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The changing skill sets of a PR professional

There is an interesting blog post on arikhanson.com on the evolving skills of tomorrow’s PR pro that sparked an interesting discussion among the AHA Crew. The way the world communicates has changed and as communicators, we have had to evolve right along with it in order to remain effective and relevant.

Our approach at AHA is to blend traditional communication and social media. Online communication is an important component of our toolkit. Arik is right when he says that the skill set required has changed.

Strong writing is an important asset for any PR agency – it’s one of the abilities we look for when bringing someone onboard. Telling the story of our client’s organization is important and good writing facilitates great storytelling. But times have changed. Shorter is now better. Getting a message across in 140 characters isn’t easy, but with the popularity of Twitter, it’s important. When I was at Maclean’s, I used to write a lot of pieces for the People page of the magazine. I often wrote short, snappy articles that were only a paragraph long and got teased by some of my colleagues who were writing six page feature articles. Others I worked with understood that sometimes it’s harder to write short pieces than it is to produce a full-length article. The world now demands short and to the point, but still wants to hear the story, be entertained and engaged. The PR person that can do “short” well is in demand.

In his blog post, Arik also touches on what we, at AHA, believe is key to developing a strong outreach. You need to reach your stakeholders where they live and interact. Understanding all the ways that the individuals or groups you wish to have a conversation with communicate is essential. If they are on Twitter, your organization needs to be there. If they are writing or reading blogs, you need to be doing that also. If they are actively attending events or are reading and watching specific media outlets, well…you get the picture. It’s not about how you want to communicate with them any more, it’s about understanding where they want you to be and how they want you to initiate or join the conversation. This is an approach that has always been strategic, but with today’s opportunities to connect through online communities, understanding the culture of the new paradigm of connection and conversation is key.

Online search is another important component of today’s PR. Understanding Search Engine Optimization well enough to include keywords in an article or blog post without damaging the content is a huge asset. So is the ability to use search tools to better understand how your stakeholders or community base perceive your organization.

Another element that we are focusing on more and more is how to evaluate and measure a campaign, program or overall success. The traditional ways don’t work for the online space and there needs to be a process that combines the two without creating so much work that the time spent on this overtakes the time spent on communicating. While there are some ways to evaluate and measure for both traditional and online that might be considered adequate, and there are certainly some excellent companies offering this service, for our part, we always want to do better and it’s an area that we continue to research and improve upon.

Arik also points out that understanding the use of mobile tools is critical and as the iPhone and the Blackberry and their apps become more and more the norm, understanding how to use these tools and what they mean strategically is essential.

One of the tools that we use quite often—and that is becoming more and more important—is the use of video and podcasts. From live streaming video with interactive chat components, to person on the street video interviews, to a personalized message from a senior executive, this is gaining credibility as a valuable communications tool. With the growing use of video, it becomes important that as a communicator, we understand the visual elements as well as the messaging.

We’ve embraced the new paradigm of business and communication here at AHA. It’s become a part of what we do everyday and each of us is always looking to expand and improve our knowledge, expertise and understanding of the evolving skill sets necessary to succeed. For us as communications professionals, it’s challenging and exciting. As a business, it’s a necessity. Our clients expect the best from us and we want to exceed those expectations as often as possible.

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There is a good customer dissatisfaction video on YouTube about a band member that had his guitar damaged when flying United Airlines. According to the video, there were witnesses to baggage handlers throwing the guitar and taking absolutely no care with it. Currently, there are only a few hundred views of this video, but many, many comments – most of them saying they are appalled at how United has handled this issue.

Apart from being an interesting (and entertaining) video made by a dissatisfied customer, this also brings up something that we have recently been discussing here at AHA Creative Strategies: social media measurement – in all its forms. We provide evaluation on projects, media coverage and other initiatives to quite a few clients and the accuracy and credibility of that evaluation is very important to us. Social media is a challenge because the natural reaction is to use traditional evaluation methods, and that’s a little like comparing apples to oranges.

I had this discussion with my friend and colleague Stephen Hodgdon of Beaupre and I thought his response—while specifically about blogs—was worth repeating and could be applied to many forms of social media. He said: “Blog traffic has a number of advantages over traditional media reader metrics, including that it tends to drive more customers directly to your business website, enables you to engage with your customers directly, and increases your search engine visibility, to name a few.”

In the case of the United Breaks Guitars video, it is interesting to note that there are companies that specialize in the transportation of band gear (full disclosure, one of the top companies out of the U.S. that does this is an AHA client.). Think about the gear of big name acts like The Rolling Stones, Britney Spears, U2, Matchbox 20, Kelly Clarkson and Nickleback and the hundreds of other acts flying around. (These acts aren’t necessarily connected to our client). They tour globally and for the most part – they take a lot of their gear with them. The shipment of guitars and drums and other instruments and equipment needed to put on a world-class show can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars per band. So, not only has United put off this one particular customer, who happens to be in what appears to be a smaller band, it may also be showing other much larger clients that United can’t be trusted with this kind of cargo. What do you think would happen if someone had to explain to Bruce Springsteen or Jon Bon Jovi that their favourite guitar was damaged in transit? That wouldn’t be good for anyone.

So, from this video – not only do I now believe that as a single passenger, United Airlines will do nothing to help me, I have also sent it to my client, who runs a company that promises that a band’s gear will get to the next city on time and in one piece.

In this day and age, it’s not how many people hear the good or bad about your organization, it’s who hears about it and what that means to you.

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First off, let me state that I am not going to speculate about why Sarah Palin resigned her position as Governor of Alaska. I am, however, going to put forward a few things about her resignation that make you go hmmmm…

As communicator’s we know that sometimes the news (both mainstream and online) focuses on one big story and may exclude others. In the past couple of weeks that story has been about the death of Michael Jackson. Coverage about how the “King of Pop” died, his will and the custody of his children has been extensive. I found it curious that Sarah Palin decided to announce her resignation in the middle of this coverage and on the Friday of the July 4th long weekend.

I can remember as a young reporter being told by a gruff, old journalist that I should always keep an eye on news releases or announcements sent out on a Friday afternoon. He explained to me that they were done on purpose. It was done in order to slide bad news by us, so that by Monday, it was old news. I never forgot that and when I saw Palin’s announcement on Friday, I wondered about the timing. As I flipped through several U.S. news stations to see their coverage, they were all saying the same thing, they were surprised at the news and some described the news conference as “hastily arranged.” (Which, I would imagine, is why there is speculation about why she resigned.) Hastily arranged, surprising to political journalists and all on the Friday of a long weekend. It makes you go hmmmm…

I had put the Palin resignation out of my mind and wasn’t even going to blog about it, but then I heard all kinds of news coverage yesterday about Palin’s attorney saying she would sue journalists and bloggers speculating about her resignation. Because Palin responded, I thought about the timing of her resignation again. I learned about the speculation of why she resigned and I heard that she was threatening lawsuits. So did the use of the threat of lawsuits provided any benefit to Palin. I don’t think so. It just stirred the pot and got people talking more about the negative.

There is an interesting article on politico.com that talks about Palin’s Facebook response to mainstream media’s reaction to her resignation. It’s worth a read. Online media has changed how we receive our news and how we can respond and participate. It will be interesting to see how this will play out over the next few weeks.

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First off, I have to apologize for this blog being less active than usual. As many of you know, things are changing in our world. QUAY is closing its doors and AHA is refreshing and re-energizing and getting ready for the next stage of our professional life. As of June 30, this blog will be over, but – within a few days (or a week) of that, our new AHA blog and website will be up and it will all be back to normal with almost daily blog posts and even some vodcasts and podcasts. And, of course, we will also keep you posted on what’s happening with Patsy and Della and hope they will come on as guest bloggers every once in a while. So stay tuned…it’s going to be great!

Now back to the real blog post!

Todd Defren has an excellent post at his PR-Squared blog today. (He often has excellent posts so if you don’t subscribe to his blog, you really should.) In it, he talks about the importance of having your PR team believe in what you do because they have tried your service or product and genuinely believe it has value.

At AHA, we won’t take on a client that we wouldn’t tell our friends or family about, that we wouldn’t be proud saying “hey, we work with them, we’re a part of their communications team.” We have clients that offer things that might not be relevant to any of our team at this stage of our lives/careers…for example, we have done quite a bit of work with BCIT’s School of Health Sciences and it’s highly unlikely I am going to give up PR and go back to school to become a health care professional. However, I have spent a great deal of time with many of the instructors, program heads and the Dean of the school, Kathy Kinloch and I would recommend the School of Health Sciences to anyone I know that wants to enter the field of health sciences.

When I was a journalist and got a pitch from a PR person, I could tell in seconds if they were just feeding me a bunch of words or if they really believed in their client. Let’s be realistic, if your PR person doesn’t believe in what they are pitching the media – the media isn’t going to either.

AHA is a small agency by choice and one of the reasons we decided to stay “boutique” is because we want to make sure that we only take on clients we can get behind, that we believe in. We don’t want to become big enough that we have to take on work to support the company. And, let me tell you…there have been times early on in our company’s history when it would have been much easier financially to take on certain clients, but we held fast to our belief that we needed to understand and experience what they were offering wherever possible – and we need to believe in them. Which, by the way, doesn’t mean that we just take the message out “there.” We develop a strategy, work on story angles and develop engagement concepts that will connect like-minded people through social media sites, etc. But, at the heart of it, it’s that we think this organization is worthy of your time and/or energy and sometimes even your hard-earned dollars.

When we take on a client, when we “get” what they are offering – it’s so much easier to pitch media, to blog about them, to put information out on Twitter or to share it on Facebook or other social media sites. More and more these days, as social media blurs the line between professional and personal, it’s important that as communicators that we embrace the value of our being authentic in what we put forward on behalf of our clients. For us, it’s not just about being awarded the contract. It’s about finding great organizations that we can put our expertise, experience and our reputation behind. It makes such a difference to our success, to our client’s success and to what the future holds.

No matter what organization you choose to work with, make sure they “get it.” It’s crucial.

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