What do you contribute to the PR team?
Posted Monday, October 24, 2005 at 1:25am in Blogging, PR General | Leave a Comment
This is taken from a hand-out I got at uni last year in my PR Strategy lecture. Basically it gives you nine different definitions and characteristics of players in a team. All you have to do is identify which one you’re most similar to in terms of strengths and then scroll down to see your weaknesses. No doubt some people will see themselves in more than one definition.
I said in the headline ‘what do you contribute to the PR team’ but basically it works for any team really. But hey, this is a PR blog. So here we go:
Plant
Creative, imaginative, unorthodox. Solves difficult problems. Resource Manager
Extrovert, enthusiastic, communicative. Explores opportunities. Develops contacts.
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Co-ordinator
Mature, confident. Clarifies goals. Brings other people together to promote team discussions.
Shaper
Challenging, dynamic, thrives on pressure. Has the drive and courage to overcome obstacles.
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Monitor Evaluator
Serious minded, strategic and discerning. Sees all options. Judges accurately.
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Teamworker
Co-operative, mild, perceptive and diplomatic. Listens, builds, averts friction.
Implementer
Disciplined, reliable, conservative in habits. A capacity for taking practical steps and actions.
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Completer Finisher
Painstaking, conscientious, anxious. Searches out errors and omissions. Delivers on time.
Specialist
Single-minded, self-starting, dedicated. Provides knowledge and skills in rare supply.
If you’ve picked which one is the nearest to your traits, scroll down to see your weaknesses.
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Plant
Ignores incidentals. Too pre-occupied with own thoughts to communicate effectively. Resource Investigator
Over-optimistic. Can lose interest once initial enthusiasm has passed. Co-ordinator
Can be seen as manipulative. Offloads personal work.
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Shaper
Prone to provocation. Liable to offend others. Monitor Evaluator
Can lack drive and ability to inspire others
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Teamworker
Indecisive in crunch situations Implementer
Somewhat inflexible. Slow to respond to new possibilities.
Completer Finisher
Prone to worry unduly. Reluctant to let others work on their own. Specialist
Contributes on only a limited front. Dwells on specialised personal interests.
Personally, I see myself in two of these; a Resource Investigator and a Teamworker. And I suppose the weaknesses have some truth in them too. But I think the diversity of these characteristics would go toward an excellent PR team. Don’t you think?
Technorati tags:
team, teamwork
PR before the Internet. A long process?
Posted Saturday, October 22, 2005 at 1:14am in Blogging, PR General, Technology | 6 Comments
At work yesterday a thought occurred to me on how much the Internet is used in PR and it got me thinking on how much we rely upon it for a lot of day-to-day tasks.
I send and receive countless amounts of emails everyday; I use it as a secondary research tool when writing news releases, looking for background information, monitoring trends and to get my daily news fix from my RSS feeds.
Even sending documents over to my colleague opposite me is used via the Internet.
So my question is: How did PR cope before the Internet?
PR being the speedy environment that it is and working to tight deadlines the norm, how did PR practitioners ever cope?
Simple tasks like distributing a press release to multiple journalists, looking up background information to finish a press release or sending a document or photograph to a client must have been what we would now class a painstakingly long process.
Of course there was the fax machine, but even that would have took a considerable amount of time and effort to distribute documents to multiple people. And you can’t fax a photo…well I don’t think you can?
And before that was simply the good old fashioned postal service. Oh the mind-numbing of it all!
Should us that’s new to the game feel a sense of privilege to be working in the profession with this tool. Or do the old school seasoned PROs feel we’ve missed out in ‘the good old days’?
Another WordPress invite available
Posted Friday, October 21, 2005 at 11:26am in Blogging | Leave a Comment
Any takers? First to email me can have it.
Divided loyalties
Posted Thursday, October 20, 2005 at 12:05am in Blogging | 1 Comment
Football. The beautiful game. A game that can have two grown men arguing like children in a playground; a game that can incite mass violence among two sets of fans; a game that is not a game, it is a religion devotedly followed.
Anyone who lives in the North East of England will know the passion the people of the region have for football. It is bred into them from birth. It’s part of their four survival necessities - food, water, shelter and football. In no particular order!
You have three major teams to choose from. Newcastle, Sunderland or Middlesborough. Once you’ve made your choice, there is no going back.
I am a Newcastle United fan. My good friend plays for Sunderland. This Sunday at 1.30pm, Newcastle play Sunderland in a Premier League game at St. James’ Park, Newcastle.
What should I do? Who should I support? Should I watch? Should I go to the game? Which end should I sit in? Who do I want to win? Do I remain neutral? Should I hope for a draw?
Why would anyone want a career in PR cont.
Posted Wednesday, October 19, 2005 at 11:00pm in Blogging | 2 Comments
Just to add a little bit to Piaras’s great post on Why would anyone want a career in PR? Part 1
News awareness
What I try to do at the beginning of every day is get a feel for what’s making the news on that particular day. On my drive to work, I will listen to both national and regional news reports. Once in work, I’ll check all of my RSS feeds and then turn on the radio to get the hourly updates.
Unlike Piaras, even though we use a clippings agency, we still check the newspapers every day to make sure they haven’t missed any of our releases. This job is usually down to me, but to be honest, I enjoy doing it. It keeps me news-current and on a side note, I like spotting mistakes by journalists. 
And yes Piaras, I do get black inky fingers!
Keeping up-to-date on news events is very important in PR. There may come a time when you can use the news agenda to your advantage.
Planning ahead
Analysing future events in the PR profession is a must. You should always keep one eye on the future. For example, one of your clients could be a book publisher looking to gain some publicity about a book they’re about to distribute. It would be the PR practitioner’s job to come up with some sort of campaign to meet the book publisher’s objective(s).
If the PR practitioner does a little homework, they will know that the month of May is National Share a Story Month. This (along with other forms of research) could be an ideal opportunity to muster some creative brilliance and get your client out there.
Objectives, strategy, tactics and evaluation
PR is about having objectives; creating a strategy to meet the objectives and using tactics and PR tools to implement your strategy. Once this is done, you must evaluate how effective your campaign has been and then start again. It’s a continuous evaluation process.
I like to call it Kaizen. Kaizen means continuous improvement in Japanese.
So why is evaluation important? You can find out what worked and what didn’t. And the next time you execute your strategy, you will have made changes accordingly to meet your new objectives. You are continually improving your campaign.
Day to day
Piaras is so right when he says no day is the same, which in my opinion is the great thing about PR. You become experienced and knowledgeable in a wide scope of genres, tasks, issues etc. Take today:
10am I was picking the best looking wannabe models from three local universities for a campaign we are in the middle of.
12pm I wrote two press releases for one of our clients.
2pm I interviewed a director from an established North East business for a press release I am writing.
3pm I recorded an answer phone message for a housing company we represent. (They advertise a lot of their houses in a phone message - it’s very quick paced!)
4.30pm I arranged a meeting with the web developer who is building our new website. (RSS syndicated by the way)
No doubt tomorrow I’ll be doing something different altogether.
I’ve even ’starred’ in a local TV commercial for a client whose PR and advertising account we handle. I was forced asked to do it so of course I obliged. You can imagine how my friends and family laughed when they aired it in the ad breaks of Coronation Street? Oh yes, how they laughed!
Like a lot of jobs, times do get stressful. One minute you can have a light work-load and the next you’re inundated. But I think PR is a job which can give you a great sense of accomplishment. The work you do, the people you get to meet and the results you can achieve adds to what in my opinion is one of the most exciting professions around.