This is a post by guest columnist, Alison Kenney.
It’s back to school time, and that has me thinking about PR courses and accreditation. Most of the PR professionals I know majored in English, Communications or another liberal arts degree. A few majored in Public Relations; even fewer have their masters in PR or Communications. Clearly, you don’t have to major in these subjects to work in the field. Many successful PR professionals switched gears or leveraged a degree in a different field.
PRSA’s Accreditation Program, the only certification program for our industry, is another story altogether. It’s a certification geared to those who’ve been working in the industry for some time as it judges your aptitude in various PR knowledge areas, e.g. research, planning, implementing and evaluating programs, ethics and law, etc. I know several PR professionals who received their APR, but overall fewer than 25 percent of PR practitioners are accredited.
Which leads me to wonder: is accreditation worth pursuing?
The PRSA stresses the importance of a national standard for legitimizing the profession and building accountability. Andy Beaupre, CEO of Beaupre & Co., agrees and blogged earlier this year on why PR accreditation makes more sense than ever. And, while there are no hard numbers that show professionals with the APR mark earn more than their non-accredited colleagues, survey results show that PR professionals find accreditation to be a source of pride (91%), a help in developing professional skills (78%), provide personal benefit (75%) and help resolve ethical dilemmas (58%). This blog from the PRSA member site underscores those reasons and highlights the satisfaction the writer got from earning her accreditation.
Others argue that an APR mark is not necessary as it only confirms the knowledge that can otherwise be ascertained by reviewing a PR practitioner’s work record. SHIFT Communications principal Todd Defren blogged several years ago that accreditation is not the solution to the PR industry’s perception problem and not the benchmark for demonstrating competency.
What do you think? If you have an APR, what made you pursue it? And has earning accreditation improved your career satisfaction? Please leave your comments below.
Alison Kenney an independent PR practitioner with more than 15 years of PR consulting experience. She is based on Boston’s North Shore and has worked with organizations in the technology, professional services and consumer industries. She writes a bi-monthly PR column on LindsayOlson.com. You can find her at www.kprcommunications.com. Learn more about Alison Kenney.
This is a guest post by PR Columnist, Alison Kenney.
Changes in the media landscape and the growth of social media have altered the role of PR. Now, to a greater extent than ever before, many PR pros are tasked with the responsibility of producing and managing content.
If this sounds like something you’re dealing with, here are four tips to make your role as content developer and curator easier:
Tip #1: Plan Ahead
PR pros are used to working with editorial calendars, the published calendars of scheduled editorial features at given media organizations, and there’s no reason we can’t create our own calendars for planning blog topics (and their contributors), scheduling tweets, and planning video. Start with a goal in mind: how often do you want to publish your content? Then, determine what you’ll have to do, and when it will need to be done, to achieve that goal. Next, fill in the deliverables with ideas for content…more on that below.
Tip #2: Look for inspiration
A common exercise at blogger gatherings is to undertake a 30-day (or 60- or 90-day) blogging challenge, where each blogger commits to writing something every day for that period. The goal of the exercise is to establish good, consistent habits to keep the content flowing. I’ve seen blogger challenges that ask each blogger to write about certain topics on each day of the challenge, i.e. on day #1 everyone writes about where they find inspiration.
Tip #3: Find new life for the content you’ve already got
Social Media consultant Mack Collier says that over time, many bloggers have learned how to either repurpose existing content, or to create new content that can be distributed via multiple social channels. Collier points out that content can come from repurposing white papers, PowerPoint presentations, and questions submitted by customers. New content can easily be created with folks you see everyday – think of video interviews with company execs and customers and recording the goings-on at industry events.
Tip #4: Change it up
Does your creativity dry right up at the thought of writing a compelling introduction, several supporting points and a thought-provoking summary? A blog post doesn’t have to be in essay form every time. HubSpot’s Beth Dunn suggests using a Style Bank to spur creative blog entries.
What are your tips for keeping the content flowing?
Alison Kenney an independent PR practitioner with more than 15 years of PR consulting experience. She is based on Boston’s North Shore and has worked with organizations in the technology, professional services and consumer industries. She writes a bi-monthly PR column on LindsayOlson.com. You can find her at www.kprcommunications.com. Learn more about Alison Kenney.
This is a guest post by Derek Pangallo.
Through much trail and error, I may have written the *perfect* cover letter. No — not bragging: I’m still getting turned down after each interview (I’ll write another post when I perfect that.) The simple method I have been employing runs contrary to conventional wisdom, but has taken me from a 1% to a 10% call-back rate.
After sending out a thousand applications and only landing about 10 interviews, something had to change. Literally my Gmail storage limit was maxing out from attaching my resume so many times. I decided to take a (qualitative) scientific approach at writing a better cover letter.
A student of Political communications, I subscribe to a lot of fundraising emails. A LOT. Most of them are pretty ineffective, all the way from subject to signature; after automagically knowing my name, “Derek–”, there isn’t much feeling of personalization… it’s all “me, me, me; donate donate donate” (Here’s looking at you, Barack.) I thought hard about what language hit the right nerve in these emails.
Next, I dug out the cover letters that actually worked (one of the better ones was addressed to Lindsay.) I went through each, looking for common words, phrases, or conventions. Synthesizing those letters into one, I ended up with the standard four-paragraph template you could read about on any number of websites, but with one notable exception: parentheses.
What could it be about use of parentheses — usually discouraged in formal communications — that made my letters click? I wasn’t sure, but was confident enough to keep using them. And while continuing to apply for the same kind of jobs, my success rate increased by 10 times. After further thought, I now understand what makes parenthetical commentary so
effective.
Parentheses let you be personal and professional simultaneously.
No one wants to read a cover letter. The letter is the arbitrary barrier to entry, the price of admission showing you’re willing to research a company, caring enough about the job to invest the time. Parentheses let you prove you understand convention while giving you carte blanche (almost) to speak as yourself, making a personal connection with the reader.
Parentheses are an aside, the inside joke between two professionals. Where the letter is the white-washed outside persona, the parentheses are a just-for-you nudge and whisper. You’re able to convey personality with a sense of humor and amicability — without using exclamation points, emoticons, or saying “I” too much (as feels like a problem in this post,
sorry.)
Long story short: write a standard cover letter, then spruce it up with parenthetical commentary. Some of those annotations you might turn into “real” sentences. You’ll create a more enjoyable read for the hiring manager and will likely be rewarded Just don’t over-do it (you wouldn’t want to come off as schizophrenic, either.)
Let me know how it works out: @derallo or derek.pangallo[@]gmail.com
Derek Pangallo is an Online Community Manager, Communications Consultant and Advertiser aspiring toward a Political New Media career on Capitol Hill. He hates talking about himself in the third person and thinks anyone whose Twitter bio is written as such should be banned from the Internet.
This is a guest post by PR Columnist, Alison Kenney.
In last week’s season opener of the AMC series Mad Men, Peggy Olson tells Don Draper “we’re all here because of you.” The episode also shows Don’s struggle with revealing his personality – he blows a profile opportunity with AdAge before getting a second try at answering the question, “who is Don Draper?” with the Wall Street Journal. And, not only does Don shy away from revealing his personality to the public, he also tries to quaff his support staff’s attempts at defining the company (by disparaging Pete Campbell’s attempt to portray the agency as a scrappy start-up and by calling Peggy’s guerilla PR tactic a ‘shenanigan’).
Whether you work for a global PR firm, a boutique agency, your own solo practice or part of an in-house department, chances are you’ve come across PR ‘personalities.’
How important is it to have a recognizable personality behind your business?
First of all, having a recognizable personality behind your PR brand (recognizable in a good way, that is) can help attract business. Publicizing agency leadership is a form of in-bound marketing in that it helps prospective clients understand who they’ll be working with and what they’ll be buying before-hand. Anyone looking for a job will have heard how important it is to demonstrate their expertise through social media – by answering questions on LinkedIn, writing an original blog or posting comments to another widely-read blog, maintaining a web site and developing a following on Twitter. “Sharing your expertise publicly is a way of promoting yourself” tweeted Kellye Crane (@kellyecrane and @soloPR) when this topic came up on a recent #soloPR Twitter chat. “It’s also a way to practice what you preach and demonstrate that you know how to build an effective brand and reputation,” added another #soloPR chatter.
It can also help up-sell. The bigger the personality, the more valuable the counsel that person provides and the more you can charge for it. Anyone who has worked on the agency side of the PR business knows that the firm’s most senior leaders charge astronomically high billing rates when they are involved with client work.
Some clients and business partners are willing to pay higher rates for a big personality because they sense they’re getting more than just PR counsel for their dollars. I call it a rain-maker mentality — in which buyers think they’re also purchasing the services of someone who has valuable connections and is business savvy.
What do you think? Do you work with a PR personality? Do you cultivate your own professional personality?
Alison Kenney an independent PR practitioner with more than 15 years of PR consulting experience. She is based on Boston’s North Shore and has worked with organizations in the technology, professional services and consumer industries. She writes a bi-monthly PR column on LindsayOlson.com. Learn more about Alison Kenney.
This is a guest post from PR columnist, Alison Kenney.
There’s been a lot of talk in PR about how the media has changed in the past few years and what that means for PR practitioners, for brands and for organizations. One axiom that I keep hearing and find interesting is that now we are the media. In essence: traditional media outlets are shrinking, and many are incorporating user-generated content, while self-publishing opportunities are expanding greatly thanks to social media, e.g. blogs, YouTube videos.
So, if we’re all now de facto content publishers, what does that mean?
Does it mean that we take oaths to uphold traditional journalistic values like openness, transparency and access? Quite the contrary, marketers continue to promote their product or view but doing it through social media contributions can make it appear more objective. In the Social Media Playbook from Eloqua’s Joe Chernov and Jess3, professors Peter Kollock and Marc Smith say the motivations for contributing to online communities do not rely on altruistic behavior on the part of the contributor, they depend on these four pillars: anticipated reciprocity, increased recognition, sense of efficacy and communion. One of the few social media ethics guidelines can be found on the Word of Mouth Marketing Association’s ethics/disclosure page.
Does it mean we need to hire an editorial board? Perhaps. If you’re jumping in to social media with both feet, it is wise to have someone on board who is media savvy. Depending on your organization’s size and involvement with social media that resource could be one person in your organization, a cross-section of your PR team or a special social media “swat team” comprised of resources from PR, marketing, sales and customer support.
Does it mean that we are now concerned with traditional media measurement metrics like circulation numbers and ad buys? In a word: yes. Except in the new media world influence is measured by the number of followers a brand has on Twitter, the number of clicks and amount of time visitors spend on a web site and how many of these lead to conversions.
What do you think? How do you see PR incorporating “traditional” media practices?
Alison Kenney an independent PR practitioner with more than 15 years of PR consulting experience. She is based on Boston’s North Shore and has worked with organizations in the technology, professional services and consumer industries. She writes a bi-monthly PR column on LindsayOlson.com. Learn more about Alison Kenney.
My column on MediaBistro’s PRNewser is up.
Here’s an excerpt:
Rejection is one of those things that is going to happen during any job search. You might get lucky and find your dream job on the first interview, but at some point in your career, a job rejection will find its way to slap you in the face.
People don’t get the job for a plenty of reasons – being under or over-qualified, the internal candidate that “pops-up” last minute, job specification changes, etc. You realize that many of the reasons are beyond your control. And then comes the job you are passed up for, the one when everything seemed to point to you until you got the rejection call.
Read the rest of the article and the tips about how to get feedback on PRNewser: From the Recruiter’s Desk: They Didn’t Hire Me, But Why? How To Get Feedback During Your Job Hunt
This is a guest post by Alison Kenney.
Working a part-time schedule is attractive for many reasons and PR is an industry that lends itself to flexible schedules. Or is it?
On the plus side:
Part-time can equate to freelance status in PR which can be more lucrative than salaried work – although non-salaried workers don’t receive benefits through their employer, they typically charge an hourly rate or project fee that equates to more money per hour than what their salaried counterparts earn. See my previous blog and the reader comments about tips for solo PR practitioners if you’re curious about how to make a freelance career work.
Working part-time can be a good way for older workers to ease out of demanding schedules and prepare for retirement — staying employed, even part-time, enables older workers to continue to accumulate savings (through income and employer contributions) and to postpone paying retirement expenses (like contributions to health insurance). A recent report from the Employment Benefit Research Institute says that part-time employment is a growing trend among older workers.
Some parts of PR work can be done anytime, anywhere – non-urgent PR work, such as building a media list or editorial calendar or writing executive bios or materials for a web site, don’t necessarily need to get done during certain hours of the day.
Technology makes it easy to stay connected and accessible – as long as you have access to the internet and a phone you can probably accomplish 90 percent of the PR work you need to do. Skype and other video conferencing tools have made it even easier and more acceptable for people to work remotely. Why is this important? First, more people working remotely blurs the lines around work schedules which makes working part-time more acceptable, i.e. it becomes lumped in with other flexible work arrangements. Second, it’s often assumed that if you work a part-time schedule you’ll be able to check in after-hours and be accessible if something urgent comes up and technology makes this possible.
On the negative side:
The opportunistic nature of PR makes it hard to predict that your job can be accomplished during a set time of day – many PR duties are deadline driven or arise suddenly – such as responding to a competitor’s news, handling communication during a crisis and responding to a reporter who is on deadline – and therefore require PR staff who are available around the clock, or at least during traditional office hours.
PR is a service-driven practice – PR is often perceived as a service business. If you work at an agency, you service external clients. Even if you work in-house you are servicing other functions of the company, such as supporting the sales team, collaborating with HR and furthering the executive management team’s agenda. Depending on their needs and expectations for your services, these clients may not want to accommodate your part-time schedule.
It can be difficult to land a part-time position – As Lindsay can attest, most career positions are not recruiting part-time candidates. I would hazard a guess that many part-time PR employees negotiated their hours after working full-time for that employer and building up a positive track record. That’s not to say that part-time jobs don’t exist or aren’t advertised – but they are outnumbered by full-time opportunities.
What do you think? Is PR the right field for workers who want part-time hours?
Alison Kenney an independent PR practitioner with more than 15 years of PR consulting experience. She is based on Boston’s North Shore and has worked with organizations in the technology, professional services and consumer industries. She writes a bi-monthly PR column on LindsayOlson.com. Learn more about Alison Kenney.
This is a guest post by Alison Kenney.
I’ve heard Foursquare referred to as the hottest new marketing tool. But personally, I’m not a huge fan. In fact, according to this Fast Company article, I’m in the apathy stage. I just don’t feel the need to compete for badges and mayorships — and not enough contacts in my personal network use it to make it a useful communication tool. However, I am intrigued by its marketing and PR potential.
Here’s why Foursquare matters to marketers:
Your audience is game. This CNN story on Foursquare creator Dennis Crowley illustrates the appeal of Foursquare to a certain type of consumer — someone such as Crowley — who enjoys playing virtual contests, or someone who loves the challenge of new e-games. Foursquare can be a new way to connect with your target audience or even a way to reach a new audience.
Foursquare can reinforce your brand loyalty. Retailers like Starbucks and Dominos (in the UK) are testing Foursquare as a way to identify enthusiastic customers by rewarding them with coupons and discounts based on the number of times they “check in” using Foursquare.
Mobile and geo-location technologies are the future. According to Yankee Group president and author of the book, “Anywhere: How Global Connectivity Is Revolutionizing the Way We Do Business.’’ Emily Nagle Green says that Google’s decision to put mobile first in their business is a telling indicator. Yahoo! also seems to be throwing its hat into the geo-location ring with its recent purchase of Kropol. A recent report from Juniperstates that all mobile location-based services may contribute a total revenue of $12.7 billion by 2014.
Location-based services are a natural fit for tourism and travel related brands. More than ever people are turning to the Web to plan their travel itineraries, find recommendations and map their trips. Foursquare can be a fun way to engage travelers and tourists during the process. The city of Chicago’s tourism office is encouraging people to recreate a scene from the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off using Foursquare. The state of Pennsylvania is leveraging social media to promote tourism too and has created special Foursquare badges just for Pennsylvania sites and uses Foursquare to provide tips for visiting Pennsylvania destinations.
Content generators now have another medium to reach their audience. The NY Times has aggregated its content for a new free iPhone app for visitors to Manhattan and Brooklyn and also offers integration with Foursquare for convenient check ins, i.e. convenient links to NY Times content.
Event marketers use Foursquare to drive participation. In addition to allowing users to know who is nearby or attending the same event, Foursquare can help event marketers increase participation. Last week fashion designer Cynthia Rowley launched the Cynthia Rowley Bridesmaids collection with the help of Foursquare and gave attendees at its launch unveiling a special gift if they checked in on Foursquare. (Visitors who check in at the store Lovely Bride during the week after the launch also receive 15% off their bridesmaid dress order.)
Whether Foursquare is here to stay, or not, smart marketers and PR pros are considering location-based social media as part of their integrated marketing plan. Are you?
Alison Kenney an independent PR practitioner with more than 15 years of PR consulting experience. She is based on Boston’s North Shore and has worked with organizations in the technology, professional services and consumer industries. She writes a bi-monthly PR column on LindsayOlson.com. Learn more about Alison Kenney.
Several times in the past few months during a recruiting calls I’ve been asked if I would offer a referral fee. By no means is this new. Back in my recruiting hard-to-find semiconductor engineers days, this question came up all the time. And still, every time, without fail, I hang up the phone a bit more annoyed than the last time.
I question the person’s professionalism. I feel bad that the referral might not have the opportunity to hear about a career changing opportunity because his friend wants to make some cash off his name. And then I wonder if the referrer did get a recruiter to pay him for a referral if he would ever tell his friend he only recommended him for the job because he got some cash out of it. It just feels dirty.
I don’t ask the doctor, the design firm, the accountant, the babysitter, or any other professional service provider to slip me a cash bonus when I refer someone to them. I’m not their hired sales agent. I make a referral because the service provider has earned my confidence and my friend trusts that I have his best interest in mind.
I know that plenty of recruiters out there pay referral fees and that the business model works for them. I also know in 13 years of agency recruiting, I have never paid out a referral fee and a majority of our placements are candidates who have been referred to us directly or indirectly.
Maybe I’m missing something completely…
This is a post from PR columnist, Alison Kenney.
As a solo PR pro, I love any technology or technique that makes my work easier or more affordable. Those that make life both easier and affordable really take the prize!
Following are a few examples of services that are free and also leverage social media to help PR pros collaborate to make their work easier and more effective. Each of these examples replaces or competes with a service that either a) previously cost an arm and a leg or b) was something that every PR team did individually and then staunchly guarded.
Help a Reporter Out (HARO) – Founded in 2008 by serial entrepreneur Peter Shankman as a Facebook Groups page, HARO is one of the fastest-growing social media services in North America.
HARO enables journalists to connect with the right source and grants everyone – from home-based entrepreneurs to large businesses – access to reporters who may write about them. It’s comparable to PRNewswire’s Profnet but can be subscribed to for free versus Profnet’s $3,500 price tag.
PitchWithMe: a new concept from PR pro Heather Whaling that helps PR folks collaborate on pitches to discover potential resources and offer journalists more multiple resources. As Heather says on the PitchWithMe site, “within agencies, this kind of packaged pitching is already taking place; however, freelancers, boutique agencies and small businesses don’t always have these kinds of resources available. Until now.” Thanks Heather!
BloggerLinkUp: kind of like a HARO or Profnet for bloggers and those trying to reach bloggers, BloggerLinkUp was formed by Cathy Stucker as a free resource (via email subscription) for bloggers who are looking for expert sources, products to review or guest posts and for PR reps who have products they’d like reviewed or guest blog posts they’d like to see published. In addition to providing tactical solutions, what I think is so great about these services is that they are also shifting the emphasis in our daily PR jobs from process to content. Now that we all have access to reporters’s queries, bloggers requests and other PR reps to collaborate with, we can focus on creative strategies and hopefully improve the PR services we offer.
What do you think? What free collaborative social media tools do you recommend?
Alison Kenney an independent PR practitioner with more than 15 years of PR consulting experience. She is based on Boston’s North Shore and has worked with organizations in the technology, professional services and consumer industries. She writes a bi-monthly PR column on LindsayOlson.com. Learn more about Alison Kenney.
This blog is to share my recruiting experiences and discuss thoughts on the job market, PR industry and technology.
Alison Kenney is an independent PR practitioner with more than 15 years of PR consulting experience.
