Nurturing the Future of PR

Nurturing the Future of PR

Being an effective, skilled PR professional requires a combination of ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ skills. Like excellent communication and interpersonal capabilities, alongside trend analytics and digital know-how. It demands a delicate balance of understanding client objectives and understanding what’s newsworthy. Staying in the present, with one eye on the horizon.

PR is filled with highly-driven, highly-intelligent individuals. But with an increasingly fast-paced industry landscape, bigger client demands, and a few years of at-home working, many agencies are spotting gaps in professionals’ skills. Skills that are imperative to clients, companies, and career aspirations.

We’ve revisited some of the most central qualities and capabilities in PR to aid your training, and help you develop productive, fulfilled teams that drive PR performance.

Core Skills

A wide range of experience and know-how can be used to drive clients’ brand presence and skyrocket their media campaigns. But the key is making sure your talent is well-versed in the bare necessities of PR – and that they’re continually revisiting these to fill in any gaps.

Identifying an ‘Angle’. Not everyone will be required to determine the angle of a PR campaign or strategy, but every industry pro should know how to identify a great hook.

This skill helps talent… understand the ‘why’ behind a campaign, and the way it both rolls out in the media and connects to a client’s goals.

PR Storytelling. In many senses, storytelling is at the very foundation of PR, so knowing how to craft an engaging story – written and verbally – is crucial.

This skill helps talent… produce great content, determine how it fits into current news and public rhetoric, and communicate effectively with clients.

Pitching & Media Relations. There’s an art to selling in a story, and it starts with a snappy, relevant pitch, and great relationships in the media.

These skills help talent… build long-term connections with reporters, and aids your agency’s reputation as a source for quality news.

Digital Analytics. The ability to view analytics and draw insights, observations and inferences has never been so crucial.

This skill helps talent… identify trends, patterns and relevancy, supports with the creation of activity reports, and identify ways to enhance a campaign for greater results.

Additional Skills

For many agencies, the AMs and SAMs of pre-2020 are now at leadership level, making big-picture decisions that affect the company every day. Progression is an important step in businesses’ talent retention, but there are key skills many now-senior professionals missed out on while working from home…

Leading & Managing. ‘Train the trainer’. Line management and coaching are imperative to business growth and team productivity, not to mention revenue and retention. 

This skill helps talent… develop high-performing teams that deliver results, support individual career goals, and create a supportive, healthy working culture.

Presentation & Public Speaking. Presenting on a client call, or speaking in a webinar is wildly different to being in a boardroom or on stage when all eyes are focused on the speaker.

This skill helps talent… drive company revenue goals and brand awareness by attending in-person opportunities, take on additional responsibilities, and build trust with partners.

Business Development. The more senior the role, the more likely business development will be a KPI. That includes consistently sourcing opportunities, and knowing how to close the sale.

These skills help talent… upsell and cross-sell existing clients, secure new business, identify prospects, and even network with potential partners.  

Crisis Management. Crisis management is central to PR – both for a company and for clients. This is as much about solution-finding as it is about ‘spinning’ a story.

This skill helps talent… calmly, competently and confidently manage situations, find solutions, and act with controlled urgency, as well as act in the best interests of stakeholders and brands.

Ask [the right] questions.

Asking team members of all experience levels and seniority what their ambitions are, and the skills they feel they’re missing to fulfil those goals will enable you to construct a suitable plan. Be it through mentorship, team training days, courses or certifications, or individual development plans.

The outcomes: your talent clearly sees you’re invested in their future, and actionable plans will help individuals achieve goals, feeling more fulfilled and valued at work. You strategically upskill employees for a more productive team, and support company retention. Plus, clients and partners benefit from more skilled, confident account teams.

Multiple birds, one stone.

Further Resources

If you’re overhauling how you onboard, train and upskill your talent, we can help.

We recently compiled a training checklist to help you bring your junior talent up to speed on the fundamentals – and refresh your existing staff, too. Read it here.

Or, for a more hands-on approach, speak to us about our workshops. We run tailored training sessions and events for companies operating across the PR industry and beyond.

Author: Helena Rangers – Senior Consultant