#pr pro

how do you see a possible future for them when everything between them feels so shattered is there a path forward or is this destined to be a beautiful disaster i’m absolutely living for this 🙌✨

first of all, thank you so much friend!!

this answer is going to be a cop out, but - a little something about me - i cannot bring myself to completely change/rewrite the core of a canon character even when writing a fanfic because the beliefs of the characters established in canon especially in something as rich, fleshed out and beloved as Tolkien made me fall in love with them for a reason. and that is how i look at it when i write my version of those characters, not to say i do not like to READ unhinged stories with role reversal aus or modern aus etc. it's just something i personally struggle to write. but at the same time, just like Tolkien although no longer a catholic myself, i firmly believe that 'nothing is evil in the beginning' and no one is beyond redemption. redemption is sort of my whole personality trait. i incorporate it into every single story that i write on ao3.

„Das Spiel gefällt mir nicht... oder ist das irgendein Partner von uns?“

Why thank you, Breakaway Living Lifestyle Mag, for the enthusiastic reception. So far the only people who claimed their lives have changed thanks to InstaPrompter are Speech Coaches and Public Relations Pros who found that they can remote control nervous on-stage talent with our app.

The 12 Stages of a PR Professional’s Day [link]

In November, the CEO of Muck Rack wrote an article for "Fortune"about why PR gets no respect.

Of course, that's not a new conversation. We talk about it a lot. We talk about how measuring our efforts to real business goals will get us a seat at the leadership table. We also talk about how our jobs are quickly becoming those of hybrid PR professionals.

But he had a couple of insights I thought were interesting.

He said the industry gets no respect because you can't track or scale PR, PR pros have a terrible reputation problem with journalists, and there is no use putting lipstick on a pig.

Does that sound about right to you?

In Canada there is an industry-wide initiative to get rid of media impressions and advertising value equivalencies (AVEs). It has been so successful, clients no longer ask PR professionals to submit results based on those two things.

But that's still how the way the industry measures its efforts in the U.S. In fact, when we judge award entries for professional organizations, the results sections lack real business results and focus instead on the number of Facebook fans, media interviews, and media impressions.

It hurts my analytical brain and communications heart.

We can either win the big awards, not have a seat at the table, and keep things status quo, or we can shake things up and learn how to track the real things that sustain a business. Things such as increased revenues, shortened sales cycles, and improved margins.

Where is the opportunity?

But here's the thing: I'm not so numbers driven I don't recognize the need for the more, shall we say, "light" metrics. It is very difficult to measure brand awareness and the effectiveness of traditional PR.

We have to find ways to measure our efforts in ways that are meaningful to the executives who pay us.

I've broken down the types of things you can measure into two categories: "light" (brand awareness) and "data-driven" (business objectives). The list is long—my apologies. Hopefully you can just cherry pick what makes the most sense for you.

Light metrics

1. Media relations: From my perspective, media relations includes blogger and influencer relations. Because of the Web, we no longer have to count on circulation multiplied by two and a half (if it's a consumer publication) or five (if it's a trade outlet). Now we can track how many times an article, blog post, or piece of content was shared. We can figure out how many people saw, shared and read it.

Get to know Google analytics (it's non-negotiable), and use Squeeze to track your traffic, views and social shares. Report the value of each campaign to your executives.

2. Customer relations: I won't call this customer service because I don't want those professionals to think we're encroaching on their territory. Rather, we have a huge opportunity to build one-on-one relationships with our customers via the Web.

Social media provides the opportunity to connect, engage and chat. In this case, it makes sense to track fans, friends, connections, followers, and viewers-when you combine them with the data-driven metrics.

3. Scalability: One of the things the Muck Rack CEO mentioned as a problem for the industry is that PR can't scale. That was true in the old days, but today PR pros are tasked with promoted posts, promoted tweets, and Amplify. In the past, because we would have considered these things paid media, they would have lived under the advertising roof. I'm willing to bet more and more of you spend time with these tools. Facebook, Twitter, and Outbrain all give you analytics to support your buys.

Data-driven metrics

1. Increased revenue: If you don't work for a public company, having access to the revenue goals may prove a little difficult. But if your organization is run like mine, the revenue goals are very visible.

Figure out how you can affect growth. If you have ecommerce, your campaigns will drive people to landing pages where they can buy. If you don't sell online, you will measure your content, email, social media, media relations, and other efforts through the leads you create, how you nurture them, and how you help sales convert them.

We have one client who gave us access to its customer relationship management (CRM), so we know exactly where each leads comes from and whether or not the leads convert. Get access to the things you need to track your efforts and pay attention to how much money you drive for the business.

2. Shortened sales cycle: If you're in a consumer business, this is less important to you. But in a B2B organization, a sales cycle could be anywhere from two days to two years. Work with your sales team to figure out how long the average sale takes, and set a goal to beat it. Let's say it takes 10 months. Set your goal to nine months.

What's the best way to shorten a sales cycle? Stay top-of-mind. What's the best way to stay top-of-mind? Share valuable and interesting content where your prospects hang out (email, social media, stadiums, subways, websites, etc.).

The better your content, the more likely your prospects will read it. The more likely they are to read it (or view or listen to it), the more likely they are to buy from you. PR pros have ultimate control of this.

3. Improved margins: We had a client a few years ago who incentivized us based on how much we helped his margins increase. Just as we were about to get our bonus for improving margins by two percent he decided to buy a Ferrari, which killed the margins and we got no bonus.

If you don't work for a public organization, I recommend you stay away from this one. If you do, the easiest way to determine your effect on margins is to track how much revenue you produced, subtract your budget, salary and benefits (if you work for a PR firm, subtract your budget), and the number you end up with is the real revenue you'll use for reporting.

Then have your finance team help you figure out the margins from there. If you increased revenue by more than what you spent, you can pretty much guarantee you improved margins, too.

4. Big data: For those of you who have been in the industry as long as me, you'll remember having to sit through focus groups night after night, watching people on the other side of one-sided glass talk about your products or services. I was always happy when the advertising team said we didn't need to attend.

We no longer have to give up our weeknights (and eat pizza four nights in a row) to get information about what our customers think. If you have strong command of all of the data at your fingertips, you will be able to influence high-level decisions on product, market positioning, and more. If you don't know how to sift through the data, take some online courses through Coursera or Big Data University.

It's your turn. What else can the PR industry do to gain the respect it deserves?

Midcentury stuff remains hot.  TV networks continue to produce shows set in this stylish period—“Vegas,” “Call the Midwife”—while at least one major carmaker found inspiration in its latest model from a 1960s-era design (the Jaguar F-Type).  A major PR firm is also looking to the mid-20th century to inspire the current generation.  Today is the 60th anniversary of Edelman PR. To help mark the occasion, the firm released an infographic listing the 10 rules for PR pros, which the firm’s founder Dan Edelman wrote in the early 1960s.  Among the rules: “Be flexible”; “Get the big story”; “Remember, this is a service business.  In honor of the anniversary, the company also took out full-page ads in several trade publications—PR Week, Advertising Age, and Adweek—as well as in several Chicago publications. Dan Edelman founded the firm in Chicago in 1952.  The firm’s current CEO Richard Edelman is slated to speak at an event in Chicago today. According to Richard Edelman:  “PR [60s years ago] was viewed as merely an add-on and something used primarily for corporate reputation or publicity for celebrities. But over the last 60 years that has dramatically changed, as has the world.”  In a blog post, Edelman lists five behavioral changes that will be required of the PR industry. They are: 

• Provide clients with advice on what to do, and then how to communicate around themedia cloverleaf (social, hybrid, owned and traditional).  • Aim to have the dominant creative idea.  • Be comfortable with interpreting data and insistent upon using it.  • Show, don’t just tell.  • Find the right balance between global and local. 

So you want to be a public relations or social media measurement maven? The first step on the way is to educate yourself. Whether you are now in school, or thinking of going back to pick up a few courses, here is a list of classes that will give you a good foundation. 

Note: Many of these classes are not offered in the typical communications department. You might have to look around a bit, maybe take some psych or econ classes. Depending on your aptitude and inclination, you might want to be a business or math major. Our recommendation is to first get a very solid grounding in business, then go on to get your creative juices flowing.  • Advanced Excel

I assume that you can’t get into college these days without some basic knowledge of Excel. Of course it’s been 40 years since I first entered the doors to college, so who knows what gets you in, but the very first measurement course you must take is an advanced Excel course. Excel is the one measurement tool you will use no matter how big or small your organization. Ninety percent of the measurement I’ve done in my life has been done in Excel.

• Business 101 and 202

You can’t be a communications professional without a solid grasp of how business works, how your company makes money, how profit and loss (and, yes, ROI) are calculated. Don’t stop with an introductory course, keep going until you get a solid dose of accounting. It will make you so much more effective in talking to those bean counters.

• Statistics

Embrace statistics. You need to know what constitutes good data and bad data, bad conclusions and good, and the only way you’re going to do this is with a solid background in statistics. We recommend not one but two classes to make sure you don’t forget anything. Unless you're a math major, you'll want the classes called "Statistics for the Social Sciences" or similar.

• Experimental/research methods

It used to be that you’d only take Experimental Methods if you were a fairly advanced science major with several prerequisites under your belt. Today, with so much data available and analysis being done, experimental methods—or the study of how research is planned, conducted, communicated and critiqued—is becoming more of an intro class, sometimes combined with stats. It’s usually part of the psychology syllabus, but sometimes it’s economics, sociology, or political science. This class will help you understand your own data, as well as help you evaluate research findings reported by others.

• Strategic business planning

If you don’t know how to produce a solid, data-driven business plan, you will never succeed anywhere.

• Customer relationship management

Everything in business comes down to relationships, and today’s CRM tools are incredibly useful for tracking and building relationships.

• Measuring marketing campaigns

Before you get down into the weeds of PR measurement, you need to understand how the big money measures results. Marketing measurement today is heavily dependent on digital conversions, Google analytics, and the overwhelming amount of data that can be generated by Twitter and Facebook. You cannot succeed until you understand this part the business. Best source for this is the Continuing Studies page of the Digital Analytics Association website.