How to Improve your Personal PR by Ronn Torossian

Basic Steps to Improve Your Personal PR

Public Rela+ons is For Everyone One of the key methods of maintaining a successful image for your business or personal pursuits is to have a decent grasp of how Public Rela?ons work.

Managing Public Rela?ons is an important facet of several different career fields, because many successful people will at one ?me or another find themselves in the public eye. This aFen?on can catch some by surprise, therefore it is a good idea for anyone seeking upward mobility to at least learn some PR basics. By following a few simple steps, even those who seem to suffer from perpetual foot-­‐in-­‐mouth syndrome can become a Public Rela?ons maven.

Take Stock of your Public Rela+ons Situa+on The first step to improving the public image of a business or individual is to perform a Public Rela?ons Audit. It may sound complicated or even scary, but this audit is basically a list of pros and cons. To complete a PR audit, compile 2 lists: Things which have the poten?al to help your public image, and things which have the poten?al to hurt it. AKer the informa?on has been organized, it can be compared in order to assess your Public Rela?ons Risk Factor. There is no par?cular scale to follow in regards to how high your risk factor may be. They key is to simply work on decreasing the items which may have a nega?ve impact.

Modera+on is Key Once you have iden?fied poten?al Public Rela?ons risks, the next step is to work on increasing your general appeal across the board. This is useful for poli?cians, business owners, and public speakers alike. In general, you want to at least appear to be very “Middle of the Road” in your dealings. Any poli?cal poll from the last 50 years of elec?ons will show that moderate candidates do beFer across the board in elec?ons. Of course candidates who express fervent approval for special interests will gain a great deal of aFen?on and press, but they rarely get elected, why? The answer is simpler than you might think. Human nature tends to lead people to prefer leaders whose behavior can be easily predicted. Being outwardly moderate indicates to those observing that you are more considerate, intelligent and trustworthy.

Who Are You Trying to Impress?

The third basic step to maintaining good Public Rela?ons is to iden?fy your key demographic. This is the group of people you most wish to aFract to yourself or your business. Certain demographics will be aFracted by certain behaviors and repelled by others. It is useful to learn which issues and features are important to your target demographic and use them to your advantage. Consider the current 18-­‐30 year old urban demographic: This group, more so than any other is aFracted to representa?on. They want to know that you not only want to sell a product or idea to them, but also that you consider their ideas and interests to be a valid contribu?on to the culture at large, and not simply things to by laughed at and chalked up to youthful silliness.

For the current genera?on this typically involves the integra?on of technology into your business model. However, the need for representa?on is not a new facet of this demographic.

In Spike Lee’s 1989 film “Do the Right Thing”, an Italian-­‐ American business owner opera?ng in an African-­‐American neighborhood ends up losing his restaurant to vandalism that was the direct result of his refusal to acknowledge that his business’s success is due almost en?rely to the Black customers that frequent it. A running theme throughout the film is the idea of escala?ng events, in that several scenes which nearly became violent (and one that did) could have been avoided by simply acknowledging the value each group represented to the other.

Managed Public Rela+ons = Increased Expecta+ons.

Managing Public Rela?ons can be an incredibly rewarding skill to master. Though tradi?onally considered to be more a part of poli?cal and big business environments, even everyday people are increasingly beginning to realize the benefits of having a few PR tricks up their sleeves. By learning to conduct business in a more organized and image conscious fashion, anyone can increase their personal profitability improve their public image.

This post was repurposed for distribu?on.

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