With being a young person and wanting to get into the field of public relations could be quite hard and and overwhelming. With all of the various information telling you to do this or do that you just can’t understand what areas you need to focus on or understand first. Well, I’m going to share with you three pieces of advice that you should focus on to ensure a successful career in public relations.
1. Understand what PR Is and Isn’t
So often you find young people not really understanding what public relations is. They think it’s this magical switch that you can turn on whenever you feel you’re launching a new product for a company or wanting to get more customers for an existing product line. You might see PR as just another way to put a product in-front of the the masses of people in the various industries. Public relations can’t guarantee anything at all, and you’re going to have to understand that from the beginning. Once you do you will have greater success in having an career within PR. You will become successful within PR when you can understand how to turn companies culture into a story to tell to their customers.
That’s how you’re going to get the best out of your career within PR! If you notice some of the best PR professionals always can take a companies goals, missions, and products and tell a story. If you don’t understand a company’s story, then you won’t be successful at any PR campaign that you create. Understand the story, build upon that, and then share it with the world.
2. Growth Takes Time
With PR, if you want to see the fruits of your labor, you’re going to have to plant the seed and pour water on it consistently. What you have to do with your career is create a PR schedule as to what you’re going to work on improving over the first year of the business and going forth. You want to set goals as to what skills you will focus on building first and then what other skills you will start to form along with it.
Never assume that you’re going to get a promotion or raise just because you’ve been at a company for an amount of time. The more skills you develop, the better you can execute campaigns, and do that consistently. The better your chances are at being successful in any PR position that you go into.
3. Learn to Use Social Media
Social media is one of the biggest area of PR that companies use right now and it’s not going away anytime soon. So, what you’re going to have to do is understand how to use it properly. What you have to do is create your own social profiles and engage within them and see how they work and how communities are built. You can use resources such as http://facebook-studio.com to see how brands are using Facebook. Browse Youtube channels to see how companies are leveraging video.
The more you can get involved and stay up to par with the social media trends the better it’s going to be for you to have a successful PR career. The worst thing that you can do for yourself is not understand different areas of social media and how they can benefit a specific company.
Going into PR is an excellnt decision and you can have some great success with it. But, you want to make sure that you understand some key areas as to how to be successful and how to grow skills so that you perform at an above average level throughout your career. Take this advice that I gave you and build upon that. Always continue to read and apply what you learn and you will become very successful in PR.
Liz Becker is a freelance writer and regular contributor to this blog. She is a recent graduate where she received her Medical Office Manager Certification, and now, performs market research for an online marketing firm when she is not contributing her own thoughts and observations to the online community for a wide range of clients
You explain how to build a PR career, but how do you lay the foundation?
What advice can you give to recent graduates wanting to get their foot in the door?
Thanks!
April: Fastest way to a career in PR is via internships, not one but several. Start as early as possible. I met a young person recently whose first internship came between her junior and senior year in high school, and she had one each summer during college. Second best route is active involvement in college activities, especially those directly related to your career goal. Get involved in on-campus agency, college newspaper and nonprofit organizations where you can help with public relations.