Yet, some public relations people manage to go through their entire career without a firm grasp of what public relations is all about. Their response to crises, or to requests for well thought-out solutions to public relations problems, reveals a serious lack of understanding.
This month and next, we’ll lay out the ten basic steps to turning your knowledge and expertise into stories that the media can use—giving you free publicity in the bargain. If you’re a financial planner, you know how to plan for retirement. You know how to fund a college education….how to buy a house. You know about starting a business. These are things the media, and their audiences, want to know! You just have to slice, dice, and package all this knowledge into boxes of the right size and look, and the media will buy. Here’s how we start:
Public Relations
a major discipline with so many diverse, partial, incomplete and limited interpretations of its mission. Here, just a sampling of professional opinion
on what public relations is all about:
* talking to the media on behalf of a client.
* selling a product, service or idea.
* reputation management.
* engineering of perception
Even when we feel certain about the fundamental premise of public relations, maybe we should take another look? Because if we are wrong, at best we miss out on public relation's enormous benefits. At worst, we can damage ourselves and our organizations.
Public Relations Career
Your knowledge and expertise are just like those corn flakes. Your “box”—what you sell to the media—is your story. Learn how to package, present and deliver your story and you’ll become a publicity success.
If you are new to the business, grasp early-on The Rosetta Stone of public relations, i.e., a guide to understanding the discipline and its core strength. Namely, people act on their
perception of the facts; those perceptions lead to certain behaviors; and something can be done about those perceptions and behaviors that lead to achieving an organization's
objectives.
If you are a student who has taken up public relations in college and it's fast approaching the time when recruiters are going to be coming to your campus, there are a few things that you are going to want to do in order to assure yourself of the best chance of being hired by a public relations firm and then the best chance to hold your job once you get it.
Once on the job, hook up with a mentor, someone who you feel you can learn from. All the confidence in the world doesn't make up for experience and knowledge. A mentor can get you through that rough first year by giving you sound advice and also by acting as a sounding board for your opinions.