Career
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7 things cooking taught me about PR
The biggest tip new and aspiring PR pros often get from seasoned pros is that your most valuable lessons are the ones you learn outside the classroom. Even though this traditionally means on-the-job experience, the professional development you invest in and other opportunities you encounter in your post-grad life, you’d be surprised by where inspiration and insight can come from – like your hobbies and interests outside of public relations. There are two things that I love in life: cooking and communicating. I could, and often do, write for days on end. Twitter is the most used app on my phone. I strongly believe that communicating is one of the…
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Overcoming Impostor Syndrome
Raise your hand if you ever downplay your achievements? How about if you ever feel like you’re a fraud or a failure? Or like you don’t know anything or everyone in your field is lightyears ahead of you? Or that your intelligence, knowledge or accomplishments are insignificant? How about questioning your skills? Oh good, I’m not alone. If you raised your hand, you’ve just described impostor syndrome. It’s a thing. Impostor Syndrome: a psychological phenomenon in which people are unable to see their own accomplishments, dismissing them as luck, timing or as a result of deceiving others into thinking they are more intelligent and competent than they believe themselves to…
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Fresh Start to 2016
This year, I’ve decided not to make resolutions. Resolutions usually end up being lofty aspirations or very general changes, like “being healthier,” “working out more,” “read more books,” or “spend less.” Aspiring to do better is always great, but it’s easy to give up on such broad objectives. Sure, swapping the greasy pepperoni for some veggies on your pizza every day at lunch is healthier, but not by much. So instead of establishing some broad aspirations for the year, I’m setting goals in 2016. Why goals? Goals are measurable. Goals are specific. It’s a goal to start your own business or to read 50 books in a year or learn…
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Building the Brand of You: What’s in a Portfolio
The holidays are here and we’ve all got a little extra downtime between all that time with family and loved ones. And with the new year just ahead, there’s no better time to give your professional materials a once-over, especially your portfolio. I don’t know about you, but I dread putting together my portfolio. Part of my problem may be that I wait until I need it to put one together. Most of it is that I don’t always know what to put in my portfolio. A portfolio is meant to be a sampling of your best work examples. It should show exactly what you can do and what you’ve…
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Holiday Success: The PR Girl Way
PR Girls, we’re in the home stretch. Thanksgiving is behind us now, Christmas is rapidly approaching and the new year is on its heels. 2016 is upon us! We’re at the point in the year when we’re wrapping up the plans we’ve been working on and finalizing our outcomes and reports for the year, while putting together the strategies and plans for the coming year. If you’re a Sagittarius like me, you’ve got the added bonus of a birthday thrown in with those holidays & tasks, too. It can be difficult to completely focus with all that’s going on – I mean, anyone would be distracted by all those twinkling…
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Taming your Twitter
It’s no secret that Twitter is most PR pros social media network of choice. No other network offers the plethora of information, the conversation possibilities or the chance to connect with millions of people in real time. There aren’t algorithms preventing anyone from seeing our tweets or ranking others above ours. It’s all about timing! On the user’s end, Twitter can get a bit messy. If you’re following hundreds, or thousands, of other users from all over the world who are interested in many different things, it can be difficult to weed through all those tweets in your timeline for information that you’re interested in right then. The unfiltered nature…
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Building the Brand of You: Finding Your Niche
In last month’s “Building the Brand of You” installment, I talked about where to start with your personal brand – what do you want it to say about you and how you want others to see you. I also talked about thinking about which channels and methods you’ll use to promote yourself. Today we’re going to dive right into determining your niche. Figuring out your niche is the best way to start building your own brand. There are tons of people on social media and many with their own blogs and sites to share their ideas, so why should people pay attention to what you have to say? That’s where…
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PR Girl’s Guide to…Job Searching
Whether you’re fresh out of college, looking to switch jobs or an experienced pro looking for a change, job searching is tough and no one really enjoys it. If you’re currently unemployed and actively seeking a new opportunity to sink your teeth into, the search often feels endless and frustrating. Time seems to pass by both rapidly, as the weeks fly off you calendar while you send resume after resume, and terribly slowly, as the days drag on while you check your email and phone hoping for good news. So, yea, job searching is a headache, but that’s not news to anyone. It’s also not incredibly helpful information, unless you’re…
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Building the Brand of You: Where to Start
Last month, I published the first part of a series on personal branding, a topic I think is incredibly important for young PR professionals. In that post, I talked about why a personal brand is important and how it can help pros build their career. Today’s post will look at where to begin in building your personal brand. Branding used to be reserved only for brands and celebrities, primarily because brands were built on what people said about you. The media had to talk about you and other people had to create buzz around your brand. Thanks to the internet and social media, self-publishing and self-promotion is the new norm. The…
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Building the Brand of You
When looking for a job, what do we do to prepare? We put together our portfolio, we spruce up our résumés, we clean up any questionable social media and we start putting our best foot forward and apply for jobs. It’s not enough anymore to get good grades, take the right classes, have the right internships and extracurricular activities if you want to land you’re dream job. That’s a lot of work to put in all at once before even submitting your first application. Why spend so much time prepping your materials and image once you decide to head down the job search path? Developing and maintaining a personal brand…