I was going to open with, “I often get asked what PR Agency’s do…”, but actually I don’t!
Well, I suppose I do but its in a roundabout way which disguises the fact that some people really don’t know what PR types do.
Often marketing people don’t often know what’s really involved either. We’re a mysterious bunch….see below! But those of us who can work in one of the most stressful jobs, stay tuned as we’re going to through back the curtains on what we got up to today!
Source: blog.notesolution.co
When I was a Londoner I used to hear about all the high society It Girls and royalty doing PR jobs. I had no idea what it was! Seven years ago I moved from my lovely London Town (which I miss!) to beautiful Adelaide (where the sun sets over the sea, ahhh!). At that point I was three months pregnant and managed to snag myself a coveted Account Director role at PPR, one of the biggest PR Agencies in the country.
That’s when I fell in love with PR!
So “enough of your waffling!” I hear you cry, what do you guys actually do?
So big picture, we’re about getting businesses and brands profile, exposure, credibility, impressions, click-throughs and leads. Here’s an example below of how us PRs differentiate ourselves from marketers, branding and advertising:
Source: blog.crowdspring.com
Originally, our core method of creating hype, gaining attention and positioning our clients as thought-leaders and ones to watch was done via the media. So we would pitch stories, case studies and media releases to relevant media – online, print, radio or TV across business and consumer. However, PR is being disrupted as media is struggling. Every year Facebook and Google gain more advertising $$ and the newspapers, mags and other media see their ad sales shrinking.
I won’t dwell on that, but PR is still alive and well, and most of us now are channel-agnostic. Meaning, we’re still doing similar work in promoting our clients reputations and brands, but we’re doing this through media relations AND via social, influencer relations and the digital world.
So when it comes to core media relations work, first we set up an onboarding meeting with our new client which is done via Skype or face to face and usually lasts an hour and a half. We like to see our client’s big picture vision and then get into the real detail of what they do, why it matters, who it affects and lots of other nosey questions so we can create a PR Strategy.
We put together the PR Strategy which covers communication goals, key target markets, suggest media outlets and other communication channels to use, creative ideas and angles we’ll be using to grab the media and customers attention. With this comes an implementation timeline so our clients can see a full three months’ worth of work, broken down, week by week. We’re in contact with our clients weekly and we send monthly Wrap-Ups detailing every phone call, pitch and action our team has taken over that time.
Then we get into implementation. The best way to tell you what we ACTUALLY do, is to tell you what I did today…
So for example, today as the CEO of Rhetoric I’m often acting as a Senior Account Manager and managing day to day client accounts, as well as running the business. So this morning at 8am I was following up on quite a few leads I gained from the day before. Interested editors and journalists came from New Zealand Fairfax papers and trade publications about one of our newer clients who we’ve recently started talking to national business media about. It’s going really well and we’re getting a lot of interest, which is a complete highlight of my job! With the Account Managers at Rhetoric I also like them to text me any time they get the media interested in any of our stories! The night before I was up until 11.30pm coming up with some slightly whacky content to send out before Valentine’s Day and helping Sophie get creative with a fun giveaway we’re doing with an online retailer in Melbourne.
I spent 6 hours on this client in the end. I know this as we track all our time using Asana and Harvest. I spent a bit of time fiddling around with Harvest, setting up new client accounts and archiving old ones and working out hours per month to budget for, for each client. I spend a lot of time with my head in spreadsheets, whether it’s analyzing cash flow or checking our client’s stats around social media impressions or Google Analytics results. As a bit of a geek I love a bit of Google Analytics, the other day we found that we’d doubled a client’s web traffic within six weeks of bringing them on (another highlight of my job!).
I then talked to the CEOs of both clients I’ve got live accounts set up for this week. One was keen to get back to me in 40 minutes which allowed me to quickly get out of the house (working from home today!) and run on the beach to get my steps up (I got a FitBit for Xmas!!). I got back made a quick lunch then got straight back on the phone interviewing our client for a couple of technical questions I’d been sent about kilowatt-hours from a journalist!
I had an hour before I needed to head to an event run by the Small Business Commissioner on digital disruption so went into research mode for a PR Strategy that I’m writing, while trying to set up a local newspaper photoshoot with a pro-bono charity client we have on at the moment.
I actually did way more than that, including calling the Fin Review, who are keen to do a profile on a client and having a Google ‘G Suite for Education; lesson from another client who is a Google re-seller. At 11pm I’m writing this blog post after having my 4-7pm with my kiddies, phew! (Oh, annndddd there were some Carmello Koalas involved in my day too, and I’m not telling you how many!).
Anyway, that went into ‘My Day as a PR’!!! But hey ho, that’s blogging for you. Till next time…
Happy Rhetoric clients, who we <3 <3 <3:
Sachin Patel, CEO, Dr Sicknote |
“When we contracted Rhetoric we hadn’t launched our website and deadlines were slipping. They were agile enough to get stuck in helping project manage the build of the website and write the full copy and set up of our social media channels for us prior to launch. When we launched Dr Sicknote the media attention we got included viral content via Business Insider and Mashable to Channel 9 and Channel 10 TV interviews.
Over a six month period the team got us 24 national media placements including front page news.com.au, Australian Women’s Weekly and an interview with Steve Price on 2GB. The team were friendly, helpful and worked quickly to get new content out to different markets identified through their PR Strategy. I couldn’t be happier with the results I got with Rhetoric and I’d highly recommend them.” |
 Sarah Bartholomeusz, CEO, YouLegal |
“I engaged Rhetoric for three months when I was launching my first book. The week of the first media campaign going live I was interviewed by Australian Financial Review and The Australian and the coverage didn’t stop there.
The campaign got 21 media hits overall, including exclusive articles featured across high traffic business, legal and business women’s media. Off the back off one well-placed article I was even approached by a potential investor. I was blown away by what the team achieved in that time and have been recommending ever since!” |
Are you an entrepreneur – find out how Rhetoric offers a unique package which can help you launch or just help build your profile, position you as a thought-leader and drive traffic to your website:
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