Public relations and media strategy are foundational elements to a business’s branding and marketing departments. Like many other parts of business development, learning the ropes from a mentor usually offers added insights that courses or textbooks don’t cover. After all, the real-life lessons that mentors offer to younger professionals are often hard-earned, and can typically give an added advantage to newer entrepreneurs—particularly ones who are still getting a feel for making the most of their PR efforts and media presence.
To help business owners improve their marketing game, seven professionals from Forbes Agency Council, below, shared some of the most valuable PR and media strategy lessons they’ve received from their mentors. Here’s what they said:
1. Start With Your Strategic Goals
Always start with the strategic business objective. Starting with your goals will help keep all parties informed of the final destination, which is essential for decisions that are made without you. – Ryan Hansen, LumenAd
2. Make Sure You Aim For The Right Target
My best mentor taught me that the best strategy in the world cannot fix the wrong objective. The key to getting your strategy right is to ensure that you’re aiming for the right target before you start. – Daniel Hill, Hill Impact
3. Always Test And Adapt
Test or die. If you aren’t always testing and adapting, you’ll fall behind and become irrelevant. PR and media are dynamic fields—they are not for stodgy people who are set in their ways. – Greg Trimble, Lemonade Stand
4. Be Authentic In Sharing Your Story
YouTube videos and Quora articles have been my only mentors so far. Seeing the reaction of a lot of successful business owners on it, I think the single most important thing I have learned is to be authentic and have a good way to put your story into words. You can’t imagine how much free PR you can get just by telling your story, and nothing is better than free and authentic brand promotion. – Vishal Jain, Sunshy Group Of Companies
5. Simplify The Message
One of the more valuable lessons I’ve learned about PR and media strategy is “simplify the message.” It is necessary to go straight to the point. By doing that, you’ll be able to prevent distractions and make sure to deliver a great story. – Giovanbattista Cimmino, SocialAsk
6. Be Consistent And Creative
Media is all about consistency and being creative. Everyone has a unique story—in the end it’s about understanding and getting it out into the world. – Jose Aristimuno, NOW STRATEGIES
Read more in Can We Train Our Creative Muscles?
7. Offer Radical Candor
Radical candor is the most effective and most important thing in PR. Trying to “spin” a situation always ends in disaster because people will see through it immediately, and means that you are trusted less by clients, peers and journalists. The only way to truly succeed in the long term is to be completely honest—which is the opposite of how most people view those who work in PR. – Paul Blanchard, Right Angles