Speaker 1: Working in PR must be the easiest thing in the world. No, it's not. Hey, 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 upfront. 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 in order to get smarter using data. So think about it from a broad concept, right? If you know which media publications are really owning the narrative of a particular topic and really driving impact, 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 there's a lot of books out there that are available 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 to help kind of frame your mind, your state of mind to being a better storyteller. Number three is the gift of gap. 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 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? 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've been kind of in the industry for, for some time, right? So being able to take a step back and saying, 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 in general outside of just marketing and communications. So I hope this video was valuable to you. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you found any value in this whatsoever, please like and subscribe or share this video. I would really appreciate that. And until I see you next time, please stay healthy and I'll talk to you soon.