What They Think We Do, What We Really Do And How To Bridge The Gap

That Solo Life Podcast, Episode 242: What They Think We Do, What We Really Do And How To Bridge The Gap

In this episode of the podcast "That Solo Life," hosts Michelle Kane and Karen Swim discuss the challenges of communicating the value of public relations (PR) to clients and the general public. They emphasize the need for PR professionals to articulate their strategic role and the broader range of services they offer beyond media relations. They also discuss the importance of demonstrating the value of PR through case studies and the need for ongoing strategic thinking in the field. The hosts encourage PR professionals to practice their elevator pitch to reaffirm their own value and excitement about their work. They conclude by inviting listeners to join the Solo PR Pro community and share the podcast with others in the industry.

Michelle Kane (00:17):
Thank you for joining us for this episode of That Solo Life, the podcast for PR pros and marketers who work for themselves like me, Michelle Kane, with Voice Matters and my wonderful co-host, Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro. Hi Karen, how are you?

Karen Swim, APR (00:32):
I'm great, Michelle. How are you doing?

Michelle Kane (00:34):
I'm doing well, thank you. We are in spring. Spring is here. Kind of

Karen Swim, APR (00:40):
Ha,

Michelle Kane (00:43):
Maybe by the time this hits, that'll be a little more true. I think that may be the case, but now we were just talking offline about how when you get together at family dinners, as many of us have done over the recent holidays, you find close relatives that you have pretty good relationships with, who still have no idea what you do.

Karen Swim, APR (01:02):
This is true

Michelle Kane (01:03):
As public relations professionals, and sometimes we come up against those limitations even with our own clients. So today we want to have that conversation of how can we best communicate what we have to offer and ways that we can continue to make that case, especially in this time where earned media is a harder and harder grind and certainly not as reliable as it once was. How can we make the best of our business and be the best we can be for our clients? Right?

Karen Swim, APR (01:37):
Yeah, absolutely. I think that this might be the episode of That Solo Life that is really more for the non PR professional, but our PR professionals will definitely be able to relate.

Michelle Kane (01:54):
Yes, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. It's just interesting that especially as public relations has been more of an integrated field, right? We are the chief storytellers and that touches on many aspects of promoting a business or a cause, not simply get us in the Wall Street Journal.

Karen Swim, APR (02:18):
Yeah. I do find it frustrating that the general public overarchingly either has no idea what public relations is at all. They have no idea. If you tell people that you are in public relations or communication, they say, oh, what does that do? And the only anchor point that they have is they understand the media relations portion of it, which for many PR professionals is not even a service that they offer and for others it's merely a slice of the whole pie. So that is frustrating. My wish is that people would come to a better understanding of the strategic role that we play in organizations, whether we are consultants outside of an organization or in-house, because our true value is not just in driving media results. It's all of the other things that tactic is a part of, and it's unfortunate that even companies don't always realize that.

Michelle Kane (03:32):
True, true. Really much of the role that we serve is as a defacto chief communications officer or chief communications strategist, if you want to put it that way, simply because, hey, even when I am massaging copy or reviewing someone's internal campaign that they've said, Hey, take a look at this, make any changes. Always thinking, okay, who is the audience this is going to? How is this going to be received? How if need be, can we realign these words, these thoughts, these images, so that it is more persuasive, not in a false or diabolical way, but ideally, but in a way that the end receiver of whatever the message is that it's going to land properly and the way that the client has intended and make a difference, not only for the company and their bottom line, but for the recipient. So what we do really touches on a lot of things, and we've said this so many times, that that requires us as communications professionals to have a seat at these decision making tables rather than coming in afterward. So while we touch many of the moving parts, I guess I could understand why someone who doesn't work in PR and only sees us throw the parties in TV and movies that they would be like, what? Oh, oh. So that's what you do.

Karen Swim, APR (05:06):
It's funny because here at Solo PR Pro and in the PR profession, we've talked about how PR needs a PR person and that we're that profession that people just can't quite explain. And I've come to believe that partially true, but not entirely accurate. I do however, think let's be practical for our PR people in the audience. We understand the depth and breadth of what we do, and we often talk about really standing up for the value that we truly bring. But I do think that all of us could do a better job of communicating that value in a way that's meaningful to people that have no idea What we do, and I ran up against this with a returning client who has a new person who made some comment about our value is our relationships with the media or our contacts and my head nearly spun off because that could not be further from the truth.

(06:17):
And it's like, hi, this is not 1960 when we had Rolodexes and your Rolodex was everything. That's just not how it works. And by the way, if you're hiring me for that, you shouldn't be hiring me. That's not the true value that I bring, but it does force you to stop and think, okay, what can I do to better position myself? How can I talk about these things in a way that is not PR language, but is in real person language and ties it? And so I've long said that for many years I felt that PR was guilty of making it. We relied on PR is an art, and it's not a science, but there is science to what we do. The art is the creativity and the way that we carry out things. But we set that because we shied away from hard and fast metrics. So for example, when a client says, I want PR to drive leads, great, we can absolutely do this. Let's talk about how we can drive top of funnel leads and how the opportunities that we bring you can be leveraged to nurture those relationships with potential clients, but also how they can bring in traffic to your website or get eyes on the assets that are important to you.

(07:45):
I don't think that we all do that well enough. And so you have people with these weird ideas about what we really do, but here's the real key for communication professionals as well. The better you are able to articulate your value in meaningful ways, really cuts directly to your bottom line. So we have these PR people out here today and they're direct PR and they're selling paid placements and they're doing, they're just pushing this media relations slot machine. I promise you that even if they're earning a lot of money, they're having to work a lot harder for it. So if you really want to be a top earning successful PR professional, the difference is being more strategic and being able to have a seat at the table because you've delivered on the promises and you've demonstrated to executives that you belong there. It makes a difference in your earnings. And so if you have any desire to earn more money and to really be treated like a top professional, this is where it happens.

Michelle Kane (09:01):
That is so true. And on the flip side, companies want to make the most of their spend, so they want to be more strategic with what they're doing and how they're getting it done. So that's something else for us to consider and just to be upfront about, to say, Hey, we're not here just to make sure we fulfill that. We take everything out of your budget. We want to make sure that what we're doing is spending wisely and getting you the most return, the most value. I know that that is certainly something that they look at when they decide from year to year, quarter to quarter, who's going to stay on the team. So that's certainly something to keep in front of you. Another thing that we are certainly up against is the pro Sumer. We all have laptops now, especially with ai. There are people out there, well, I wrote something, I made a thing too. It's like, oh, okay. And we're not saying that that's not worthy or helpful, but if it were that simple,

Karen Swim, APR (10:07):
Yes,

Michelle Kane (10:08):
You'd be doing it for a living. So it's that I know we're beating back a lot of that confidence versus skill savvy in strategy. And I know sometimes we can be up against that when getting new business and they say, well, I have this and they're cheap and I just do the thing and I plug it in and it's fine. They think it's fine, but then they may start to wonder why messages aren't resonating.

Karen Swim, APR (10:36):
Can we unpack that as well? And I think that that's really important, and I think that this is, it's another reason why we should have some case studies ready to go. They can be short. They don't have to be long case studies, but case studies ready to go to show here was the client goal, here's how we got there, and here were the outcomes to show people. Because you're right, people, what I have found, and I don't mean this in a demeaning way at all, but what I have found is that you can't take strategic thinking for granted. It does not come naturally to everyone. And even if it comes naturally to you, it does not mean that you do not have to invest in learning how to be a better strategists. That is, I believe, a skillset that everyone could continually work on for the rest of their life.

(11:30):
And when you are not thinking strategically and you're focusing on tactics, then you think that the tactics are all that matter. So you do something and then you sit there and wonder like, well, how come we didn't do the result mean? Perfect example, clients who may come to you after they've been putting out press releases and no one covered them because that's a tactic. It's not the strategy, and you're missing that strategy portion. Or people who feel like they can sign up precision on their own and will just pitch, but they have no idea what to do when they get those queries. They don't know how to craft a pitch. They don't know whether or not this is the right publication, whether or not it meets their audience needs. There is actual thinking and value in the knowledge that we have in evaluating opportunities and then strategically responding to those opportunities. Even if the opportunity falls into your lap, there's a set of questions in a line of thinking that a PR professional is going to follow, that the general public will not. And that's not to say that other people aren't smart. It's to make that differentiation that public relations communication is a discipline. We actually learned this job. We didn't just wake up and say, I'm going to go get a box of crayons and color today.

Michelle Kane (12:57):
We didn't vote

Karen Swim, APR (12:57):
On discipline. Wait a second. We're trained in this discipline in the same way that marketers, it is, marketing is a trained discipline. There are things that you need to know. You don't just wake up and go, I'm going to send an email newsletter because I write really well, yay me, but do you understand why you're sending the email? Do you understand how to segment your audience? Do you even know how to identify your audience? Do you understand the right cadence? There are just so many other scientific pieces, but again, people look at the output and they think, oh, I could just use AI to do that. Yeah,

Michelle Kane (13:37):
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And eventually, unfortunately, they haven't experienced that. That has them come around to proper thinking. But yeah, I mean, it is a profession and there is the a PR designation, which certainly helps. But so even for, we are up against in many ways that consideration simply because there are so many tools out there now that appear to be levelers, but you cannot say enough for strategic thinking, for troubleshooting, for just thinking ahead through all of the potential outcomes of a scenario or a situation and being prepared for them. There is nothing quite like it that, and really, we also help our clients with their business relationships. We help them establish their credibility and their thought leadership so that they are known as a trusted source. And that's whether it's in a media placement or if they have a nice catalog of content on their website so that, oh, hey, I found this in a Google search and oh, I trust these people, so eventually I'm going to do business with them. Because you know what? They offered up all those great tips and didn't really ask me for anything for it, and it was helpful. And at the end of the day, it doesn't really get much better than that. And that's where my nerd shows up.

Karen Swim, APR (15:09):
I agree. I agree. And again, I believe that we have work to do as a profession, but for our individual audiences, I know that we're really passionate about the work that we do, and we understand that it is a discipline and that we bring something more than just the tactics to our day-to-day jobs. I suggest for all of us, one of my executives was talking about how internally with her own employees, she has them practice their elevator pitch until it's internalized. And she has them do that. I love

Michelle Kane (15:50):
That.

Karen Swim, APR (15:50):
Not just so that they can sell themselves, but so that they can reaffirm the value that they bring to the organization because that's big for her. Because when people really understand their value to an organization, they're going to be happier about the work that they do. It's going to be more fulfilling for them because you get it. You're connecting the dots. And I think for us, that's also a good practice to practice your elevator pitch on a regular basis to reaffirm the value that you bring to organizations and to continue to be excited about what you bring to the table. Because I think sometimes we gloss over that. And so our elevator pitch often is it's outward looking, right? It's the thing that we're practicing so that people get it right away. So we're focused on them and how they feel about it and how they think about it. But I think there's something to be said, practicing it for our internal purposes so that we get it, and so that we're excited about it again, and that we understand like, Hey, I am not just a media slot machine. We are other things that I bring to this table. And it's so much more complicated than that.

Michelle Kane (17:04):
Yeah. Oh my goodness. That is so true. I love that. It's like a daily affirmation for ourselves. And honestly, if we do work on that on a consistent basis, it can also help us to know, Hey, maybe the way my business has been model has been created so far. Maybe I'm looking for a shift or maybe I'm no longer doing what I kept saying I'm doing. So it's not only a great affirmation, it's a good check-in with yourself and my goodness. And not only that, but it helps you truly describe. So what do you do for work? Again,

Karen Swim, APR (17:40):
At the next holiday gathering, maybe you will have an answer that will make people sit up in their seats and go, wow, no idea. Because people should hear about what we do and they should be like, oh my gosh, that sounds like such a big job. That sounds really exciting. We all want other people to be as excited about what we do as we are.

Michelle Kane (18:03):
That would be good. That would be nice, right?

Karen Swim, APR (18:07):
It would be,

Michelle Kane (18:08):
Well, we hope you found value in this. We value that you tune in every week. We also would love it if you would share these episodes around, give us a review. That would be fantastic. Let us know how we're doing. Sign up for the newsletter@soloprpro.com. And Karen, is there anything else in the solo PR pro world that's cooking that our listeners should know about?

Karen Swim, APR (18:31):
I think that, again, we always talk about the value of our community, and that just has not changed over the years. We'd love to have you be a part of it. We're cooking up some new content stuff and we're refreshing some things. We're working on things on the website in the backend, and just hope to make this a great year for us and making it a great year for us, bringing you the resources and the support that you need to do your jobs more effectively. So yeah, if you've been sitting over on the sidelines and wondering about membership, we invite you to check us out and come join us. Membership is open, so you can go to our website and see that. And of course, this podcast Labor of Love. And as Michelle said, please, please do share it with a colleague or a friend or even a client, know that there are PR people out here explaining what we do and helping other professionals to talk about the hard things in their world as well.

Michelle Kane (19:31):
And hit us up at soloprpro.com. If you have topics you'd like us to cover, we'd love to hear from you. So until next time, thanks for listening to That Solo Life.