Stories by Diane Schwartz

Growing up, most of us were encouraged to play well in the sandbox, to share our toys and pay attention in class. Fast forward to now, and imagine your boss telling you to do the same. It would feel patronizing, right? Truth is, we could benefit from those childhood reminders. As the tools at our disposal work across multiple disciplines, it’s become more critical for brands to promote an omni-channel message that will resonate.

After volunteering to write press release for my son’s rowing team, I began thinking of the difficult work that communicators like you do every day and the possible lack of appreciation for your trade. Hence, this epic list of daily obstacles faced by PR professionals. For communicators to gain more steam and prestige, it must chip away aggressively at these challenges.

We asked thousands of communicators via PR News’ social platforms what they would do if they had an extra $250,000 in their budget. The answers were telling: while “more staff and training” was the #1 answer again, a few other ideas took on some weight, influencer relations and video being two of them.

As communicators, you know the importance of face-to-face encounters, having a meaningful conversation IRL (in real life). Whether you are attending an industry event to learn, to network or to market your brand, here are the 5 habits of highly effective event-goers.

Imagine this: attendees at a conference are flocking to a table filled with greeting cards where they can choose among “thank you,” “happy birthday,” and “congratulations” greetings, write something nice (hopefully), lick the envelope and place it in the makeshift, Lucite mailbox. This was the clever idea from American Greetings, which had an executive from… Continued

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When was the last time you hand-wrote a thank you card? When was the last time you took out that stack of business cards you collected at an event and called (actually, phoned) those new contacts? And admit that it took a lot for you to resist posting on Instagram that beautiful dessert set before you at last weekend’s dinner.

Forget about Business-to-Business or Business-to-Consumer marketing for a moment. Instead, consider Human-to-Human. If you treat your customers like the humans they are and communicate with them in human ways, you are more likely to succeed on social media. Whether you are tweeting, posting, gramming or snapping, your human customers expect to be educated, enlightened or entertained.

For those of you who are dealing with customers and stakeholders (who isn’t?), a little customer service goes a long way. Little, as in, call someone back (text or email is also fine) within a reasonable time frame. Treat them like you don’t want to lose them. Bad customer service experience can not only inconvenience you, it can change the whole way you feel about a brand.

We’ve been put in positions where we’ve had to inspire our colleagues to soldier on, even when we can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. We have our game-time playbook and have had to adjust it in real time. While the Falcons played hard, the Patriots played harder when it mattered most. That’s a lesson for the times, for these times.

Coming just days after the Women’s March, PR News’ Top Women in PR awards luncheon in NYC was an ebullient event that brought the PR industry together to celebrate female leadership and the individuals who’ve moved the communications needle in the past 12 months. If the on-stage commentary from the honorees is any indication, however, there is still much work to be done on the issues of diversity, work-life balance, workplace equity and career advancement.