5 signs you’re not cut out for PR

While my firm is incredibly fortunate to employ some of the very best PR and social media practitioners, we’ve also had a number of staff members who simply weren’t cut out for our business. Sure, they were good, hard-working people, but the writing was on the wall early on that they weren’t cut out for public relations.

Here are a few key indicators that PR might not be a good career path for you:

1. You receive critical feedback, well, critically.

Critical feedback is a way of PR life and professionals in this business are required to have thick skin. Even the very best piece of secured coverage can generate commentary from a colleague or client about a key message that was missed; the most successful social media campaign may result in a request for more “likes” or a greater number of followers. And that’s the results end of the campaign.

The feedback during materials development and/or project management is typically without a filter and often comes from a number of sources including colleagues, managers, and clients. Critical feedback is part of the gig, and the best you can do is embrace it, learn from mistakes, and improve moving forward.

Can’t handle it? Consider another career.

2. You think the PR job (or project) is finished.

An old and great client of mine, Jim Gustke, now the vice president of marketing at Internet phone company Ooma, once told me (wisely) that the problem with PR (and social media, marketing, etc.), is it’s never finished. PR people can always do more. And these were the words of a satisfied client—one who understood that the agency support I was providing his organization was the very best I could do under the budget, program, and business circumstances.

You may come to the “end” of a launch, or a short-term client project may be “over,” but there’s always the next thing, the higher level. You can send one more pitch, or comment on one more blog. You can spend more time prepping your spokesperson for the next interview, or spend more time following-up with a key contact.

In general, there’s always more to do and you should always be thinking of “what’s next.” If this isn’t in your makeup, you might start thinking about what comes next—after PR agency life.

3. Breaking news means nothing to you.

If you wake up one morning and realize that you couldn’t care less about what’s happening in the category in which you and your clients work, start thinking about your next career step.

PR pros are expected to embrace the energy and enthusiasm that surrounds their clients’ categories. Do you keep up with current events? Are you a voracious reader? If your answer is “no,” you really ought to consider a new line of work.

4. You have a perpetually low energy level.

Does this sound familiar: After several coffees in the morning, your pulse barely registers? If so, the career gods are waving a large red flag in your direction and letting you know to pick another path.

There’s natural and trained enthusiasm—and PR requires both. Trained enthusiasm is a person’s ability to credibly show enthusiasm for a topic without necessarily feeling the love. We’re not talking about faking it, but rather knowing how to make your client, colleague, or media target know that you are “genuinely” pumped about the latest and greatest. PR is a high-energy gig—and that’s one of the reasons why I love it as I do—and a lack of juice is synonymous with a “slow fade” from the PR biz.

5. You are educated and you’ve been trained, but you can’t talk or type your way out of a paper bag.

This likely seems harsh, but this list is incomplete without mentioning basic and solid communication skills. It should be a glaring sign to hang your professional hat elsewhere if you struggle with finding the right words to say or type.

I wouldn’t expect any of our clients to rely on a communicator who is anything less than top-notch. While such standards aren’t as critical at the start of a career, you need to reach them relatively quickly, ensuring that colleagues and clients have confidence in your ability to deliver key messages.

Can’t write? Can’t effectively talk with clients? You know what I’m going to say next.

What have I missed?

Scott Signore is the principal and CEO of Matter Communications, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary as a firm next week.

No, PR does not look more like advertising

 PR Dailyrecently ran the op-ed, "The PR industry today looks an awful lot like advertising."
Why does it look like this, according to the author?
Because, he says, with social media, blogs and even press releases, PR is going straight to the audience and bypassing traditional media.
According to the article, "It doesn't matter whether they're selling information, clothes, or coupons—they are selling it direct to the audience. So are they advertising or PR-ing?"
No, PR does not look like advertising
What the author is getting after is third-party validation: By skipping the media and publishing to reach audience directly, PR is missing the credibility that is earned through the media.
But he's wrong. Sometimes the press release is the story.
Indeed, PR is defined by third-party party validation, but the media is not the only source of credibility. Every link, tweet, like, Google +1, Stumble, bookmark—any Web connection that shares information—is a form of validation. Individually, they may not make an enormous difference, but over time the aggregate of voices definitely matter.
This is why Yelp reviews rank so well in local search. This is why content marketing is the new branding. It's good old fashioned word of mouth marketing, done online and that answers that important question: I'm thinking about buying X, do you have any recommendations?

To the contrary, marketing looks more like PR
Marketing looks more like PR, and that includes advertising.
Did you hear about that stunt Oreo did during the Superbowl? Sure, everybody did. Was it a paid placement? Nope.
The Oreo social media plug was the brainchild of 360i, a digital marketing firm, that features the fact it made AdAge's 2013 "Agency A-List" and was also named as a best place to work by AdAge in 2011 and 2012 on its website.
Remember the Old Spice campaign? It blended advertising, PR and social media and drove sales, and was created by Wieden + Kennedy, which by its own description is a "creatively driven advertising agency."
Native advertising, the latest new hot thing in advertising is pointedly designed to disguise advertisements as news stories.
Advertising today is engineered to look, feel and function more like PR than advertising … because PR works. Talking to people, engaging with your audience, and reaching out works. Fostering trust, forming relationships and building brands moves content and sells things.
Why is this happening?
Marketing has to shift to function more like PR because consumers are tired of interruption marketing. Technology has given us the means to do that through DVRs, pop-up blockers, and email spam filters to name a few. For many, online advertising is like swatting flies—we bat down the advertisements to get to the good stuff, while marketers continuously try to force feed us paid promotions.
Promoted posts, click-through news stories, and those annoying mini pop-ups that follow you as you scroll a page are among the latest interruptions. People don't hate marketing, they hate those interruptions. They're obstacles that are intentionally placed between readers and the information they seek.
On the Web, attention is a form of currency. I contend it's better to earn it than try to buy it, which is what PR has always done. This is why marketing, and indeed advertising, looks a lot more like PR. It's a change I embrace, and recommend other PR pros do as well.
A version of this article first appeared on Sword & the Script.

Can You Prevent Social Media PR Nightmares?

Social media has grown from a curiosity to an integral piece of corporate strategy in the space of only a few years. Nearly overnight, companies have brought on whole teams of specialists to handle multiplying numbers of social media accounts.

On the one hand, this has enabled companies to connect with clients and employees in brand new ways. With that growth, however, has come some serious challenges. Rogue tweets, off-message posts, hacked accounts and general confusion seem to be multiplying all the time.

Take for example the recent PR disaster experienced by global music retail chain HMV, when a disgruntled ex-employee took to the company’s official Twitter account to vent her frustrations to 70,000 followers around the globe. “We’re tweeting live from HR where we’re all being fired! Exciting!! #hmvXFactorFiring,” went the first in a string of damaging public rants.


To make matters worse, many of these highly publicized gaffes will continue to live on in social media infamy, becoming examples of what not to do and leaving PR teams scrambling to repair damages for a very long time.

So is there a way for businesses to avoid social media meltdowns? Well, until recently, not really. Collaboration and security features on social media sites were limited or nonexistent. Interns, CEOs, interns and marketing pros posted and tweeted in a social media free-for-all. Departments couldn't collaborate. One wrong click could spell a PR crisis. Staying on message was like herding cats.

But, finally, that's changing. For example, my company, HootSuite, continues to develop some very serious tools aimed expressly at business collaboration. They promise to restore a semblance of order to sprawling social media departments. By bringing all company social profiles into one central dashboard, managers can ensure messages are aligned and approved before publication—and no one drops an F-bomb while on company time. Flexible permissions restrict who can post what to which accounts—from the CFO right down to the summer intern. Back-end sharing means messages aren't duplicated by different departments. Social media squads can organize organically by department, posting to Twitter, Facebook and other networks as a unit.

These changes represent a fundamental shift in how social media is being used. The planet's largest companies are integrating Twitter, Facebook and other networks into every aspect of their operations. This means that very visible brands are more vulnerable than ever to damaging social media PR disasters. To avoid such catastrophes, companies—at the very least—must stay on top of the latest security tools available to them.