Valley PR Blog

8 Essential Skills for PR Pros

By Dan Wool on March 25th, 2007 In Professional Development

Show me a PR person with these eight skills (in this order) and I’ll show you the elite of our profession. (Are you listening ASU?):

(1) Knowledge of business operations - If you don’t know how a business works and especially, how it makes money, you cannot succeed in PR. Period. Public perception is the ultimate referendum on good business operations or the ultimate check against poor operations. You need to be in a position to know your client’s business as well as the client does in order to advocate and deliver.

(2) Personal relationships – Smart content and distribution only get you so far. For best results, it is always who you know. Everything else is a cold call. That’s right: you’re a whore on Information Blvd. whispering “Hey baby, want some sugar?” at passing journalists.

(3) Knowledge of consumer behavior — No consumers, no business. Wrong consumers, no business. Who target consumers are, how they think and how to reach them — especially on the Internet — is the lynchpin of PR.

(4) Strategy – “Every battle is won before it is fought” — Sun Tzu “The Art of War”. If you’re not strategic, you’re simply tactical. Anyone can be tactical — it’s called telemarketing — or spamming. You’ll win some battles but always lose the war for media and consumer attention. Noone plans to fail, they fail to plan.

(5) A great attitude. “If you think you can or can’t, you’re right” — Henry Ford. A can-do attitude is simply unchanneled passion. A great attitude builds confidence and trust, even if the end result is a loss. You always get hired on attitude, not skill.

(6) Journalism skills – PR pros are essentially corporate journalists with sales responsibilities. You have to think and write lik journalists in order to out-think them and write stories they want to write themselves. This is why the best PR pros are generally former journalists, especially those who go to work for major corporations.

(7) Rhetoric and negotiation skills — You need to know how to argue well and properly break down an argument into premises and conclusions. You need to know how to negotiate (fight) beyond one round. And to play poker and call bullshit. This is a sure-fire recipe for another important quality: thick skin.

(8) Focus — PR is a non-linear, fast paced business with an ever-changing environment. It requires a lot of juggling — the kind with fire sticks. Good “jugglers” must focus on tasks at hand, stay calm and organized and know when to switch gears.

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