The One Trick That Every PR Professional Must Know

I was going to provide you with the secret to being bigger than Zuckerberg, smarter than Albert Einstein and wealthier than Bill Gates, but I decided against it.

That is because I hate giving useless advice, and any advice that isn’t taken is useless. Ok, that might be an exaggeration and I suppose that is not the best way to establish credibility either.

But I am the guy who reads the stats in blog posts and then Googles them to try and verify if they are accurate or not.

That is because the blogosphere is simultaneously the world’s greatest source of information and biggest trash dump.

The One Trick That Every PR Professional Must Know

All that noise is the reason why we keep reading headlines like the subhead just above. It is why we see a million list posts about the best tools for XYZ or headlines that promise the secret to earning a million dollars while lounging around the house.

Or maybe what I should say is one of the greatest fears in Marketing/PR is that no one will see or hear our message, which means no one will respond and consequently there will be no sales, which means we will all be fired.

I can’t tell you how many times I have heard people talk about it on both the agency and client side nor can I tell you how badly I want to take those people and shake them.

Why?

It is because I advocate approaching our work as a marathon and not a sprint.  The challenge we face isn’t in securing a person’s attention but in holding it, and then convincing them to respond to whatever call-to-action we have established.

One day when I am inaugurated as King of the World I’ll mandate that marketers and PR folks spend greater effort on helping their clients establish and build credibility as experts on whatever areas they cover.

Credibility Makes Content Compelling

There are a million different theories on how many words blog posts should be. They are all tied into this belief that our collective attention spans rival a gnat and consequently people won’t read.

It is not true.

People are happy to spend time reading compelling content, and credibility is one of the fundamental components of compelling content.

It sounds obvious but the fear of not being seen/heard sometimes makes us forget about the need to focus on building our client’s expertise and establishing their credibility, because we worry that there is no time for it.

It is easier to put some lipstick on the pig and tie a bell to its tail.

The marathon approach doesn’t mean you aren’t interested in speed, rather it means you still want it but your goal is to maintain it for the long haul and not just burn out.

When you establish your client as the expert in widgets, chicken washing and or creamy delights, people are happy to give you their time because you have demonstrated value and that is a reasonable exchange.

What do you think?

(A version of this first appeared at the InNetwork blog.)