As the holidays approach, you may be thinking about the gifts you’ll give others, whether for friends and family or clients and employees. But what about the gifts you give yourself? Simply putting in hard work toward something always reaps benefits, and public relations is no exception.
You’ve taken the more challenging road when it comes to managing your own public relations. You scoff at hiring a PR consultant. You’ve got this. Now it’s time to enjoy the rewards of managing your own PR.
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1. You Are More Tapped into Your Company
If you handed your PR over to some third party, you wouldn’t be on top of your brand’s news and media mentions like you are. As a result, you feel like you and your company beat as one. That means you’re better positioned to help your company get more attention online and in the press.
2. You’re Saving Money
Keeping PR in-house saves money. Often, employees or business owners can manage both public relations and marketing, since they’re so intertwined. Use the money you save on other aspects of your marketing, like social media ads or hiring a content marketing writer.
3. You’ve Expanded Your Skills
Maybe you’ve taught yourself how to write press releases and how to pitch journalists, which you didn’t know how to do before. Bonus. Your resume just got filled out with even more marketable skills. And these skills carry across more than PR. Knowing how to write a press release means you’ve amped up your corporate communication skills, which is useful in everything from writing emails to clients to sales presentations. And learning how to interact with journalists can help you in nudging leads toward a sale.
4. You’ve Set Yourself Up for a Great 2016
If you’ve been plugging away at building connections with journalists this year, you’ll be well-positioned to pitch them when you have breaking news next year. PR is a long game, and sometimes it takes months to really get a foothold. But once journalists turn their attention on you, great things can happen.
Managing your PR takes work, that’s true. But it’s work that pays off in the long run, so keep plugging away at it.
Images: Jonas Nordlund, 401(K) 2012 (Creative Commons)
