It’s Women’s Month and I feel that the young ladies that have just started out in the PR space need all the advice that they can get so that they can grow into the kind of professionals they want to be. I’ve decided to tackle this topic because I feel like the only way that female PR professionals will be taken seriously and seen as strategic is if they do everything necessary to ensure that they reach this point of respect and recognition.
PR together with Marketing and other related disciplines have always been seen by sales teams especially – as a cost centre. We were referred to as divisions that are there only to spend money but do not bring any in. These professions as much as businesses feel that they are necessary, their value is at most times questioned. This is because a lot of other professionals do not understand our role in a business. As PR or even Marketing, our role is to work closely with sales teams – understand their priorities or customer value propositions so that we can create platforms or conducive environments for them to sell. PR especially is not there to sell on behalf of the company – to re-iterate its role – it is to do the following:
- To build the Reputation of a company’s brand in its key markets or audiences.
- To provide counsel to the company’s executives on reputation-related issues.
- To create awareness around a company’s customer value [proposition (CVP) and articulate its unique selling point to key stakeholders, and
- To profile an organisation and provide targeted audiences or potential clients with relevant information on company offerings to assist them in making informed business or purchasing decisions.
It’s important for young, female PR professionals to know and understand their role early on in their careers so that they can provide the value required by their internal or external clients. However, it’s vital to know that becoming a strategist takes time and our young professionals need to get the basics right first before growing into the strategic roles. This means that when one is starting out, no job can be viewed as beneath one’s standards. It doesn’t matter if you come into your first job with a master’s degree in PR or Communications, everyone starts from the bottom. Young PR professionals need to know that as part of the journey to becoming a strategist, you will need to first solidify your foundation.
This foundation phase includes a lot of PR administrative work that you need to master way before you move to the compilation of strategies. To reach the strategic stage, you, unfortunately, need to assist in implementing some PR operational tasks for press events that could at times include the drafting of invites, compilation of media lists, calling of media houses to verify contact details of journalists/news editors, sending out invites or media advisories, doing follow-ups for RSVPs, helping to draft press releases, distributing them to media houses and helping with registration at media events to name but a few. To master PR skills, you unfortunately cannot be choosy and want to do certain jobs and not others. There are no tasks in the foundation phase that can be skipped because this will, unfortunately, hurt your career at a later stage.
What helps to set you apart in PR is your ability to write because this teaches you to identify newsworthy angles and understand what makes news. It is essential to find mentors that can help you to learn how to write. Without writing skills – you will, unfortunately, end up being a glorified coordinator. The writing skill helps you to even identify your area of speciality, and this becomes your unique selling point. Being patient with your process of learning and mastering the basics means that when you are eventually in a strategic, leadership position – no one in your team will be able to submit sub-standard work to you. You will be able to identify sub-standard work from far and not accept it until it’s of acceptable quality.
Miranda Lusiba is the Founding Director of Strangé Consulting – a boutique PR Agency specialising in Communication, Freelance Writing, Media Relations, Reputation Management and Media Training. #pradvice
