The 7 Habits of Highly Effective PR Pros

Since its release in 1989, Stephen Covey’s “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” has become a blueprint on how to achieve career success. I just celebrated my ten-year anniversary of practicing PR and have worked in-house roles and at agencies. Over time, I’ve created my own blueprint for PR success – “7 Habits of Highly Effective PR Pros.” It’s always good for PR pros to revisit the basics – but it’s also helpful for clients to get a read on what their PR pros should be doing.

Read the media. Any PR person worth his or her salt should be spending considerable time each week reading the media. Members of the media switch jobs and beats often, so it is important to stay on top of those shifts. More importantly, reading the media is the best way to get ideas.

If a story is in the Wall Street Journal, why not try to merchandise it in a local market? If gas prices are up, how does that affect our clients? A recent example of NLA doing this is with the recent news of the overtime rules. We saw the news had come out and immediately turned it around into a pitch for our clients.

Think outside the blast. Nick Powills founded No Limit Agency* on a key principle: we are the anti-blasting agency. Throwing a pitch together and mass emailing it to as many reporters as you can find is not only out-of-date, but it’s very ineffective. Many agencies utilize this as their primary strategy, and in fact, at my first agency, we had a separate program that we used for the sole purpose of blasting out emails. Not at NLA.

Part of our DNA is constantly thinking outside the box to find creative ways to get press for our clients. Whether it’s positioning TWO MEN AND A TRUCK* to talk about packing tips for college students or offering up the CEOs of our brands to talk about the monthly jobs report, the wheels are always turning.

Ask the right questions. Oftentimes, clients aren’t as forthcoming as they should be with information because they don’t always know what’s newsworthy and what isn’t. As PR pros, it’s up to us to pull out what we need from them and ask the right questions. At first glance, sales numbers might not seem compelling but if you dig a little deeper and slice the data the right way, you can uncover a story.

Listen. When you ask a question, listen to the response! Other than it being the right thing to do (duh!), listening to clients helps you find nuggets of information that can lead to further questions that can be turned into possible pitches.

Keep your email organized. This seems simple, but even the best PR pros can get bogged down with emails. It’s understandable–emails are coming from all angles, from media to clients to co-workers.

Don’t be a slave to your email, but don’t let hours go by without checking. Crises happen when you least expect it, and members of the media will move on to a new source if they don’t hear back in a timely manner. Treat your emails like triage–deal with them in order of urgency!

Plan. Plan. Plan. In order to be successful, you need a plan of attack. Football coaches have playbooks for a reason! In PR, the days (and weeks) fly by–and before you know it, it’s 3:00 p.m. and you still have ten things to do before leaving the office for the night.

Full days don’t allow the luxury of downtime, so most days boil down to prioritizing. When you have a plan in place for each client, it’s easier to check things off your to-do list when you have a plan in place for each client. Set aside a chunk of time each month to plan ahead for the next month. You–and your clients–will be glad you did.

Be ready (and open) to changing your strategy. Just as it’s important to plan, it’s equally important to be flexible and recognize that plans can change in the blink of an eye. Whether it’s a franchisee changing an opening date or breaking news popping up that requires a new direction, it’s important to be nimble to achieve success.

I’m sure that when I look back at this article in ten years, I’ll have lots of additions (and subtractions, probably!) but the above serves as a good playbook for PR pros to follow in 2015.