PR strategies for PR

One thing I’ve noticed in my short time in the public relations world is there are never enough hours in the day. We spend a lot of time meeting deadlines, developing new strategies and pondering ways to makes things better. We rush to meet one deadline and then we realize another one is fast approaching. We are in a constant whirlwind of deadlines and ideas.

I love this about PR, in fact it’s one of the reasons I chose to go into the field. We are all very creative people who like to put our skills and knowledge to good use by helping others. We strive to be the best, as well as to be on top of the newest technology, news, products, etc.

The lack of hours in the day and the never-ending deadlines keep us from doing basic things that allow us to show the value of what we do, which upsets me because I know our work is invaluable and that we are leaders with great ideas to share.

I know most PR professionals wish they could wave a magic wand and everyone would appreciate the value of their work, but it’s not that easy. We have to work for it and spend time educating people, but with looming deadlines and clients and organizations to look out for, we put educating people on the back burner.

So, what is the best way to combat this? How can PR people continue to dream up strategies and execute them, as well as be completely in the know and further the education of the PR world as a whole?

I surely don’t know the answer, but I do feel that as technology increases and communication formats change, we are going to have to focus on educating people on what we do and why we do it. We have to start using our public relations strategies for public relations!

Have ideas of your own? Let me know below!

Inauguration 2009: Communication Galore

Yesterday was incredible. Not because of politics or the number of people who peacefully gathered in one place to be part of a moment in history. It was incredible because of the sheer volume of people who used new forms of communication outlets to watch the inauguration events and to interact with each other.

Long gone are the days of families sitting by the radio or the TV and simply talking about programs with their families and friends. From now on people will turn to the internet and social media sites, as well as radio and TV. There will be more two-way communication between people from across the globe and yesterday proved it.

People viewed the inauguration festivities from their TV and computer screens and listened to it on the radio. People tweeted about it, blogged about it and changed their Facebook and MySpace statuses to reveal their feelings or to describe what they were doing to celebrate the moment. These responses were in real time and allowed for communication between people from all over the world. To me, that is incredible!

The historic moment opened my eyes and revealed to me that new communication outlets will be introduced all the time and they not only influence how we communicate with each other, but it changes the way we do business and how we handle various situations. We are more interconnected than we’ve ever been and in the PR realm it’s so important for us to stay current with these changes because it will help us do what we do best – communicate and build relationships!