The Skills of Today

What are the most valuable skills for a PR expert against this transformation of the PR office?

This book has already emphasized my Rule Number One: that even the worst decision is better than no decision at all, a decision that hasn’t been made. One of a PR expert’s most cherished skills and qualities today is a quick reaction, the ability to assume responsibility very quickly! This is because everything has become a function of time; everything is connected with time. That goes for any regular communication, not just for crisis management. If you must react on your client’s behalf, defend, or promote your client, time is paramount. If you take your time or delay thinking or coordinating the response with your client, many more things might happen. This is why we now bear a much greater responsibility; we are much more critical decision-makers than before the social media revolution.

You must react as quickly as you would if you were your client. When you have time to consult with your client, cases are rare today because news and comment feeds keep rolling. This book never intended to paint too rosy a picture of the PR industry after the social media revolution. There are seemingly negative consequences of this revolutionary change. One, of course, is the constant danger of getting fooled and tricked by fake news, needing more time to verify whether a news story is accurate, and fact-checking its details. However, I am sure that fake news is going to begin to die because social media is getting so personalized that nobody will dare produce phony news because they might be imprisoned. Fake news remains a significant risk, so people must be much more erudite, educated, and knowledgeable, which requires much better training and preparation. Regardless of how good you are at googling things or doing more sophisticated online research in the oceans of available information, as a PR expert of today’s reality, your head must be full of knowledge, thanks to which you would be able to make a swift but adequate decision. That is why I think now is the time for knowledgeable people in PR. Now is not the time of the “searching” people or those who can get something because today, even a three-year-old kid could do that. Now is the time for knowledgeable people who have received a good education, have undergone proper training, and are mentally prepared to assume responsibility for making immediate decisions.

PR EXPERTS OR EDITORS?

As a result of the social media revolution, PR has now started overlapping substantially with media management to such a degree that the clear-cut difference between a media editor and a PR expert might seem blurred. Yet the title “PR expert” presumes a very substantial upgrade from the role of an editor. An editor must know about their topic and proper writing and text-editing skills. In contrast, a PR expert should have all that plus much more comprehensive knowledge and be able to communicate with clients. So, a PR expert is supposed to have many more skills than an editor, even though a big part of a modern-day PR expert’s work is to be able to edit well, especially to write well.

THE PR LANGUAGE — DO WE UNDERSTAND IT?

Language in today’s world has changed a lot since the advent of social media, but in the PR industry, the changes in language style have been drastic. This is because we are not allowed to write in a language (style) that isn’t easily understandable to everyone. In the good old pre-social media days, the most meaningful verbal/written way that PR professionals communicated was by writing and sending press releases to journalists. Now, we are in contact with journalists and a broad “readership,” or clients’ clients. Journalists used to be able to take your dumb or poorly written press release and rewrite it in their style to make it understandable for the readers. Still, now you are the person who communicates directly with the readership. Therefore, PR professionals are now obliged to focus more on language skills, especially on writing concisely, intriguingly, and accurately, while also finding the right dynamic of the title sentences.

HOW TO SWAY PEOPLE TODAY

No matter how traditional it sounds, the primary way to sway people remains the personal experience. It is about your skills in doing things from which your colleagues can learn. In the public relations business, the people you work with are influenced by two things. One is salary, and the other is working conditions (including teamwork, the boss, the team leader, where they work, how they work, the clients they are assigned to work with, and the atmosphere in the office). An excellent manager must maintain a nonstop balance between these two. You can’t enjoy a very high salary, but working in an office is a nightmare, or vice versa. You can have great clients, and everything at the office might be very organized, but if your salary is low, you will not be overjoyed with your job. And, of course, you need conceptual thinking, a vision guiding your work and leading you forward.

WHEN SMALL IS BIGGER THAN BIG

However, even if the external PR company is small, it can still offer quality services that are superior to those of the in-house department. Whether a large or small PR company tends to provide better, more dedicated services is a significant matter of discussion in today’s PR industry, as is the issue of reliability regarding company size. Every Monday morning, during our staff meetings, I tell my colleagues that small PR companies are much more creative than large ones because whatever working system one might be able to invent and implement, large companies remain more or fewer assembly lines for projects and ideas, albeit usually insightful and efficient ones. Many of the things they do and how they do them are heavily uniform because of their vast commitments, the volume of each project, and the staggering workload they handle. On the other hand, a small company with a single client would die for that client. It will work 24/7 for that client. Because if it loses that client, it’s gone. In a large company, if one client leaves, that client can always be substituted by another. Or the lost income can be made up for with improved results and revenues from other accounts.

Of course, I wouldn’t ignore that large PR corporations possess significant advantages over small PR firms. In my view, there are two main ones. The first is their superior capacity: capacity is the decisive factor when a significant event or project must occur. The other great advantage is their experience; they have accomplished many more projects and gathered more knowledge and experience. The experience of small PR companies shouldn’t be underestimated, though, because every single large PR company used to be a small one before it grew. I greatly respect small PR companies because they often produce outstanding ideas.

However, an in-house PR department in a large corporation could hardly come up with such comprehensive, wide-ranging, and appropriately applicable ideas as an outside PR company could, regardless of size. Viewing even the smallest PR company as more efficient than an in-house PR department is safe. Plus, in-house departments often depend on bosses and other departments, and all kinds of domestic corporate rules intrigue and other complicated internal relations. In contrast, an outside PR consultant should not be interested in any of those things apart from the corporate standards.

The book is available on Amazon.com and BeharBooks.com.