Learning Public Relations

Learning public relations can be easy. But is public relations dead now? Or is it just different?

Getting Started Learning Public Relations 

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll know where this is going - a book. So to not keep you waiting, the book I recommend for learning public relations is “The New Rules of Marketing and PR - Seventh Edition,” by David Meerman Scott (Affiliate Link).

The Lady on Facebook Hawking Public Relations Services

PR is not dead. Just ask the lady you see all over Facebook who talks about all of the free PR she gets and she’ll show you how to do it if you give her some dough. Don’t get me wrong, teaching somebody what you know, and charging for it is not bad. In fact, I love it!

What’s Important About Learning Public Relations?

The problem is that with the exception of big, national brands with deep pocket campaigns and content, no one is going to care about your press release. Does that mean you shouldn’t do it? No.

Like so much of marketing, the internet has changed the impact of PR on businesses and why learning public relations might still be relevant. David Meerman Scott’s book lays out the case for advertising being a money pit and one-way interruption marketing being so yesterday. He’s right.

Do you know what’s cool, though? We can all create our own public relations quite easily. It’s no longer just the realm of the media, and they’re easier to find now, too.

Is Using Social Media a Good Method for Learning Public Relations?

Social media can serve as your public relations platform if you want it to. For example, posting something interesting happening in your practice on your Facebook,  Instagram and Twitter feeds is akin to what used to take hours of work to maybe get done.

I Tried Using a Fancy PR Firm Once and Here’s What Happened

When the iPad was first introduced, I hired a guy to create a math game for me called Tic Tac Math. At the time, I had a little math publishing business that I bought from a guy’s estate as a side hustle.

So I introduced this game at the National Council for Teachers of Mathematics in 2010. I was the only company there to have an iPad App. Seriously. My one-person side hustle.

You might not believe it, but the president of McGraw-Hill (A major educational publisher) stopped at my little booth in the convention hall, asked if he might see the game, and asked me how I’d gotten it built so quick? The iPad was introduced 14 days earlier.

As a result of this, I was pretty impressed with myself, came home, hired a PR lady, and ran an ad on Times Square announcing the launch. It cost me $4995, and at $4.95 per app, well, you can do the math. Don’t do what I did. And if you want, you may read the story of how I failed in the math business here.

It did have a happy ending in that I sold a lot of those games by digitally getting my message in front of grade school math specialists. That’s the lesson here about learning public relations: - it’s just another way to get your message in front of customers.

In conclusion

There are blog posts below where you can learn more. I produce new content all of the time, so stop back often. If you’d like a free pdf that I put together about how to make your customers and prospects feel special, fill out the form below. Or, if you’d like to schedule a time to discuss something you’re working on, email me at Joel@makemarketingeasy.com.

Good luck and good marketing and selling!