The Public Relations Blog

Becoming a lifelong learner can help you in multiple ways

Learning, along with experience, is fundamental to gaining knowledge and being successful as a professional. However, you shouldn’t limit learning to topics related to your career or profession; you should stay willing to learn all kinds of subjects – even things outside what you’re usually interested in – whenever you can. A little learning each day can pay off in both your professional and personal lives. 

Pitch stories that happen near your target audience to catch journalists’ attention.

When pitching stories to journalists to earn media coverage, your story must stand out if you want them to accept it. As a marketing and communications professional working with news media, you need to understand what journalists look for when scanning pitches if you want them to pick up your story.

Highlight the currency of your media pitches to interest journalists.

When you consume news, you may notice a pattern: Most news is timely. Likely, you prefer to hear about events that happened recently — the more current, the more interesting. This is called timeliness, and it’s one of the most important pillars of newsworthiness.

Experience is a great tool for learning beyond what school can teach

As a professional, you should always be soaking up information and learning new things. No matter what you specialize in, learning new information will help you and your company grow and adapt. One great way to learn valuable information is through experience.

Catch journalists’ and news consumers’ attention with well-known names.

Have you ever seen a news story about a celebrity doing something ordinary and thought, “Why do people care?”

The answer: Because they are a celebrity! A story pitch featuring a famous person is likely to catch a journalist's attention, and the story they publish will likely catch a news consumer’s attention in turn.

For some companies, especially those without a strong communication department or team, drafting of news releases is sometimes one of the more difficult things to write. While pitching may be a work of art, writing a news release is like a science project. There are many elements and best practices to writing a news release, so here are our top eight best practices for writing a news release:

In this episode, guest Rob Biesenbach, keynote speaker, author, and retired actor, and host Jason Mudd discuss the power of saying “No,” the importance of storytelling, how to become a keynote speaker, and challenges keynote speakers face. Rob worked in corporate communications by day and began a secondary career of acting at night. From there, he launched his keynote speaking business and has been teaching people the lessons he learned from acting and improv and how to implement them into corporate communications and business.

Tune into this episode to learn how to implement improv and stage presence into your career as well as the power of saying “No” and the importance of storytelling.

Google Discover may be the answer to improving your company’s SEO. The updated feed experience contributes to spikes in website traffic and is transforming the way to reach users.

Google Discover was launched in September 2018 as a feature on Google’s app. It is a feed that recommends content to users based on their search history. Google Discover came from a revamping of the previous Google Feed, where the suggested content was primarily headlines and meta descriptions. Discover now includes more visuals and evergreen content, with customizations available to create a user-friendly experience. Users can follow topics they are interested in and view similar topics.

Why does this matter for your company’s SEO?

“I don’t know what PR is, but I know we need it,” is a statement many business professionals find themselves making throughout their career. CNN says “anyone who pays attention to how decisions are influenced knows that PR is tremendously important” – so why is public relations at work so difficult to recognize? Like trying to assign a universal value to a work of art, public relations is quantified in various ways depending on an organization’s unique traits. To better understand what PR is, let’s break it down using the five Ws.

Experiencing what customers do can help you put yourself in their shoes

Telling your company’s story and why it matters to your potential customers is a very important part of public relations. However, it’s possible to get so into storytelling that you lose focus on how your story connects to potential customers!

A great way to solve this issue is to put yourself in the customer’s shoes. It sounds simple, but going through the same processes your customers go through can help you understand what makes your product or service shine, thus helping you focus PR efforts on how your company can solve potential customers’ problems and make their lives easier.