Qualifying inbound leads for Public Relations

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working in pr must be the easiest thing in the world no it's [Music] not guys welcome back to this week's video thank you so much for tuning in today we're going to talk about the skills that you need to master in order to be successful working in public relations now in full transparency i don't necessarily work in public relations i don't pitch the media i've never have i don't know the media i don't know any journalists i don't write press releases i don't read press releases so this is my perspective working alongside some very smart pr professionals throughout my career there are five skills that you need to master in order to be successful working in this field number one is an understanding of data number two is being a good storyteller that's a given number three is the gift of gab which i'll explain number four is understanding the value of relationships and number five is the ability to look at the bigger picture of a business okay so let me talk about each of these very quickly all right so let's talk about data now there are two ways to think about this and i'll make it as simple as possible there's performance and measurement and there is upfront research and analytics the performance and measurement is simply you have a campaign or you have some coverage you're reporting on the performance of that campaign research and analytics is done up front it's meant to inform a program or campaign now the great news about data and the understanding of data is you don't have to be a data scientist or an analyst to be successful at using data in your job so there's tutorials there's linkedin learning there's so much out there for you to use um in order to get smarter using data so think about it from a broad concept right if you know which media publications are are really owning the narrative of a particular topic and really driving impact and you can and you know that and you can uncover those hidden narratives you can use that data to prioritize your media relations you can also use that data to determine which journalists are driving the most impact and the most engagement with their articles so it's little things like that that'll make you smarter in pr now the second skill that you need to have is being a good storyteller now it's kind of a given personally i suck at storytelling so i every video i do there's like 25 or 30 different takes until i get the right story but it comes easier for some other people especially if you work in pr you kind of know what the story is you know how to frame it you know how to spin it in many cases so um there's a lot of books out there that are available to increase your proficiency in storytelling so take a look at those i like to read children's books because children's books are short they are simple there's a beginning there's a middle there's an end and they make sense so there's a lot of lessons to be learned in reading children's books um to help kind of frame your mind uh your state of mind to being a better storyteller number three is the gift of gab what that means is you have to know how to talk persuade and influence so if you think about your job as pitching someone either through email or on the phone or in person you have to be able to get that hook right you have to know what to say when to say it how to move people down a path in order to get them to do what you want them to do without necessarily asking number four is understanding the value of relationships which i kind of suck at that too but there's a concept called uh reciprocal altruism and that simply means it well let me kind of define that it's giving without any expectation of receiving anything in return so you as a pr pro you are building relationships with journalists or the media in general you have to give them value right don't just pitch them all the time don't just send them press releases or template emails you have to think about what can i provide them that's going to help them do their job better even if i don't have any news okay so relationship building and the nurturing of relationships is that fourth skill now the fifth skill is looking at the broader context of business now this is more for those who have been kind of in the industry for for some time right so being able to take a step back and say okay well we we sell a product but what is the supply chain of that product right what are the what are the potential pitfalls or reputation issues that we need to think about what's the economic value of our product what is our d e and i you know initiatives for the business which could reflect on our reputation so it's not just about pitching the media and getting coverage you have to understand the business everything from the supply chain to distributors the channel to your customers to your employees you know so there's an internal comms element to that so that is that fifth skill now not very actionable right there's not a book you can read that will come based on experience so the longer you're in the industry the better you will be at asking the right questions and learning about your clients or the brand that you work for the business all right so let's recap those five skills number one is understanding data that performance and measurement piece of it the upfront research and analytics number two is being a good storyteller right what is the hook what is the lead up what is the payoff when you are trying to tell a story either through the media or through owned media channels number three is the gift of gab right the ability to talk persuade and influence number four is the understanding and ability to nurture relationships and lastly number five is being able to understand the business um in general outside of just marketing and communications so i hope this video was valuable to you thank you so much for tuning in um if you found any value in this whatsoever please like and subscribe or share this video i would really appreciate that um and until i see you next time please stay healthy and i'll talk to you soon [Applause] [Music]