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Your First PR Job Shouldn’t Suck THIS bad
Thanks for Public Relations
In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I recently realized why I’m so thankful for public relations.
The other day I went for a (slow) 5 mile run with my friend and neighbor – the engineer – and as we ran and talked about work I made some very interesting – and long overlooked observations about my job.
My neighbor, we’ll call him David – because that is his name – is about my age and has (like me) had a number of different jobs over the last ten years or, so our professional journeys have been similar, but our jobs are very different. In discussing these differences I realized why PR is such a great occupation.
Variety: Unlike many other professions PR provides the opportunity to work in a number of different settings: agency, independent consultant, corporate. Not to mention the ability to specialize in a variety of industries: high tech, consumer, entertainment, sports etc. Read more…
PR History Quiz – sort of
I just read Pitch Engine’s Are You in the PR Dark Ages blog post and it got me thinking about the changes in the PR industry since I joined this quirky little fraternity back in…well, let’s just say a lot of years ago.
So I came up with a quick quiz to find out how long someone has been in PR. Ever wonder how long a PR person has been in the business, here are some questions to ask.
Two or more yes answers will prove they have been in PR for over 10 years:
Did you ever mail or fax a press release?
Did you ever physically cut (scissors) and pasted (tape) a clip from a hard copy magazine?
Do you remember the big green Bacon’s media directories?
Did you ever type a press release? (okay, maybe thats going back too far)
Did you ever called down a media list to ask contacts if they have an email address?
Do you remember having to use a pay phone to call the office from a trade show?
ADDED 12/09: Did you look for a job in the Editor and Publisher classified? Read more…
PR blog case study – two months on the job
I started this blog (then called IT Security and Public Relations) just over two months ago as a bit of an experiment. The goal was education, experience, joining the conversation — having a venue to rant and vent was just an unexpected benefit.
Seriously, many PR folks are advising clients about blogging and twitter etc. and I was a bit frustrated that I wasn’t able to provide any personal insight or experiences. So I started a blog to see just how viral this community can be.
This is by no means meant to be a complete how-to manual, but hopefully others can learn something from my experiences – all 60+ days of it. Also I’m meeting a friend of mine for breakfast tomorrow morning because he wants to know what I’ve learned from my blogging experience. So here goes.
Most important lesson is that it’s not just about posting blog entries, it is about joining the conversation and that means following other blogs and commenting on them. For me it started with well known security blogger, Martin Mckeay’s ‘Tweet Like Your Mother is Going to Read it‘ entry. That simply blog reply was noticed by a number of people and search engines alike (by the way, thanks Martin). Read more…
