Career Advice for the PR Rookie

The PR industry is very broad and can cover just about every industry. Since the PR field is so diverse, anyone who is looking for employment in PR needs to have certain skills. They need to be confident, proactive, able to talk to clients, be able to hand tight deadlines, work hard, but most importantly, communication.

Here are some tips on how to stand out and last in the PR world. 

CONFIDENCE. 

When appropriate, don't be hesitant to voice your opinions and ideas. But do not be arrogant. Sometimes new employees can be so certain in their abilities that they can come off arrogant. That can damage relationships with fellow workers and employers. The trick is to provide thoughtful information but not coming off as a smarty-pants. 

MISTAKES WILL BE MADE. BUT DON'T MAKE THE SAME ONE TWICE.

Learn from your mistakes when you make them the first time and be sure not to repeat the same error again. Handle your first-time mistake with professionalism and grace. That will show your maturity and you will gain respect. 

KNOW THERE IS MUCH TO LEARN.

Although the ones who are fresh out of college have gained academic knowledge, but there is still the education that comes from actually joining the industry. You will gain humility and the will to gain as much experience as possible. 

BE PROACTIVE AND USEFUL.

Being proactive and useful will help with the relationships with media, clients and co-workers. The more you're useful, the more trusted you will be. 

KNOW YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA. 

Properly know how to work different social media channels, such as blogging, Twitter and Facebook.

And lastly... 

L.E.A.D.

According to Jody Koehler of Coopr, she says to L.E.A.D. which stands for, "Listen, Experience, Ask and Dare." 

Starting a new job in PR is definitely very intimidating. But, there are definitely certain ways to get through it smoothly. Have confidence, learn from your mistakes, learn as much as you can, be proactive and useful, know your social media and L.E.A.D. 

Social Media Expert...Or Not?

Have you ever visited a website that looked somewhat professional? But when you took a good look at it, you noticed it hasn't been updated in weeks, if not months? This is definitely a sign that someone isn't really a social media expert. It is easy to tell once you know the signs. Here are a few clues on how not to be fooled. 

CLUES: 

1. There are social media icons in their email signature or website, but when you click on the links they have, they haven't been updated for weeks or months. 

2. They can't give you a straight answer when you ask them if they have actually used the tools they're recommending. 

3. Their idea of social media is promoting a company's service or key message without speaking with the users. 

4. Their program proposals talk about big ideas. BUT they don't mention how they will measure the success. 

5. As soon as something new comes out, they suggest you include it into your program. 

6. When consider using MySpace as a social media channel to consider. 

7. They guarantee immediate results. 

8. On their Twitter or Facebook or any other social media device it says: "Social media expert." 

These different clues may seem very obvious to some, but if you really think about it, it would be easy to get caught up into believing these things. Now that I am aware of what real social media experts do NOT do, I will know when it is a scam. 

#twitterchats

I have had a Twitter account for the past three years, and I have never once heard of a twitter chat. I have always wondered why people were always hashtagging things that I had never heard of multiple times in a row. Now that question has been answered. Twitter chats.

I participated in a Twitter chat for the first time tonight called #journchat. I had never done a Twitter chat before. I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I sat watching my computer screen while all these different tweeters were commenting. Finally, I visited the #journchat Twitter page. They had tweeted four simple rules.

            1.     Quick introduction. For example, “Hi! I’m a Senior PR major at Baylor University 

                  and this is my first #journchat!”

            2.     Play nice.

            3.     Submit questions to @prsarahevans without hashtagging.

            4.     No pitching.

So I got started. #journchat tweeted different questions. The first question said, “Kenneth Starr recently spoke out about camera use in the Supreme Court. In your op, are they overdue?” There was also an article attached to the tweet for everyone to read. I tweeted back and was able to give my opinion on the issue. But what was more exciting is that I got to see what others thought about it!

Live Twitter chats are becoming more popular and they are an easy way to talk about topics online. It is live, fast, and many people participate. There are different Twitter chats that take place every single day, which gives many people the chance to participate and state their opinion over different issues from politics to fashion. It is a great way to form different opinions on things or even learn about something you never thought would interest you. Twitter chats are a great form of social media. 

A Good Online Reputation

Reputation. The beliefs or opinions that are generally held about someone or something. In todays world, having a good reputation is essential. Especially within the online world. Business's reputations are not built up simply by word of mouth anymore. Unfortunately, a person or company's reputation can be easily influenced nowadays. 

It has become especially hard to control an online reputation. Positive and negative feedback can be seen by almost anyone. But there is a way to turn that all around with five simple steps. 

1. The Golden Rule: form a dialogue with your customers or clients. When you form a relationship with your customers or clients, it is easier to take control of your reputation. By responding to ALL comments, that being positive and negative, you are showing the importance of feedback, which will make you look outstanding. 

2. Be apart of the online conversations. This helps place you as a crucial figure and makes you proactive. 

3. Don't have others monitor your online reputation. By doing this yourself, you will know how your business is doing in the online environment. For some smaller businesses, it is hard to keep track of it yourself. But, by setting up Google Alerts or TweetBeeps, it will help you keep an eye on what is happening. 

4. Negative comments can stick out in the middle of all of the positive feedback. Respond immediately to the negative comments, when needed. This will show that you customers' opinions are important and that you WILL respond to their concerns. 

5. Use other blogs or social media outlets to help your company's positive reputation. If there is positive feedback about something, then you should post about it. This will help spread the word about your positive reputation in the online world. 

Twitter DON'Ts

Photo from: http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/freebies/50-free-social-twitter-resources-and-icon-sets/

When entering the Twitter world, there are some things that need to be addressed. Yes, knowing the Twitter basics is essential like, RT is retweet and @name is the way you respond or tweet at someone. But there are some Twitter "don'ts" that users need to be aware of. 

1.    Don’t tweet anything that could get you fired or stop you from being hired.

2.    Don’t be boring. For example. Don’t tweet, “Goodnight Tweeps!”

3.    Don’t tweet more than ten times in one day. It’s annoying and takes the attention away from other Tweeters.

4.    Don’t reply to every tweet.

5.    Don’t tweet drunk. They might be funny to your followers, but not as funny to you the next morning.

6.    Don’t use cuss words in your tweets.  

7.    Don’t tweet about something big that has happened to you without posting a photo or a link along with it. It bores the other tweeters.

8.    Don’t #hashtag every topic. People will get sick of them and then your topics will be ignored.

9.    Don’t RT yourself. It’s just bad form. Don’t do it.

10.    Don’t tweet your own blog posts.

11.    Don’t take an Unfollow personally. And don’t report your unfollower. Nobody really cares.

12.     Don’t follow every person who follows you.

13.     Don’t tweet everything about your personal life. Sometimes it can be entertaining. But most likely, not all of the time.

14.     Don’t tweet if you need more than 140 characters. That is what your blog is for. Stick to that.

And lastly...

15.     Don’t tweet and drive.

Some of these don’ts may seem obvious to most. But surprisingly, they aren’t to some. The world of technology is now our way of life. People are learning how to have etiquette for all of these different media resources. Not only with Twitter, but also with Facebook. But hopefully, the people of the “Twitter World” will catch on to proper Twitter etiquette. 

Public Relations Research

In the world of Public Relations, researching is vital.  You need to research to gain knowledge, set objectives, plan campaigns and succeed. Research today gives public relations room to grow. I interned with Baylor Sustainability this past semester and before I got the job, I had to do research on what Baylor Sustainability is and its purpose on the Baylor campus. Since my internship was strictly about going green and sustainability, I didn’t have to do too much research.

Public relations has been proven to be one of the most stressful jobs in America, which shows it’s tough. There are demanding clients who want more results; therefore, research is something that is definitely needed. To have results that the client wants, it requires research on the public relations executive’s part.

Research in public relations gives the base for almost everything communicators do, such as identifying and understanding key publics, framing important issues, expanding public relations and organizational strategy, measuring the results, and gaining publicity. The main ways of public relations research are qualitative and quantitative research. Qualitative being thorough insights and understanding of a situation or a target public and quantitative is more expensive and complicated, and has the greater ability to generalize to large populations.

There are many other reasons why public relations research is important. It provides unbiased information, organizational strengths and weaknesses, provides valuable information about how the organization should craft its messaging, and gaining feedback. The “needs” for conducting public relations research are, to collect information that public relations professionals need to have and to know to do their jobs more effectively, to obtain benchmark data, to plan, develop or refine a public relations activity, to track or monitor programs, to evaluate the overall effectiveness, and providing appropriate support in promoting a specific program.

Research in public relations is absolutely essential. Without it, I don’t know how public relations executives would be successful.