Source:
https://www.podbean.com/eau/pb-6wjxa-1470d5d

No matter where you are in your career, we hope you are always seeking to learn something new, whether it’s sharpening your existing skillset, meeting with other professionals, or taking on an entirely new challenge. Join us for this episode when we talk about honing your PR skills in any season of your professional life.
 
Transcript
Michelle Kane (00:01):
Thank you for joining us for another episode of That Solo Life, the podcast for PR pros and marketers who work for themselves like me, Michelle Kane, with VoiceMatters, and my wonderful co-host Karen Swim with Solo PR Pro. Hi, Karen. How's it going?
Karen Swim, APR (00:17):
Hi, Michelle. It's going really well. How good doing this week?
Michelle Kane (00:21):
Hey, can't complain. Can't complain. Things are moving along, so it's good. Even during the sleepy months of summer, things are popping, so I can't complain. <Laugh>,
Karen Swim, APR (00:33):
Definitely this summer has been anything but sleepy, let me tell you. <Laugh>.
Michelle Kane (00:38):
For sure. For sure. And you know, what we want to talk about today is something that sometimes you rely on those sleepy moments to catch up on, which is professional development. How as busy solos do we make the time to keep our tools sharpened? So I'm just going to touch on some points of things that we've been talking about as far as in what areas should you be seeking to learn more? Just learn more about, it may not be something that you practice on your own, but to just have knowledge of it so we can best serve our clients.
Karen Swim, APR (01:16):
Yeah. I always like to think of professional development in two buckets. One as personal satisfaction, you know, to sharpen skills that I really enjoy or that I just really have a desire to get better at. And then two, to either acquire or improve skillset where it's going to matter most to the clients that I serve. And so I think that's really important because the way that you can protect your ability to develop business and to develop higher value business is by understanding what are clients searching for? What do they need? Are there any gaps? And what types of skills are they looking for? Easy way to do that is to read job descriptions and see what people are putting out there, see what people are talking about, and that'll give you a clue as to what really is in demand.
Michelle Kane (02:09):
Yeah, that's so true. So true. And one of the things we've been thinking about as public relations becomes a more integrated practice, you know, you'll hear it the phrase “integrated marketing and PR.” I mean, that's how I present myself, that's how I came up actually. But even if you don't practice the marketing end - knowing about it, the basics, what's new out there right now, you know, what isn't so new, everything comes around again, or as I always preach to my clients, look, we went from fax blasts to email <laugh>. It's like, it's nothing necessarily new, but you should be familiar with some of the tools and just the basic principles, and there are plenty of resources out there. You don't have to kill yourself to get there.
Karen Swim, APR (03:07):
For sure. I absolutely agree. I was speaking with a PR pro last week that had a good reminder because this professional had said, with all of the social media channels that have popped up since, you know, Twitter has been going through whatever it's been going through <laugh>, there has been a fatigue among all of us, and you just are sick of it. Like you're over it. We join all these things because we're communications professionals, but they had joined Threads immediately and started to play around with it, tested and understand it, and shortly thereafter, a client had sought their counsel on Threads and they were like, I'm so glad that I had actually been there, had gotten the lay of the land and could actually give wise council. So it's things like that, it's being ahead of your clients, right?
And, you know, looking ahead to what you believe, because we're smart people. We have the ability to envision what's going to come and what trends we expect to see. Let that be a factor in what skills you decide to develop. You may decide that there are some skill sets that are worthy of taking certification courses. So maybe it's, you know, a series of workshops over the rest of the summer to get certified in something. Maybe it's something that you want to go and take a class at a, you know, local college, or maybe it's a conference that you want to go to that is going to help you to develop those skill sets, but, you know, be strategic about what you're developing, because I know that many of us love to learn things, and that's great, but we all also had a finite amount of time. So you want to be wise in developing things that are really going to enrich your personal satisfaction in your career, but also increase your value to your clie