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How Does PR Happen?

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Excellence is defined by the ability to deliver one’s craft with leading-edge knowledge. It’s the ability to strategize a program quickly based on current events. Problem solving is part of the equation; as a strategist one needs to know the steps to make things right, improved, and fail-safe (in a perfect world). High-quality public relations is knowledge gleaned and tapped that adds to credibility and reliability as a counselor.

So, how does this happen…the attainment of public relations excellence?

The Public Relations Society of America has a rigorous certification course that puts a nice little acronym after your name – the APR designation (accredited in public relations). If I dug deeply, I’d be able to find the number of folks who’ve elected to join the group locally and nationally, apply for and be accepted into the course, pay, study and receive the deserved commendation.

As for me, PR happens because I have a thirst for knowledge about everything. The periodicals that arrive at my house are as varied as my college education (anthropology to zoology). I receive Scientific American, Legal Technology News, B to B, Advertising Age, Bloomberg Businessweek, U.S. News & World Report, The Wall Street Journal, Vegetarian Times, Body & Soul, More, Health, Food & Wine, Cooking Light, Fresh Home, and (no wonder I supply second-hand zines to every school, waiting room and salon in town!).

Beyond reading (including the blogosphere I attempt to get to 3x/week in my Google Reader and fail), I also self-educate. When I first began hearing “PR is dead” from bloggers, I knew I wasn’t. By then, I had already enrolled in several Dreamweaver (Web design) classes, a Photoshop course, and one on HTML.

More than a year ago, I began to tweet. Twitter was the best thing that ever happened to me. Beyond meeting some of the most fab people I now can ring at any time for counsel or to say hello, my learning rate increased five-fold. I am serious when I say this. There’s no way to immerse in social media faster than on Twitter.

You learn early on whose links to click, and when a learning pot of gold greets you at the other end, every minute of time is worth it.

I also buy access to communities like Marketing Sherpa, and I’ve joined Social Media Today on which my blog gets posted, too. I listen, I engage, I learn.

My favorite learning environment right now is Lynda.com. It is a wealth of tutorials on the illusive knowledge we in public relations do not have – it’s tech and software oriented to the Internet. If you never spend a dime on your education, I recommend you stop the bleeding and rush to Lynda.com.  I’m not even an affiliate! I just value what I’m learning off this site so much, everyone else in integrated marketing should know about it, too.

How does public relations happen for you? What rich resource am I missing to enhance my intelligence quotient?

Using a Holistic Approach in Public Relations

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The May 3, 2010 BtoB story on Microsoft’s marketing reorganization earlier this year struck me a bit odd. Microsoft is executing a new, more holistic approach with its agencies by working horizontally across all campaigns to be more collaborative. The old Microsoft way was to brief agencies and then wait until they returned with impressive creative.

Collaboration breeds success, and this is why I was taken aback with the Microsoft story. No agency functions well without full disclosure (or close to it) and understanding of a client’s business, services, products, people, stories, and goals. While the Microsoft story in BtoB magazine was about marketing and advertising agencies, a collaborative approach applies across disciplines.

When in a client/agency relationship, public relations succeeds when there’s give and take. I’ve been in a one-way client/agency relationship (as the agency), and it went poorly; nobody wins.

Perhaps there needs to be more understanding how to work a new relationship at the onset. Here are some basic suggestions to put a win-win approach in place when hiring a public relations team:

  1. Clients should appoint a day-to-day point of contact for the agency. This person should be a middle-manager or director level with some decision-making power.
  2. The public relations team should be introduced to internal client teams and be allowed some maneuverability within the company.  
  3. Keep public relations teams informed at all times about what’s happening internally. Add outside public relations teams to distribution lists and forward background frequently. 
  4. Feed and fuel the relationship with discussions about current events and how global and national news impact the company.
  5. Invite the public relations team to internal meetings with marketing and sales.
  6. Understand that public relations continually develops strategy based on new information. Information sharing keeps high-level strategy and program execution at a fast and results-driven pace.

What other tips can you add to help a client/agency relationship succeed?

Public Relations Good, Not Bad

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In public relations, like many other disciplines, there are leaders and followers. There are generalists and specialists; strategists and tacticians. There are those who engage in social media and want to be on the leading edge and offer it to clients nascent in their understanding. There are practitioners seasoned and mid-level hanging on for dear life to the apron strings of traditional public relations, hoping to stave off the inevitable.  

We’re in the early stages of a public relations boom.

“Employment of public relations specialists is expected to grow 24 percent from 2008 to 2018, much faster than the average for all occupations. The need for good public relations in an increasingly competitive and global business environment should spur demand…,” says the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics .

At any given moment, among the some 1 million people working in public relations today (a Google 2003 stat had our profession at 600,000 to 800,000), there are extremes of experience, expertise and capabilities. No surprise.

Throughout my career, folks have appreciated putting public relations under the spotlight – pointing fingers at the ineptitude that inevitably embarrasses us all. Some of my favorites – we “can’t write,” we blast journalists with the same pitch then call to ask “did you get my press release?”

You can read the impressively credentialed brand strategist  negative opinions on about the . The post comments bring to life the two extremes – marketers who judge generally the caliber, expertise and ROI of PR and agencies defending our position.

Unfortunately, as a strategist, leader and 100 percent adopter of social media to enhance my public relations offering, my exasperation about these blanket generalizations is par for the course. (I’m sure there’s a Pareto Principle stat that applies here somehow.)

Nothing has changed for 26 years in this regard except my passion for public relations is solidified daily; we are a stronger discipline; we are invited to the table earlier; we are fueling and leading campaign strategy with marketing in step; and, the incredible opportunity social media brings to program development makes our field one of the most exciting in which to work.

So why the doubt? Good public relations. I know from experience public relations, when done well and supported by sound strategy, contributes to attainment of business goals with measurable ROI. We need more good PR to squash the conversation about those among us doing it poorly.

I’m all in; anyone else along for the ride?

Who Owns Blogs?

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Thought I could avoid this controversial topic of ownership, but why not further stick out the neck after blogging here that “Public Relations Drives Marketing?”

The hackles most raised by that post were those of Mr. Mark W. Schaefer, blogger extraordinaire at {grow}. Yesterday, Mark returned the favor while leading a Webinar on B2B blogging I attended.

To the question posed by the audience “Who owns blogs, public relations or marketing?” Mark prefaced his answer with “My PR friends are going to kill me…marketing owns blogs!” He suggested public relations can draft content all it wants, but marketing owns the strategy.

Because I tweeted the Webinar (can’t sit idle during those things) at #b2bblog, others weighed in. @NEMultimedia said “I see PR and Marketing as two sides of the same brain.” @X_youarehere said,” No 1 owns communications, but there are many…change own to coordinate.”

I concur with that statement Mr./Ms. X with a change from “coordinate” to “lead or direct.” We’re at a crossroads, and this ownership question continues to rear its ugly head. I report to a client’s brand marketing team, and I direct strategy and content for landing pages, blogs, social media, and more.  While I don’t own it, I certainly collaborate with marketing.

I vow, as of today, never to claim ownership of blogs, social media or other; rather, I’ll claim partnership. In Mr. Schaefer’s defense, he did respond to my tweet questioning his marketing-owns-blogs statement saying “we can agree to disagree only if he’s right.” (No way, dude, we both are! There, how’s that for starters?)

What’s your contribution to this discussion?  Let’s establish future guidelines for all of us.

Defining Public Relations

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On so many blogs I see the definition of public relations is confusing to folks, especially since the advent of social media. I’m not surprised; I’ve spent the last 26 years educating people about what I do and expect to spend the next 26 years doing the same.

What I can share is my passion:

  • I’m the most fortunate woman to have landed in a profession (quite by chance rather than choosing) that is always evolving and allows me to learn so little about so much.
  • I dabble in all industries and all shapes and structures of companies and organizations.
  • The explosion of new channels to communicate allows public relations to assess metrics, monitor the conversation, measure, and adjust strategy to engage tiered audiences.
  • Limitless opportunities exist to influence business goals with strategic and creative marketing public relations strategy.
  • My passion for public relations is palpable; every day, week, month, year are different and energy-filled – no sameness, no boredom, just a never-ending quest for higher learning.

That’s my somewhat description; let me share an author’s opinions who wrote a book on public relations in 2000. is author of “.”  In his book, he references Thomas L. Harris, author of , who brought us the term “marketing public relations,” which I love and am now using to show the blending of marketing with public relations.

  • Chapter one, line one in Mr. Saffir’s book states “In the corporation of the 21st century, public relations will rank higher than advertising.”  Line two states “CEOs of major companies will come out of the public relations field.”  (I love these powerful book-opening statements!)
  • I wrote in a recent blog post “.” If that’s so, which I firmly believe, then what drives public relations? Mr. Saffir says “Creativity and ingenuity drive public relations.”
  • More insights from Mr. Saffir include:
    • “Public relations has grown into a full-fledged discipline with the power and reliability to influence perception.”
    • The primary goal of public relations may be to “shape the broader context within which publics in general or specific target publics form opinions and make decisions.”
    • “While marketing identifies customer needs and satisfies them at a profit, public relations produces goodwill among various publics whose goodwill is important to the organization.”
    • Here’s a comment that might raise a few hairs – “Public relations is a discipline and marketing is a task to be accomplished by various disciplines in the corporation – sales, sales promotion, merchandising, marketing research, advertising and public relations.” (Interesting! Do you agree?)

What’s your definition of public relations? On the flip, perhaps it’s not necessary to clarify; mysticism is good!