CyberFootprint

Are you committing one of the PR sins? CyberFootprint is bringing you a list of practices you should avoid in your professional life to become a successful PRO.

Lacking perspective

Richard Bailey, a veteran educator in the field of PR and the editor of Behind the Spin, opines that the worst sin a PR newbie can engage in is to lack perspective.

Just because you’re working on your company’s or your client’s biggest story, doesn’t mean that it’s likely to be one of the biggest stories of the day.

There’s pressure to promote, but it’s unproductive to view public relations as a telesales operation. It’s sometimes more productive to go back to the drawing board and discover a more compelling story.

This isn’t a terrible sin, but it can result in public relations being associated with empty hype. So for the sake of our industry we need to do better.

Failing to listen before you speak out

Stephen Waddington has amassed a great amount of experience throughout the years of working in Public Relations, as well as managing his own consultancy business. His take on PR sins emphasizes listening before joining the fray.

Listening must be the first activity that a new PRO undertakes before engaging in conversation, and ultimately seeking to create influence.

Listen to the journalists and bloggers (read their articles and blogs) that your seeking to influence. And listen to the conservations taking place amongst in the communities that before jumping in.

Only by listening will you understand the appropriate topics and tone with which engage and influence.

Mass mailing the journalists

Every experienced PRO, like Eva Nepokojová or Jed Hallam, will tell you that the journalists need an individual approach. Sending a personalized e-mail can help you build trust. Sending a mass pitch will kill all your chances to get the press release published.

I saw a pitch sent to about 50 journalists offering exclusive information. Not only the PRO obliterated the concept of exclusivity, he also upset all the recipients. The journalists are not stupid; they will find out that they are being pitched en masse. If you are not willing to work on 1 on 1 relationship with the editor, you are disqualifying yourself.

Lying to a journalist

Jed Hallam, the rock star account executive at Wolfstar, shares his perspective on the worst possible sin in Public Relations – lying.

This should NEVER be done. Ever! In my very early days I made a few mistakes (thankfully nothing too serious) and just managed to resurrect the relationships with the journalists – but I learnt my lesson and nearly got caught and now I would NEVER do it again.

I know people that have been caught and it’s been a total disaster. Lying is never acceptable and if you do lie, you’ll get caught and it’ll harm your relationship with the journalist/paper, your client, your agency and your career.

Not following up when promised

Here is my own take on sinning in the PR profession.

If you promise some additional quotes, information or other data to the journalist and fail to deliver that, you have just struck the greatest blow to your relationship. The editor will think that you are unreliable and would not be interested in working with you anymore. Do that a few times, and your reputation is shot.

The single most important rule in PR is to underpromise and overdeliver, rather than doing it the other way around. In this case, silence is NOT golden.

I hope you enjoyed this information-rich post and learned something new from the senior practitioners. If you did, subscribe to my RSS feed.

Image credit: circo_de_invierno