How PR Pros Become Successful - Tips for College Students and Grads

A communications major at the University of Florida recently interviewed me regarding what it takes to be successful in public relations. I offer the following tips that I gave her.

Successful PR professionals:

• Always get their key message across. Whether it is a news release, brochure, media interview or social media “Tweet,” PR pros are focused on the message(s) they need to communicate. Even if someone tries to lead them down another path, a PR pro knows how to transition back to the message to keep the spotlight on it!

• Are very good writers in both short and long form. Study grammar and style. Be crystal clear and concise in your writing. The more writing you can do, the more constructive feedback you can get to help you improve.

• Part of being a good writer is reading good writing. Some of the best PR writers in the World are editors in magazines such as Time, Newsweek and US News. Read their stories and you’ll see nearly perfect style and form. You’ll pick up sentence structures and how they crafted their story. I encourage our young staffers to read the story, and then try to recreate in their mind, or on paper if they have the time, the news release that was originally sent to the reporter.

• Are good verbal communicators. In many cases, a PR person is front and center in an interview on behalf of a company. It’s important to know your key messages, be able to transition to them, how to counter misleading questions and, of course, look calm and cool under the circumstances.

• Are creative at what they do. While all of the above is important and vital for success, you have to remember that everyone else is doing the same thing to capture a reporter’s attention. So it’s important to be creative in your approach to pitching the media about a topic, writing a news release with a headline and first paragraph that has some flair to it, creating social media tools that not only educate but are somewhat entertaining. At the end of the day, you may have the best news release ever written, but the reporter who receives it already has seen 100 other releases and will give your release about six seconds to scan it… It’s important to capture their interest from the very first word.