During this five-part blog series I’m going to be exploring some of the beliefs that people have around PR, looking into where that belief has come from and then of course, setting the facts straight.
MYTH #1: PR IS HARD
In this blog I’ll be exploring myth #1 – that PR is hard.
Before we go down that road, I’d like you to answer the following questions:
❓If something is hard should you avoid it?
❓If something is hard does it mean that it can’t be done?
❓If something is hard, do you feel a huge sense of achievement when getting it done?
I truly believe that if everything was easy then we’d get bored. I mean, where’s the fun in being handed everything to you on a plate?
There would be nothing to learn if you could already do everything you needed to do (which sounds really fricking boring to me!)
Life is never fair and it’s certainly not always rainbows and unicorns, which means that you’re always going to encounter polarities. You can’t have night without day, sunshine without rain, healing without pain, ease without hardship.
You always have a choice.
You’re in control of the decisions that you make (and not making a decision is actually making a decision)
So yes, you can choose the hard option, but you also have the choice to take the easy option either way, there will be a decision to make and some sacrifices too.
FLIPPING THE SCRIPT
How do you know if something is easy or hard if you haven’t experienced it before?
The logical option is to seek answers from people who have experienced it before, but their answer is being told through their lens. What they experienced may be unique to them, because they’re a unique individual with unique needs.
If their experience was bad, does that make the product or service they used bad, or do you look at the context in which the bad experience happened?
As human beings, we’re naturally drawn to believing those we love and trust the most, but their truth isn’t the entire truth.
Also, what’s easy for them may not be easy for you and vice versa.
For me, running a marathon would be hard, but for someone who loves to run and trains every day to enhance their skill and performance, running a marathon would not be hard 🏃♀️
I personally love throwing weights around in the gym and doing big compound movements with a barbell. 🏋️♀️ Would I say that it’s easy? No! But I enjoy it and I’m good at it so it drives me to want to get better at it. You may find weight training hard, so you’re more likely to sway the opinion of someone who is asking for advice on weight training.
YOU’VE GOT TO TRY SOMETHING TO REALLY KNOW
Maybe there’s no such thing as hard or easy, you simply enjoy it or you don’t. If it’s something that you actually want to do then whether or not it’s hard or easy becomes irrelevant, because you want to do it.
Perhaps you should ask yourself if it’s something you actually want to do, need to do, or think you need to do.
Going back to the topic of the blog, I want to demystify the belief you have that PR is hard. Anything will be hard if you choose it to be.
From experience, the people who say that PR is hard have dipped their toe in the water and not been successful, therefore have made the assumption that PR is hard. And I get it, there are many things that I stop doing because it hasn’t worked out on the first attempt.
Who can honestly put their hand on their heart and say that they perfected something the very first time that they did it?
Who dares to admit that their friend tried dipping their toe in the water, didn’t hear back from any journalists, didn’t get featured and therefore told you that it won’t work for you either. You believed them, didn’t you? They’re only trying to protect you after all, right?
As with most things, as soon as you know the steps to take, or have a formula to follow you stand a better chance of getting the results that you want (compared to trying to figure it out yourself and failing)
🧁 THE CAKE ANALOGY 🧁
Think about baking a cake. You have all the utensils and ingredients in front of you, but you don’t have a recipe in front of you, so you have no idea how much each ingredient needs to weigh, or in what order they need to be added into the cake mixer. You also have no idea how hot the oven needs to be, or how long to bake the cake for.
Do you shove it all in the mixer and the oven and hope for the best, or do you search for a recipe on Google to avoid fucking it up and wasting your time on something that’s not right for human consumption?
Perhaps you decide to give it a go, based on your experience of baking in general, or by trusting your instinct. But, nine times out of 10 you’re not going to get the results you set out to achieve.
(Hands up if you’ve ever eaten a raw cake because you hated that you’ve just wasted time, energy, gas and ingredients on something going straight in the bin? 🙋♀️)
Now let’s use the cake analogy but switch the cake for securing media coverage.
You have no idea what journalists needs from you, you just know that being featured in the press is going to raise your profile, build brand awarenesss and reach more of your ideal customers and clients.
A friend has told you to look on Twitter for #journorequest or join LightBulb, so you now have access to journalist requests.
But you don’t know what you’re doing, so you do one of two things:
1. You deploy the ‘hit and hope’ method, keeping your fingers crossed that the slap-dash response you sent to a journalist ends in a full page feature on you and your business
2. You seek the advice of a professional who can help you get started, to elimate the hours of blood, sweat and tears, only to get ghosted by multiple journalists.
(NB: at this point you’re probably already thinking ‘But PR is expensive’, so head over to another blog I’ve written as I debunk that myth too!)
YOU’RE ONLY ONE DECISION AWAY FROM SUCCESS…..OR FAILURE
Which do you choose? Option one that leads to overwhelm, overthinking and obsessively scrolling through social media
Or option two, which will get you what you want in a shorter period of time and will reduce the need to pull your hair out or scream at your computer screen
At this point I should admit that I will always choose the option that will get me somewhere faster (there’s a reason why people travel by plane instead of land or sea when holidaying abroad)
Investing in support can feel like a waste of money if you haven’t really invested in your business before, especially if you’re time rich and have more time than money to invest.
BUT, investing in an hour or two of support will save you much more time in the long run. Again, it comes down to choices: Do you want media coverage to be hard, or easy? Because it can be both.
To be totally honest and transparent with you, investing in support doesn’t mean that you’re going to land every piece of PR coverage you pitch yourself for (if it worked like that my clients would have been featured millions of times over the past 20 years!)
However, it will put you on a fasttrack to success. You’ll understand exactly how to respond to a journalist request, or pitch yourself proactively with a bespoke idea that’s specific to one media outlet
HARD OR EASY?
The choice is yours – do you choose the easy route or the hard route?
Email me and let me know what you decide
Alternatively, if you want to take the easy route and invest in fast-tracking your way to success, then schedule a Growth Audit with me and I can suggest the level of support that you need, based on where the business is at and where you want it to be.
