- Read – PR is about telling stories, so try to read a newspaper in print or online, and your industry publications every day.
- Monitor – understand what your competitors and your industry are saying. Whether it’s through Google Alerts or setting up your own dashboard using RSS feeds.
- Focus – be very targeted about what will help the business you work for achieve its goals.
- Research – understand where your audiences hang out, whether that is forums or they read certain blogs or they attend key events.
- Give – share your expertise to make the PR world a better place.
- Take – attend webinars, training and learn whenever you can.
- Listen – to your client. They should be clear about their objectives, so ensure that you listened and understand them. Also listen to journalists, if they want a landscape image, don’t give them a portrait one!
- Triple-check – look out for typos, and if you don’t have the time, get someone else to check your work.
- Be calm – you will be doing many things at the same time. If it’s all getting too much, just breathe, walk away from your desk, and return when you feel ready.
- Be honest – if you tell the truth, people will trust you. If a lie comes out (and they often do), you look foolish.
- Accept – that the client is not always right, that you will have to work late sometimes and people will claim your ideas as their own.
- Make your client look good – whether that is a marketing manager in-house or your account director. They should repay you for it.
- De-junk your email – use colour coding or whatever you have to, otherwise you will miss things, or become overwhelmed.
- Use tools – we build our own for intelligence, but subscribe to services like Responsesource and Buzzstream too.
- Learn to write – ditch the jargon, try to use a structure for your article and blog posts and always add a call to action.
- Get social – whether you are active on Instagram, YouTube or Twitter, use these tools as you will understand how important social media is.
- Keep a track – of your work to see how you are progressing towards your targets.
- Brainstorm – get together to think of new ideas. If you work on your own, get together town other PRs and bounce ideas around.
- Take great pictures – think 300 dpi. If you don’t have great lighting head outside, or better get a professional photographer.
- Meet up – with journalists, bloggers, event organisers to find out what’s going on in the industry.
- Understand – the product or service you are promoting. This is especially true of technology products or services. If you don’t understand an offer, how can you “sell” it?
- Pitch – be proactive and pitch ideas to journalists.
- Get evidence – always have evidence in your back pocket. Especially, if you need to write copy where you are making claims that you need to substantiate.
- Make lists – for press, bloggers, awards, analysts, events and more.
- Keep lists up to date – spend time to watch for moves, new contacts or events etc.
- Be realistic – the front page of the FT isn’t possible for most companies, but understand that being in the top trade titles is a good result.
- Don’t spam – sometimes you may press the send button and a message goes to the wrong person, but don’t make it a habit.
- Check the publication/site – before you send a message. We run a number of blogs and are very specific about our focus, but we still get generic irrelevant news.
- Learn to juggle – you will most likely be working on a few campaigns at a time.
- Be enthusiastic – no client wants to hear someone who sounds like they don’t want to work on your account.
- Come up with new ideas – bring new idea to your clients every week if you can.
- Follow – the people who want to influence. We find that LinkedIN and Twitter are good tools.
- Be brave – wacky stunts don’t always work, but some do, so have a go.
- Recognise different types of copy – articles, releases, case studies and more aren’t written in the exact same way.
- Create templates – if you do the same things again and again, then create templates.
- Delegate – don’t do everything yourself. Hand over tasks if you can, like media monitoring, especially if there are juniors on your team.
- Prioritise – have a daily, weekly and monthly plan and work out what needs to be done now.
- Pick up the phone – introduce yourself to new journalists, or talk through an idea.
- Learn about other marketing or communications disciplines – see how activities like advertising and direct marketing tie in with PR. This is especially important around SEO – being a PR today means that you need to have a grasp of SEO too.
- Invite way more people – than you want to attend an event, as there will be dropouts.
- Deliver on your promises – if you say you will organise an interview, organise it or let the journalist know ASAP that you can’t.
- Enjoy your job – PR is a great career. Our work helps to keep businesses going, brings I leads, makes customers buy, raises awareness and so much more.
