stedavies.com - communications consultant

Just to add a little bit to Piaras’s great post on Why would anyone want a career in PR? Part 1

News awareness

What I try to do at the beginning of every day is get a feel for what’s making the news on that particular day. On my drive to work, I will listen to both national and regional news reports. Once in work, I’ll check all of my RSS feeds and then turn on the radio to get the hourly updates.

Unlike Piaras, even though we use a clippings agency, we still check the newspapers every day to make sure they haven’t missed any of our releases. This job is usually down to me, but to be honest, I enjoy doing it. It keeps me news-current and on a side note, I like spotting mistakes by journalists. And yes Piaras, I do get black inky fingers!

Keeping up-to-date on news events is very important in PR. There may come a time when you can use the news agenda to your advantage.

Planning ahead

Analysing future events in the PR profession is a must. You should always keep one eye on the future. For example, one of your clients could be a book publisher looking to gain some publicity about a book they’re about to distribute. It would be the PR practitioner’s job to come up with some sort of campaign to meet the book publisher’s objective(s).

If the PR practitioner does a little homework, they will know that the month of May is National Share a Story Month. This (along with other forms of research) could be an ideal opportunity to muster some creative brilliance and get your client out there.

Objectives, strategy, tactics and evaluation

PR is about having objectives; creating a strategy to meet the objectives and using tactics and PR tools to implement your strategy. Once this is done, you must evaluate how effective your campaign has been and then start again. It’s a continuous evaluation process.

I like to call it Kaizen. Kaizen means continuous improvement in Japanese.

So why is evaluation important? You can find out what worked and what didn’t. And the next time you execute your strategy, you will have made changes accordingly to meet your new objectives. You are continually improving your campaign.

Day to day

Piaras is so right when he says no day is the same, which in my opinion is the great thing about PR. You become experienced and knowledgeable in a wide scope of genres, tasks, issues etc. Take today:

10am I was picking the best looking wannabe models from three local universities for a campaign we are in the middle of.

12pm I wrote two press releases for one of our clients.

2pm I interviewed a director from an established North East business for a press release I am writing.

3pm I recorded an answer phone message for a housing company we represent. (They advertise a lot of their houses in a phone message – it’s very quick paced!)

4.30pm I arranged a meeting with the web developer who is building our new website. (RSS syndicated by the way)

No doubt tomorrow I’ll be doing something different altogether.

I’ve even ’starred’ in a local TV commercial for a client whose PR and advertising account we handle. I was forced asked to do it so of course I obliged. You can imagine how my friends and family laughed when they aired it in the ad breaks of Coronation Street? Oh yes, how they laughed!

Like a lot of jobs, times do get stressful. One minute you can have a light work-load and the next you’re inundated. But I think PR is a job which can give you a great sense of accomplishment. The work you do, the people you get to meet and the results you can achieve adds to what in my opinion is one of the most exciting professions around.

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