PR In A Jar

MMU Lecture to Public Relations MA students

by Nathan Smith

For those of you following me on Twitter and reading this blog no doubt you are hyperventilating with anticipation to whether or not the cash prize was claimed when I spoke at MMU yesterday to the Public Relations MA class. 

Alas the prize went unclaimed, but this was a small blip on an otherwise great afternoon.  Hats off to the MA students, who really impressed me and a big thank you to Dr. Jane Tonge for asking me to speak in the first place.

Having the chance to talk and listen with the students after the lecture I feel inspired to write a guide to ‘how to get a job in PR when you’re a student!’  Watch this space – I’ll aim to complete this next week.

Cash prize for the first student to read this post (subject to T&C's below)

By Nathan Smith

I’m a guest speaker to the public relations MA class at Manchester Metropolitan University this Thursday 19^th Feb – the subject is online PR.

I was always taught that the first rule of public speaking is to ‘know your audience.  This presents me with a real problem in terms of what to prepare for the students; the truth is I just don’t know at what level MA students in PR are familiar with all things digital?

Will they have online profiles – one assumes?  Do they follow blogs, better still do they write their own blogs?  Are they twittering while in the students union ordering snakebites?

I’ve decided to set a little challenge for them prior to speaking this Thursday.  For the more online savvy students, hopefully there already listening to what’s happening out there – they know I’m speaking and I’m hoping some of them may have checked out this blog. 

I will give £50 to the first student from the PR MA that I’m addressing this Thursday who responds to this blog – they can claim the cash face to face on Thursday.

I’m going to link this article to my twitter account (@nathanjsmith) and ask for a couple of retweets to get the word out there.

I’ll update you on Friday!

New team member required - we are recruiting for an Account Executive

We’re looking for a dynamic and ambitious account executive to join our team at Smith & Smith. He or she needs to be someone with excellent copywriting skills and knowledge of search marketing and CMS; they’ll be into social media in a big way and almost certainly be a keen blogger who has experience of creating brand presence online and also networking that presence through the right channels.

Essential: an interest in current affairs, an inquisitive nature and a willingness to be enthusiastic and professional about a wide range of subjects and with a wide range of people; desirable: modern languages.

Interested candidates should contact Nathan Smith in the first instance with full CV.

nathan@smithandsmithpr.co.uk

Are we failing our newbies?

At some levels we are failing in how we train the younger members of our profession.  We have to take more responsibility in ensuring that we are empowering the future of this industry to attain the highest standards.  There are many from this set that blaze a trail in public relations and I’ve been impressed beyond belief at how they’ve got to be so smart so young.  Many more, however, have left me aghast by their lack of fundamental skills and understanding of what is expected from a professional in this industry.   Smith & Smith recently launched its own Academy to address our own training needs.  These have also proven popular with clients and other interested people, particularly Nathan’s social media workshops.  But what I think is needed for some in the job is ‘back to basics’ training that would include:

 

Digital 101

What surprises me is the reluctance of some to embrace social media and the lack of basic skills needed to benefit from digital advances.  (I REALLY dislike those nay sayers who discredit social media platforms when the haven't even tried them). Rules of the game include:

·         Understand what RSS and feedreader are and how to use them

·         Join in the conversation on Twitter – the greatest place for skill transfer ever

·         Read at least five industry blogs a day, especially those written by the gurus

·         Learn about social news releases and social media newsrooms

·         Write your own blog.

 

Spelling and grammar

There is a skills shortage when it comes to spelling and grammar, evidence of which is the recent assault on the apostrophe. If incentive’s required to spur the profession to achieve perfection in both, then recruits to the PR industry need to appreciate the increasing shelf  life and accessibility of their copy due to the rapid emergence of blogs, Twitter and social media news releases.  Any early copy that is below par will come back to haunt errant scribes later in life. 

 

Media relations

Email killed conversations with journalists.  And those emails sent to check that the journalist received a press release probably ensured a few PRs were culled at the same time.  Social media is also proving hazardous in the quest for a working relationship with our traditional nemesis, evident in the way Twitter is now being used for the hated ‘ring-round’.  This and the discovery that the blogger is even fiercer than the hack means relationship counselling is still much in need.

 

General knowledge

This would start with making it mandatory to read the newspapers every morning. EVERY MORNING.  Don’t ask me how many candidates I’ve interviewed who couldn’t tell me what the day‘s headlines were. You have to be a mine of information in this job.  And if you don’t have high levels of curiosity then you shouldn’t even consider this profession.  We are information brokers, conversationalists, protagonists of our clients’ brands.  How do we ply our trade without the power of knowledge?