they do working. It’s all a matter of you making it so.

Ad-Lib Press Release (Make an easy $25)

Garth Beyer

I went to the kick-off meeting for the Public Relations Student Society of America at UW-Madison today. The way they began was genius and I truly wish I could share that genius with you, but instead, I’m going to give you the opportunity to make some cash.

The meeting began with the president asking for words or phrases, such as an adjective, a holiday, a female celebrity, and so on. After we were all well curious what the point was, they put on the television screen an Ad-Lib Press Release using the words and phrases we provided.

(In case you were wondering, the press release ended up being about the Geek Squad releasing a new type of toilet paper for my birthday. ### Fingers crossed!)

I found a few mad-lib press releases that people have made, but I’m looking for something more unique.

This is where your talent comes in.

I will be taking submissions at thegarthbox@gmail.com until October 5th for ad-lib press releases. The person who sends in the best ad-lib press release will be credited and given $25! (Must have paypal account)

Runner-up will receive $5 and be the one that tests out the winning ad-lib which I will post.

Let’s see what you got! Feel free to ask any questions, there are purposely few rules to accommodate your creative abilities.

Plugging Into Your Audience

Garth Beyer

One of the quickest ways to reach your audience is through social media. (Duh!)

But while social media may consist of a hundred sub-categories, that does not mean that you need to invest into each one to reach your audience. A quick assessment of yourself/your business and your audience will make you aware of what social media tools you can leverage and which tools you will need to learn.

This can be done by drawing a mind map of Media and You, as well as one for your audience (Media and Them). I have drawn a simple version of mine. Unlike mine, you would want to be more elaborate and branch off further with each group until you have a full map.

After drawing your own media mind map, then draw one for your audience; what media do they use? what parts of that media do they use most? If you’re really in to it – which you better be – you can create a sidebar of all the parts of media that your audience avoids or rarely uses.

When comparing your map with your audience’s, the areas you share something in common are the areas where you can begin to leverage and those which you do not have in common with your audience are the areas you must create, build, and continuously work on until they become part of your own map.

@Businesses, when you go to hire a Social Media Professional or a Public Relations Specialist, don’t hire the one that has toyed with every single part of social media. Hire the one that relates best to the media mind map of your audience.

After all, it doesn’t take an expert to figure out what social media your audience uses. A phone call or email will do.

PR Botique And Originality

Garth Beyer

Here’s an oxymoron: everyone is unique.

If every PR agency continues to say they are a boutique public relations firm, the term boutique will lose all it’s meaning, all of its power.

Here are four out of a thousands of sites that consider themselves Boutique firms or agencies:

Heck, this one has Boutique in its name.

Now here is where I show that I don’t know everything. Before researching this concept, I thought I was on to something big. I wanted to show that PR firms and agencies need to quit saying they are all unique, they are all boutiques, they are all different niches of PR and to come up with something more meaningful. PR Outhouse, Exclusive PR, PR Booth, or something like PR Superette are all better variations than the traditional and overused Boutique.

All cool ideas, I feel, but then I read this.

So maybe these PR firms and agencies are not doing any wrong when calling themselves a Boutique, but don’t you agree they can be more original?

PR Gangnam Style

Garth Beyer

This is a prime example (2:40) of what separates the old age of PR and the new.

The old PR would see this video and say that his glasses are his image. He can build a reputation from those glasses, he can build an audience from those glasses, he can build an enterprise from those glasses.

The new PR would see this video and say that the fact he took his glasses off makes him real. It makes him human, and in this digital PR revolution, that is priceless.

###

Here is his music video

Dancing To Your Own Tune

Garth Beyer

Public Relations is a lot about reaching out to a specific group, your target audience. When you reach out to your audience, you want to develop positive awareness that turns into an action that everyone takes.

A big problem before going out with a press release or other form of an announcement is that there is more than one thing you want your target audience to do.

Don’t just buy the new iPhone 5, tweet about it, tell us what you think about it, write a blog post about it, get someone else to buy one, show it off to your coworkers, try our app on it … the list goes on.

At times, yes, PR is about target, precision, and getting your audience to take one action at a time, but this current digital revolution has created the 100-focus-mind. Everyone can and does focus on a hundred things through the day and never is there a time that only one item is focused on. It’s a two-or-more interactive world.

Every digital native audience is capable of handling it, so why do PR specialists still focus on one-group-one-action strategies? It seems to me that you can reach out to each individual member of your audience and give them the option of what to do. As a result, you will have created sub-audiences – people who are taking the same action (listening to the same tune) bundle together and then you can focus on their progress.

Basically it’s about letting every member of your audience dance to their own tune. Whether it is communicating to the entire audience or subgroups, they are all still dancing.