High-Tech PR Blog >> Beyond the Hype

3 ways to leverage Google's new blog search

One the areas I invest a lot of self-learning time around social media and online marketing is understanding (as best I can) Google's algorithm.  Doing so is half the battle for social media success. Despite the prevailing wisdom that Google is super secret about its algorithm, it does leave good clues and SEO bloggers make good detectives.  

The most recent breadcrumb was left within its most recent "This week in search" roundup.  Google updated its Blog Search to make it a much better resource for finding more than just individual blog posts about a topic query, but a blog itself.  This is shown in the following screen shot, which I generated based upon a search on "high-tech pr" from the main Google search page, then clicking on "Blogs" in the sidebar.

What this shows is a new section at the top called "Related blogs about "high-tech PR" and a list of links to the homepages of three blogs, ours included.  Below that are links to individual posts related to the same search query, with a recent post by Don Jennings included in the results.  

Clicking on the "Related blogs about high-tech pr" pulls up an expanded listing of just the homepages of related blogs.

What this means for you 

As we typically do here, I want to offer three takeaways from these changes in practical terms based upon how you can leverage these changes to Google blog search now. We are here to help.

Use Google blog search to find bloggers worth linking to.  A blog is a two-way street.  The best way to grow traffic and influence is to pull in bloggers with similar interests through reacting and responding to their opinions and linking to them in the process.  This change in Google blog search makes it much more useful to find the bloggers and subscribe to them.

An efficient way to do this is to get to the blog homepage search based upon the path described above and then searching on different terms from there.  The blogs listed in the first few pages are ones that are most relevant and influential on that specific topic.  What's nice about this new search is how targeted you can get with your search term to find bloggers on niche topics.

Search on your market/product category to determine where you rank.  This can be done from the blog homepage search page that you arrive at when following the path described above.  If your blog is not on the first three pages of results, it's time to review and tweak the SEO settings and options provided by your blog CMS, such as the meta description, meta keywords and blog title.  Does it include those keywords for which you want to rank highly?

Just as it is important for your corporate web site to rank highly in regular search results, it will be equally important for your blog to rank high for more people to find it, link to it and use it as a source of information

Consider where else to strategically add keywords. SEO blogger Bill Slawski suggests that Google might be looking at information such as feeds, blogger bios, post titles and post content to determine the ranking of results for the blog homepage searches.  Based upon my own testing using various keywords, it does appear to me that the search snippets (the result summary presented for each link) Google generates uses keywords from these various sources to determine relevance.

This requires even more diligent SEO considerations in ongoing blog writing, as well as a review of the elements of the blog that heretofore we might have thought was not important, like a bio page or field.

If you've tried the new Google blog search, what are your takeaways?

A Buyer's Guide for Virtual Server Backup is Coming...

  As the Universe gets ready for VMworld in San Francisco next week, I had a chance to sit down (virtually) this week with Jerome Wendt, lead analyst & President at DCIG and Bob Eastman, managing director, Research at SMB Research, LLC to discuss their upcoming Virtual Server Backup Software Buyer’s Guide.

Jerome, Bob, you both are well underway on your latest Buyer’s Guide, this time on virtual server backup software.   What are you hoping to accomplish with this Buyer’s Guide?

(Jerome) First and foremost, this DCIG Virtual Server Backup Software Buyer’s Guide is intended to survey the landscape, and to provide end-users with a clarifying look at the vendors that make up the virtual server backup software market.  This seems to be a rapidly growing, and under-covered area.  So DCIG and SMB Research believe that the Buyer’s Guide can provide a comprehensive view into the vendors that serve this segment and the features and functions that each vendor is offering.

End-users should find this Buyers Guide to be the best source available on the market for an in-depth comparative look at the features and functions of each virtual server backup software product to include which vendors have what products and what vendors’ features and functions best suit their needs.

We believe this will be the best source yet for analysis and research into this market plus virtual server backup software vendors should find this Buyer’s Guide to be an invaluable tool to help to differentiate their product, educate their prospects, and accelerate their sales cycles.

I am working closely with Miles Prescott and Bob Eastman from SMB Research, who are frankly doing much of the heavy lifting on this project, to produce a comprehensive, insightful, information-rich Buyer’s Guide.

How important will support for primary virtual server OS platforms be for this Buyer’s Guide?

(Bob) What we are hearing from end-users will define what will be “important” for this Buyer’s Guide. Support for virtual server OS platforms will be just one of many features and functions that we are looking at in our analysis.  Certainly, from an end-user standpoint, the backup software vendor’s support for “their” operating system is critical to them.  They may not care that a backup software vendor offers support for multiple other virtual OS’s although that certainly says something about the robustness of the vendor’s features and functions as a whole.

From your primary research, how many software options do you plan to look at for the Buyer’s Guide?

(Bob) We have not enumerated the number of different software options that we are looking at.  Suffice it to say that we have gone out of our way to ensure that this is a comprehensive view of the features and functions being offered for virtual server backup software.  If anything, we have erred on the high side in terms of querying some features and functions that we suspect may just be “me-too” features at this point.  We are putting a lot of work into the research side of this so that the end-result is a comprehensive view of the features and functions available in a single product.

For those interested in participating, what’s the best way to do that?

(Bob) We are very interested in hearing from any software vendor if they have a software solution offering for virtual server backup.  We have decided to focus on software-only solutions in this Buyer’s Guide with the intent to cover backup appliances in a separate forthcoming Buyer’s Guide.  However the dividing line here is not always as clear as one might think. 

The best way to participate is to contact Jerome at either (402) 884-9594 or jerome.wendt@dciginc.com or myself or Miles Prescott at SMB Research at (781) 904-0408. It’s also worth checking with the marketing and sales folks in your company as they may have already been contacted by us.  The cutoff date to participate is September 8. 

Do you plan on making recommendations on backup software packages as part of the Buyer’s Guide?

(Bob) Yes, we will be making recommendations which will include scoring and ranking all of the products in the guide. It would not be a full-fledged, certifiable guide unless we arrived at these conclusions as we consider that to be one of our obligations for end-users and vendors alike – to make some sense of what we are observing for features and functions offered by the vendors and to make some recommendations for end-users.

In some sense, you could think of this as the “Consumers Report™” of virtual server backup software.  So it is not just a case of looking to see who has the most features and functions. Rather, looking at the features and functions in total, and seeing how well each vendor supports and implements which features and functions that are important to end-users.

Although each end-user’s needs may be a bit different, we anticipate being able to make some very good recommendations about what features and functions, and what vendors, are most suitable for different types and levels of end-users.

There seem to be many ways to solve the VMware backup problem, a few of which are agent-based backup, image-based backup and serverless backup. Do you think we’ll see any surprises from the results of the research and vendor participation in the Buyer’s Guide?

(Bob) I’ve worked in the analyst industry for the past 13+ years while Jerome worked his way through the ranks as an end-user but both of us have learned to assume nothing and we are constantly surprised by what our research turns up.  So yes, I certainly do anticipate seeing some surprises. 

(Jerome) This is an area where there seems to be a lot of change and evolution with how people are doing things, and it will just be interesting to see how the vendors are responding to this in their solution offerings.  We are asking the vendors to provide us with some information on their various backup technical approaches. So we anticipate being able to provide some insight on how the various approaches to backup are shaking out.

What other Buyer’s Guides can we expect to see in the future?

(Jerome) DCIG has already talked on its website about Buyer’s Guides for eDiscovery software, Midrange Array Replication Software, and Small Business Storage Arrays, so DCIG has these and others under way.  DCIG’s goal is to produce one of these a month by 2012 if not sooner.

Disclaimer:  Neither DCIG or SMB Research are clients of Lois Paul & Partners.  I’ve known Jerome for many years and we’ve shared numerous conversations over time about the storage industry.

A Hat Tip To Spur Discussion

 A while back, Paul Roberts, a PR practitioner and all around good Twitterer (@paulrobertspar), asked an open-ended question, “Which delivers more value, PR agencies or in-house PR departments?" in a blog he wrote here.  In the interest of full disclosure I can’t vouch for Paul outside Twitter, but based on his profile I feel like we’d have more than a few things in common aside from PR and social media, including (bad) golf.  I would have thought the question he asked would spur a great deal of discussion. 
 
Surprisingly, crickets began to chirp. 
 
It’s funny because I’ve been fortunate to work with a number of great PR people over the years; great internal folks, great agency folks and great independent folks, and have spent the better part of seven years talking through this debate with a few of my favorite storage PR people. 
 
The reason many may not jump right into the discussion is they may mistakenly think there’s only one right answer to the question.  Agency or internal.  However, what has made my seven year long discussion so lively with one storage PR practitioner in particular is he often jokes with me, “I wish I only did PR.”  He often mentions how his focus is applied across multiple disciplines, including: comms, marketing, customer relations, social media relations, employee relations, and media and analyst relations. In any given day, he may wear many of those "hats," some of which could be considered classic public relations.  
 
Many times, especially with small-to-emerging companies, PR professionals wear more than just one hat -- traditional PR is only one of them. That speaks more to the evolving role of PR and those of us who love doing it more than anything else.  Wearing many hats is not new to agency PR practitioners, as it’s required attire in much of the work we do.  The only difference is it’s often done for more than one company. What I see more than anything is it’s never going to be an either/or answer. There is value in each role (agency and internal) and, ultimately, success usually comes when both are collaborating, working together and executing as a closely, integrated team. And, in the digital age we work in, transparency and authenticity extends between roles as well. 
 
So, I’d suggest revisiting the debate in the interest of spurring discussion, which hat is most important?

WSJ or Blog? Can you tell the difference anymore?

"Goddammit, when is somebody going to go on the record in this story?!" Ben Bradlee yelled at his Washington Post reporters Woodward and Bernstein in the "All The President's Men" movie depiction of that newspaper's exposure of the Watergate scandal in 1976.  That sentence and that film impressed me greatly, as a fresh young journalism graduate.  I remember being fascinated by the requirement of the two journalists to build their story on facts backed up by named sources.  Interestingly, I found myself using Bradlee's phrase myself when I read Monday's front page Wall Street Journal article about how the "Hurd Deal Inflamed Board."  The story presents the following premise:

"The settlement between Mr. Hurd and Jodie Fisher, a former marketing contractor for H-P, was reached on the evening of Aug. 4 without the board's input or knowledge, this person said. It scuttled a mediation session set for the next day at which Ms. Fisher and her lawyer were to meet with H-P's outside counsel and Mr. Hurd's personal lawyer, people familiar with the matter said.

The effect was to short-circuit the board's investigation and increase mistrust among directors who already felt Mr. Hurd hadn't been fully cooperating with the internal probe, said the person familiar with the board's thinking."

Amazingly, there is not one person on the record to support this premise.  There are a few quotes -- very few -- but even those are from unnamed sources.  The story was created from conversations with "a person familiar with the board's thinking." "someone familiar with Mr. Hurd's thinking," "a person close to Mr. Hurd," "a person close to [the investigation]","a different person," and "a person familiar with the matter."  The WSJ reporters were scrupulous about carefully describing and distinguishing between their unnamed source to a degree that was almost humorous.  I will give them that.  But no one can tell me that information from someone who does not have to go on the record, use their name, and take the big risk of speaking out in public for all to see is not more credible than someone who can provide back door gossip that may be part of a grudge or part of a campaign to make some individual -- or maybe even a board of individuals -- look better or worse.  If this is the new standard of journalism, which I always had been taught was fact-based, requiring at least three solid sources, with at least one or two going on the record, then there is no difference between blogs and business publications. And, frankly, it is a sad day for journalism in general.

I tried in vain to find a published editorial guidelines for the WSJ to see if their journalistic requirements have changed this radically, along with their look and feel under Rupert Murdoch.  If anyone who reads this blog has access to this, I'd love to see it.  My sad expectation, though, is that the creeping sensationalism and shift from fact and on-the-record source-based journalism is not well documented.  It is just happening in an insidious way.

Ben Bradlee's blood pressure would have been a lot lower if the Washington Post had taken a page out of today's WSJ's approach.  They could have broken the story months earlier simply by using unnamed quotes from Woodward's well-placed government source, the man known as "Deep Throat," who was revealed in 2005 to have been high level FBI official W. Mark Felt.  It would have been a much shorter movie too.

Sometimes it doesn’t take much to do a corporate blog

 

Many of us at LP&P were talking about the recent blog post by the team at JetBlue.  If you haven’t read it, you should.  It's here for reference.   

Mostly because it’s a good approach at saying no comment but in a tactful and appropriate way.  What struck many of us was the way the comments were being used as a way to connect to the community but also have best practices discussed in such an appropriate manner.  It may not always be easy to do in all industries but it serves as a reminder on how sometimes you don’t have to say much in a blog to make an impact.

So, nice job JetBlue.  It's nice to see PR handled so well (especially through social media).

Fame-seekers need not apply

I was off the grid for a few days doing real world things that can't be done online, like helping my youngest check out colleges. I noticed an errant tweet about someone named Steve Slater, but didn't hear the whole story about the JetBlue flight attendant who made a dramatic exit, complete with inflatable slide and beer-in-hand, after a confrontation with a passenger, until I returned to work and heard the water cooler buzz. My immediate thought was not that Slater was at a personal breaking point or that this was a sign of how unpleasant air travel has become (JetBlue is one of the better airlines for comfort, in my humble opinion as a frequent traveler). It was that Slater probably is planning his next career in the world of reality TV.  Sure enough, some of the coverage of the incident describes the feeding frenzy of journalists trying to get an interview with the rebel flight attendant. My assumption is that after he does his rounds of the interview programs, Slater will write a book or join the cast of some reality TV program or other. Maybe he can do a guest spot on Saturday Night Live spoofing the Seinfeldesque scene that he actually created, although I'm not sure how they can make it more zany than it was.

I also had read about the resignation of HP CEO Mark Hurd which was tied to expense reports which did not properly classify payments made to contractor Jodie Fisher who also recently settled a sexual harassment case against him and the company.  Although Fisher is only moderately participating in the lower wattage media frenzy about this story so far, she is a B-movie actress who did hire a very high profile, TV-loving attorney, Gloria Allred, to handle her sexual harassment suit.  As one of the articles noted, publicity of any kind typically helps a struggling actress. Stay tuned to see if she cashes in on her new-found fame, despite her public statements that she did not want Hurd to lose her job over this.

And then there is Michaele Salahi, who gate-crashed a White House reception with her husband in the fall and seemingly has been rewarded for her indiscretion by landing a starring role in the currently running "Real Housewives of D.C."  And now she's had a public dust-up with Whoopi Goldberg of The View and is garnering more publicity. What's next -- a mud wrestling match with Kelly Ripa?

Publicity stunts and bad behavior attached to high profile individuals seem to lead to publicity and lucrative offers and possibly even new careers. Andy Warhol had it wrong. He said everyone would eventually have their 15 minutes of fame. These people want 15 episodes of fame, it seems. In this type of crazy society, it seems wise for public companies to be more discriminating about the people they bring into the fold. Psychological testing is something large companies do as a matter of course when screening job candidates. It's not something I'm particularly fond of, but I can understand the reasons behind this approach. It certainly behooves savvy HR departments to screen not only Facebook, but also Twitter and other social media channels when assessing a job candidate or contractor who will be interacting with the public or working directly with top spokespeople. It also probably makes sense to check out their interest in reality TV when doing the type of behavioral interviewing that helps screeners get a good feel for how candidates will operate once they are part of a company. It may be completely harmless that someone's ambition is to be part of an Amazing Race team at some point in their lives, but it also may signal that they crave the limelight and just might pull some crazy stunt that helps get them there.

 

Is Forbes playing catch-up or doing something new?

We've been following the changes at Forbes.com as another gauge on the evolution of journalism.  They are coming quickly because of the appointment earlier this year of Lewis DVorkin as editorial director of Forbes.com.

Jessica Sutera recently weighed in on the first of DVorkin's major moves to open Forbes to guest blog posts outside of their regular staff of paid freelancers and contributors.  While we said that it is merely the latest in the slow transition of traditional media properties to open up its audience to more viewpoints in a crowdsourced/community based model, time will tell how successful it is.

The latest change was first reported by Business Insider on Monday regarding the fact that every reporter would have his/her own blog on a revamped Wordpress-based network.  The new network was supposed to go live on Tuesday afternoon, but didn't officially until yesterday with DVorkin's unveiling post.

Today, Forbes takes yet another bold step forward, knowing the world demands still more from its media industry. We are soft launching (yes, that means bugs) a blogging platform that puts news — and what I like to call “Entrepreneurial Journalism” — at the center of social media. It’s just the first step in our plans to open up our digital and print platforms to content creators, consumers and marketers alike. The platform was initially developed by True/Slant, a start-up company that Forbes Media invested in 2008 and purchased just two months ago. I was its founder and CEO.

Catch-up or something new?

Based upon the description above and what we see on the new site, it's hard for me to see anything distinctly innovative.  DVorkin makes it clear that there's more to come in September, but for now the highlight is a site with a cleaner, more readable and more social-oriented design.  As for the nugget in Business Insider that every reporter would have their own blog, that doesn't appear to be true yet, as the content is segmented by topic/industry vs. by individual journalist.  That is the same approach taken by most other business publications and other popular online blog networks.

DVorkin goes on to detail how the Forbes 400 issue in September will be a revamped print product with a "Web sensibility." The melding of print and online has been a constant experiment by the media for at least three years now, first attempted by BusinessWeek before being sold to Bloomberg and more recently by the likes of Esquire with augmented reality codes and Sports Illustrated with MMS symbols that returned videos of the swimsuit models.

I'll reserve final judgment until more of the Forbes changes are rolled out, but for now, it merely seems like the latest of one, long industry experiment.

What do you think the most innovative part of this experiment has been?

RIM Plays Rope-a-dope

It was fascinating to watch the smartphone wars live and in color yester as they raged around RIM's announcement of its new OS and Blackberry Torch.  Rumors have been rampant about the pending announcement.  Even before the actual announcement occurred in New York on today, data emerged about Blackberry users preferring iPhones or Droid devices, along with reports that the United Arab Emirates were set to shut down Blackberry service in their region because RIM would not allow their government the ability to monitor conversations.  

The stories were still flying late in the day (and I'm in Central Time), and RIM is working hard to turn around the negativity hurled at what could have been a banner day for them, bringing out their "it's a floor wax; no it's a dessert topping" device that has both touch screen and a keyboard.

The Trevails of Real-time Communications

This is a textbook example of the frightening real-time communications that companies face today.  Competitors who get wind of upcoming news can deflect from the positive aspects of announcements by feeding research, data and sources such as the ones RIM is now defending itself against. 

RIM is off of the ropes at present and reacting aggressively to defend itself, but the moral of the story is that you need to:

1. tighten security (think of Steve Jobs) for highly anticipated announcements in fiercely fought markets like smartphones and

2. you need to be prepared for what almost seems like the communications version of a denial of service attack that can take away your control of the communications around your announcement.

As a Blackberry Tour user who uses my love of the keyboard to defend my uncool lack of adoption of the iPhone, I applaud RIM for battling back to somewhat steady ground.  And as a communications professional, I will enjoy tuning in today to see Round 2.

Even Don Draper Needs Coaching

Like everyone who is hooked on Mad Men, I eagerly awaited the season opener this past Sunday.  As someone who has done PR for a living for many years, I was curious about the name of the season opener, "Public Relations."  

As with everything related to this terrific AMC original series set in the 50s and now 60s world of advertising, public relations had multiple meanings in this episode.  Copywriter Peggy Olson teamed up with account services lead Pete Campbell to stage what they called a PR stunt -- hiring two actresses to fake a fight over the last ham in a market before Thanksgiving.  The goal -- to give their client, who produces the hams, a revenue boost through publicity before the national holiday -- was seemingly achieved and the client increased their ad spend with the agency.  

The actresses took the fight a little too literally, however, and one pressed charges against the other. Peggy had to go hat-in-hand (well, really, on head -- this is the early 60s and women still wore them) to her angry boss, creative director Don Draper to get the bail money to have the actress released and to get both to stay mum about Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce's (SCDP) part in the widely covered ham stunt.

It was funny to hear Peggy describe her idea for the stunt, saying that they couldn't claim credit for it or get paid for it, as it was public relations, but it could get their client the attention they needed to feel that the SCDP ads were working and should be continued and possibly expanded.  Even today, PR and advertising have an uneasy relationship with advertising people and advertising-focused marketing people often believing that advertising builds brands and PR only supports this effort.  

As PR has shifted over the decades since the Mad Men era, PR agencies have risen and thrived, mostly separately from ad agencies, but sometimes as separate but equal divisions.  And with the massive shift to the internet and the blogosphere rather than print publications or broadcast vehicles to reach customers, PR is in a much stronger position in the new digital age of our profession. 

From PR Stunt to Media Training Lesson

The more prominent PR piece of the episode had our anti-hero Draper, a celebrated ad man of his day who has just launched a Glo-Coat television ad that has everyone buzzing, in the uncomfortable position of being interviewed by Advertising Age.  The end of the episode shows him again across the table from another interviewer, this time from the Wall Street Journal.

How does Don Draper do in this foray into using public relations to help his fledgling ad agency continue the buzz of his ad campaign and leverage his notoriety as a great ad man?  In the first interview, he is his usual mysterious recalcitrant self and gives the reporter nothing to work with.  He breaks one of the first rules of interviews -- don't irritate the interviewer -- and pays the price with an unflattering portrait of him that does not serve the new agency well and even causes a lucrative client to leave the firm.  

After he is chastised for failing at this part of his job -- promoting the agency's success -- he agrees to take another bite of the PR apple and really goes for it, this time spinning the tale of a cocky confident ad talent who led the exodus from his former stodgy ownership to this hot new ad firm that is going to go places.  We don't know the results of that interview yet, but it was definitely more revealing than the first one and the ending music encourages the viewer to cheer him on.

If Only Joanie Handled the Preparation

But what should SCDP have done with both of these PR "opportunities" for their most important asset, Don Draper?  Certainly not send him out without any preparation, which clearly is what they did.  Could these otherwise intelligent people who have known this man for years not have predicted the mess he would make with the first interview?  Did no one find out from the reporter what his angle was and help Don prepare?  He seemed to be caught completely flat-footed and surprised by the fact that this was a personal profile.  

And even with the second interview, which his senior partner, Bert Cooper, set up through a friend at the WSJ to do damage control for the first interview, Don was left to his own devices to decide to take a completely different tack and make things up about a second floor they don't have and who knows what else.  Again, no one sat him down and ran through what the reporter was looking for and what types of questions Don may receive.  And, even more important, no one talked with him about what would be the best outcome from this interview for SCDP.

This is not to say Don Draper would have been an easy subject to coach before an interview.  Having prepared hundreds of top executives over the years for media interviews, I can absolutely testify that some of them were not far from the Draper style of, "I don't need coaching for this."  

If SCDP was my company or my client, I would have recommended they work through Joan Harris, the office and traffic manager for the agency.  If Joan had done her usual job of managing everything, she would have had the possible questions and some recommended answers for Don in advance of each interview.  She would have used just the right amount of humor and persuasiveness to give him some pointers that would have made the first interview less disastrous and helped him think through the second one so he was bombastic without making mistakes. Come to think of it, Joan would be a great executive coach in general. 

We will see next week whether the second interview, which was on the edge by the glimpse of what we saw, results in positive coverage or causes Don to slip up when fact checkers at the WSJ discover there is no second floor at SCDP.

What are your predictions for what the outcome will be?

5 Ways for PR Interns to Get Hired Quickly

It’s not easy to get an internship these days.  And once you nail down the position, it isn’t always easy being an intern.  I know this both from personal experience (albeit from a long time ago) and also from recent experiences of my children who are in college or graduating into a tough economic period in which even unpaid internships are competitive and difficult to attain.  

My colleague Don Jennings, pointed out this recent blog post: Are Internships Worth it for budding PR Pros?, which talks about perception versus reality of internships and offers some questions interns should ask before they pursue a particular position. 

We circulated the blog post among our PR team, and some current and past interns (who did their stints here or elsewhere) weighed in on what they believe makes PR internships worthwhile:

They can help you network into a permanent position. 

Our agency stringently screens interns and we have been very fortunate to find many great permanent employees over the years in the intern ranks.  Some other agencies or organizations can’t offer you a permanent position, but they can help you find your next position.

One of our current interns, Casey Cardinal, networked aggressively, sending out hundreds of resumes, to find internships during her college years, including an internship last summer for a former LP&Per who helped recommend her for her current position.  “Although I feel as though I ‘lucked out’ in landing where I am today, I know that without my ambition to succeed, I wouldn’t have been able to turn these opportunities into experiences.”

Boston-based associate account representative Casey Ford offered that "what stood out in Mickie Kennedy's blog post the most was the third question to ask an employer: 'Who came before me?'  As a prospective employee, it is important to see evidence of growth within the company.  I always relate it to baseball:  The best organizations are usually the ones who see the value in developing their farm system."

They can help you determine what you want to do and where your strengths lie.

I know my daughter did an internship very close to her college major that helped her confirm that it really wasn’t what she wanted to pursue long term.  She then did a PR internship in a small agency with a mentoring culture that gave her great experience and showed her that communications and marketing was a possible direction. The communication skills she gained in that unpaid internship also helped her greatly in the permanent position she landed.

One of our LP&P Boston interns, Abigail Atwood, is finding that her PR internship is “more beneficial and educational” than the ones some of her friends are completing at accounting and financial firms.  “A PR internship offers the opportunity to be a more active member of the staff because there are basic/introductory tasks and projects for which many people already possess the skill, but may just need direction and mentoring to accomplish."

They can help you learn the lingo

Boston-based account representative Brittany McLaughlin said her "past PR internships were certainly worthwhile, allowing me to 'learn the lingo' of PR before jumping in head first, which I think is key in this industry.  What's a byline? What do you mean by business vs. trade press?  What's an editorial calendar?  Those of us who have been at it for a while take these terms for granted, but coming from someone who studied marketing in college and hadn't heard any of these terms prior . . . it's a big deal.” 

You can learn from the best and the brightest

Celebrating her eighth year as an LP&Per, account manager Jolene Bonina said, “Even today, as I interview intern candidates for positions at LP&P, I am the first to call out my own experiences as a ‘homegrown’ LP&Per who has worked my way into a long-term career because I truly believe a PR internship is the best way ‘in the door’ at a PR agency and as an entry-level position, because you quickly learn the nuts & bolts of a PR position, you get the hands-on experience you need, and you learn from the best and the brightest around you.”

Austin-based Account Representative Dustin Blackwell agrees: “My internship allowed me to basically be mentored by people who had been in my shoes before and helped me realize the ins and outs and everything in between. The guidance you get as an intern is far more beneficial than just jumping straight into a role, especially with no previous experience beyond schooling. In school, they teach you how to write press releases, manage a campaign and effectively learn the higher functionality of public relations. An internship lets you hit the ground running, have the backup you need in skilled, professional coworkers, and by the time you’re ready for a promotion, you’re able to grasp what real PR is and how to do it skillfully.”

5 Ways for Interns to Get Hired Quickly

Make sure they have a plan to give you meaningful work and training

Danielle Bentz, another Boston intern, found that she just was not being used by the glamorous ad agency that hired her and “going to work became torture.”  Danielle advises other intern candidates to avoid at all costs internships where there is no planned training or tracking of each person's activities.  "The most important questions you can ask are 'how much interaction will I have on the accounts?' and 'what responsibilities does an intern receive here?'  Smart companies use their interns."

Show Commitment, regardless of the task at hand

Casey Ford disagreed on the blog post's insistence that interns should ask potential employees what they will be doing during the internship.  "To me, it's not what you do; it's how well you do it that really matters.  If it is a small task, blow them away with your execution.  If it's a large project, show them you are ready to take on anything.  By turning your nose up at getting a cup of coffee, you are showing a lack of commitment to the company.  Everyone has to start somewhere.  Good work will always be rewarded."

Don’t overlook the smaller agencies

Amber Terry, an associate account representative from our Austin office said her first internship at a 5-person PR agency was a great experience because "I got to work hands-on with the principal -- a guy with 30+ years in the industry.  He gave me a lot of responsibility, which was scary at first.  Within my first few weeks, I was writing press releases and case studies.  Given my experience, starting out small better prepares you for the next big step, which for me was beginning my career at LP&P."

Be assertive, ask questions and network

Austin Associate Account Representative Sam Brune said that the several internships she completed in the past gave her a good foothold in PR and helped her assemble the following list of questions that a fledgling PR person should use regularly in order to be successful wherever they land:

"'What else can I be doing?' -- The easiest way to impress your manager or boss is to ask for assignments.  They are busy and they need help, even if it might take a little explaining.

'Is this what you mean?' -- Don't be afraid to ask questions.  It's a lot easier (and less costly) to spend the time correcting something halfway through than starting over or having a task transitioned away from you.

'Can we keep in touch?' -- The time at your internships is only part of the relationship/experience. The contact you keep with your colleagues is equally as important."

I think Dustin Blackwell summed it up well for his LP&P colleagues regarding the true value of the right PR internship: “PR is stressful, hectic and can overshadow your idea of a perfect business relationship between agency and client, but that same internship can teach you how to succeed, not only as an individual, but as a team player, coworker and eventual mentor to someone who now stands in the same intern shoes that you once filled.”