Why thought leadership matters in your PR strategy

Whether CEO or founder, communicating your expertise is hugely important, as part of a PR strategy.

Raising the profile of what you do and why people should listen involves being vulnerable - a key leadership quality - what are your values and beliefs? What topic, issue or campaign do you seek to change or shed light on? I've worked with CEOs and founders to communicate and crystallise, in their own words, their insights and experience. Not only does this help to build trust with the trade sector and national media, it is part of an always-on press office strategy that is essential to profile building.

Increasingly, the human face behind organisations can help build and maintain the reputation of an organisation in the good times and the bad. You help make the organisation more accessible, relatable, transparent and accountable.

AI generative search is also increasing the need for good quality thought leadership pieces that are often sourced as links in results, meaning you're more likely to be recommended or found. However, your approach to media has to be strategic, provide a new lens on a topic and be tied back to something topical. Why now?

How does your perspective add to a debate, conversation or make a point that can be summarised in one headline? Is it backed by reason and insights?

How can you use your expertise to future gaze and highlight the nuance of your industry or sector? The key here is depth and breadth. I don't mean the repurposing of marketing content either. This won't get picked up and will read as far too promotional by the press. Thought leadership requires a PR-led approach.

You will also have to factor in the editorial requirements of a target publication. This means there is no room for generalisations and cliches or a 'one size fits all' approach.

Authenticity and values must shine through, as well as citing credible sources, providing new information and fresh expertise backed by clear examples.

Personality must come through too. The extent to which depends on the media target, but if your tone is homogenous or bland, you might as well not bother.

I've worked with industry leaders across the creative industries, hospitality and the third sector to generate proactive and reactive thought leadership opportunities across print, online and broadcast media. If you'd like to chat more on how to raise your profile, get in touch.

Unlocking the power of PR: The benefits of working with a freelancer

PR is a changing landscape. It can feel daunting engaging a PR agency especially when minimum retainers are around £5K per month.

So, many people look to consider freelancers who offer PR consultancy. This can be on a project or retained basis, spanning B2B and B2C PR to increase awareness through earned media (print, broadcast and online media coverage).

There are many benefits to working with a freelancer and often the need is driven by budget constraints, as freelancers typically have lower fees than a small agency.

Firstly, freelancers have less overheads. This means they don't pass additional costs - such as IT infrastructure, offices and company costs - onto the fee.

That doesn't mean freelancers don't invest in themselves or their tools. Last year I completed media law and ESG (Environment, Social and Corporate Governance) comms training as well as the usual day-to-day tools that help me build connections and work creatively.

Experienced and agile

Secondly, freelancers have diverse experience and can make excellent consultants. I've spent the last ten years working across large, mid and small size PR agencies and direct clients that span global consumer brands through to local charities.

This leaves me in a unique position where I can advise based on experience generated from a constantly changing media landscape, calling on a significant bank of contacts who know me by name, based on the diversity of stories I've shared with them.

Dynamic consultancy (and delivery)

Freelancers are not one-trick-ponies. I hope that businesses are starting to realise that working with freelancers on a retained basis can be a much-needed extension of team with dynamic and consultative impact that improves awareness long term.

A PR consultant also takes on a leadership role that helps meet the needs of business objectives while being a critical friend who works in a focussed way to advise while delivering quality results.

If you'd like to discuss working with me as a freelancer please get in touch or why not take a look at my work?

Musings on internal comms for the millennial workforce

My first experience of internal comms was being the face of an internal poster campaign to promote resident satisfaction surveys at a local housing association. A Photoshop mock-up of a TIME magazine front page bore a photograph of me, holding a rainbow fan of colour-coded printed surveys with the headline 'TIME - to think about resident satisfaction'. A quick photo shoot courtesy of the marketing assistant and a blank office wall in my branded fleece and in no time at all my A3 laserjet printed face was plastered around the office; in the kitchen, by the photocopier and on finance department's door.

The posters served as a quick reminder to passing housing officers on their postal errands to encourage residents to fill out surveys for services provided by the housing association, from plumbing to income management, repairs and accessibility improvements.

My next stint at a national health charity saw a large internal comms team work on a number of projects that often lived and died in head office HQ (particularly after the regional offices closed), with the printed monthly newsletter just about getting to the pigeon holes of remote staff who used the office as a satellite. I believe moves to make the newsletter into a pdf were rejected by employees operating 'in the field' and whether or not the Royal Mail delivered the hard-copies to those unwilling to deal with inbox overload is another matter.

Working in agencies for the last five years has seen varying methods of internal comms. Generally, everyone works closely with similar roles and the only understanding that needs to be grasped relates to things like filling in time sheets, booking holiday, company away days and in-house training requirements. The focus of our efforts primarily goes onto client relations and external relations with media - monthly company face-to-face meetings iron out any wins and losses, promotions and departures, and then its quickly back to the cut and thrust of agency life. If you don't like it, make changes to make it work, or find the door.

But my work as a freelancer has opened my eyes to the importance of internal comms within organisations that look to practice PR in-house as an add-on to their core business objectives, both through becoming aware of how organisations act internally and externally. This relationship highlights how it's not just about the lines of communication open to colleagues to find out when the next summer away day is, but crucially, communicating the core values and beliefs of the organisation, how it places its people at its core, and of equal validity, what behaviour and conduct it expects of its employees. Because, nothing says crisis like having no documentation or practice of an internal culture which ends up bearing no relation to whatever external communications strategy is being fed to the media.

Good organisational PR starts with the employees. It doesn't matter what column inches you are grabbing with warm or established media titles and writers if you have 200 employees with no sense of cohesion or common understanding of their value, contributions or shared respect for their fellow workers. What is the point in investing in an all-singing-all-dancing media campaign if you do not invest in your people to have every reason to sing your praises? And no, getting staff to play the guitar and do stand-up in a team meeting won't solve the problem. Etsy, i'm looking at you.

People remember how you make them feel. If someone asks an employee what your organisation is like to work for, do you think they'll start with your amazing PR campaign in the Guardian, or the time when the HR department had no idea how to deal with harassment in the workplace?

I used to think internal comms was the poor cousin of external communications (less glamorous, slightly dull, and reinforcing brand identities at the expense of the individual, unless they were allowed to label their milk in the fridge), however, with organisations struggling to retain millennial work forces with a chasm of misinformation and lack of understanding between managers and this purpose, belief and value-driven generation, building the right foundations will ensure a stable and transparent organisational core.

I recently had the pleasure of attending a Guardian Masterclass with Mark Leruste, an exciting life coach who's developed corporate reverse mentoring scheme (and talks, workshops and coaching) that directly facilitates junior millennial staff providing advice to management teams to build a bridge and fix lines of communication. For more information, get in touch with Mark at http://www.markleruste.com. Also - make sure you check out his podcast The Unconventionalists.

#media #PR #internalcommunications #millennials