Mature businessman shaking hands to seal a deal with his partner and colleagues in a modern office
Professional PR – Imogen PR. Good looks are not enough to be professional Public Relations. Building a career in PR industry is more than a degree, moreover only with a mere good looking face. There are several special skills need to be mastered. Yes, skills of public speaking, writing and creating a communication strategy are the basic. But is it enough? Below are 5 important things to be mastered:
1. Professional PR Insight: Understanding The Client’s Business
As professional PR, understanding the business framework is a must. An online article written by Sandra Duhe from Southern Methodist University stated that she sees business as the second language in PR. Sandra Duhe started her career as financial analyst, but then shifted to PR. Her career made Sandra sees correlation between being a businessman and a professional PR, communication and business function.
When professional PR provides consultation to the client to improve the business or organization, it could be done better when he/she have an in-depth knowledge of the business itself. Usually, CEO sees PR as strategic management functions that have to work in line to improve the business in the future.
2. The Best Client Services
The success of a team, campaign and business is the power of relationship build between the client and its PR agency. Each client has their own background with their respective situation. But the basic concept and behaviour remains the same. By working in a PR agency, unconsciously we always study the client’s way of thinking and behaviour, where usually similarities are found. As professional PR, we need to be able to ‘read’ the clients every step we take.
How could we understand the situation and needs of the client? First of course by building the trust of the client, so they could reveal both the good and bad and trust us to organize information accordingly. This would also make client believe that we would give the best advice professionally on the right time. All in all, we have to be the right man on the right job in the right place at the right time.
3. Business Development
Professional PR have to build his/her own network with the purpose to bring new business to the agency they work at. Business development is the task from every agency to grow each personnel, in order to achieve success and bring in new business.
Business development training could simply done when the pitching offer comes. That’s when PR consultant are hoped to create a strategic proposal composed of the right insight development, choosing related endorser and the most important part is how we convince the client that what we do is different from other agency.
For those who recently enter the PR industry, business development actually could be the right chance to show who they are.
4. The Right Logical Thinking
Logical thinking is very important in PR industry. Logical thinking is understanding what we do as practitioner from various angles, understanding of risk and expected outcome.
Logical thinking will help professional PR to understand, acknowledge and act rationally to achieve the objective from client. This is important because its automatically implemented in the story or the key message that would be conveyed by professional PR to public. As professional PR conveyed the key message through ‘storytelling’, but the narration could not be delivered to the journalist with the wrong story. The narration logic should be right and have to be in the right order.
The quality of the message from professional PR would be very high when it’s full with facts and argument and delivered in the right context. With the right logical thinking, the story delivered not only provide new perspective on facts but also values that we want to convey so the audience accept it well. If the logic is wrong, then its going to be messy.
5. Out of The Box Creativity
Public Relations industry is not only relationship with media, but it is also a creative industry. As professional PR we are continuously challenged to think out of the box on deciding communication strategy. Creative idea are used to approach community, media or creating awareness on the on-going campaign. Client would love something different and stand out among the others.
If you feel like you’re not ‘out of the box’ don’t worry, as you gain experience, networking and knowledge on new trends, we’ll be able to create a creative and different communication strategy.
All in all, professional PR has to have the skill and broad knowledge. Learning to be professional PR is not easy, it needs tenacity and strong will. By actively engaged on daily activity, following the latest industry trend and learn to compose a better communication strategy, we’re adding skill and become one step closer to be a professional PR. So, don’t ever give up and add more experience!
Written by Dinda, Translated by Michele
