Why Try To Get Out Of Your Box, When You Can Use What's In It?
I think most PR professionals can vouch with me that a time will come when you’re going to need to learn something in PR that you hate.
You’ll announce to yourself, “I’m going to hate it, but I need to know it.”
If you can accept that, PR will be your favorite thing to hate.
There is a general concept when devising a communications strategy to list all the different mediums that you wish to communicate through. Before and after doing so, you want to rate each medium on how effective you believe it will be pertaining to the goal you wish to reach through that medium.
Here is a long list of various mediums that you may be using or may think of using next.
Print it out, highlight the ones you use/want to use, and rate each one.
Doing so allows you to monitor the effectiveness of your methods of communication. By evaluating your expectations and results, you will learn where to cut expenses and where to redirect them.
Note: Many mediums may feel broad. If that is the case, make note next to it what how you will actually use the medium. For example, will you use Facebook for advertising? For starting debates with followers? For sweepstakes? Identify exactly what you will do through each medium.
Sure, the older you get, the less you fear. Fantastic. Knowing that doesn’t help too much when your young and inspiring to be a journalist or a magazine editor.
It’s been two weeks that I sent an email to a student I met on a PR agency tour, who was interested in writing for a fashion magazine, asking her to submit a work example to me. I know a few people in the magazine industry that would either interview her or point her in the right direction if I referred her to them.
Two weeks and I haven’t received a response. There is no question about it, fear ate her and won’t spit her out. Once she thought of five or six reasons why she shouldn’t respond to me, she deleted my email. Fear got to her.
That’s the harsh reality of those aspiring to be journalists. When this happens, it’s not about being pushed two steps back, you have to start all over again.
If you’ve done something similar to this girl – and sure, you can love writing all you want – but maybe journalism isn’t your passion.
Perhaps you are emailing a recruiter at the PR agency you want to work for.
(these suggestions are coming directly from Adi, the head hunter at Edelman)
Make it easy for them to help you.
You will be more successful if you are following your passion.
Tell what you want. Never say that you don’t know.
Don’t just ask to have your résumé reviewed. What do you want? What do you have to offer besides a résumé?
“The majority of problems arise when there is a gap between expectation [from the client] and what’s being delivered.”
Murray surprised me when he went on to state that it is always the PR agencies fault. He took responsibility. He understands that a clients expectation isn’t wrong because the client is wrong, it’s wrong because the PR professional didn’t communicate properly to shift the clients expectations. OR, which Murray was more-so pointing out, the client’s expectation is accurate and the PR professionals are working on their own agenda’s with their own expectations.
Murray pointed out that it is bad relationships that can turn into strong strategies. When a PR agency isn’t pleasing their client, isn’t fulfilling their expectations, they have a challenge now, to grow, to adapt, to understand.
Murray ended with saying that accepting your failures and working past them, to close the gap between expectation and what’s being delivered, is the most difficult act that PR professionals get in. However, he knows that it can always result in something positive. “Don’t take it for granted,” he says.
