Excuses Not Welcome: How to Overcome Your PR Hurdles

For public relations professionals, generating great results for clients is always the goal, but it isn’t uncommon to go through a dry spell. Sometimes obstacles get in the way or you may feel that you have exhausted every possible idea. Generating the desired media coverage requires creativity, hard work, skill, persistence, good timing and sometimes a little bit of luck.

When the stars just don’t seem to be aligning, here are a few tips to help guide you through rough patches:

• Do not make excuses, even if they are accurate. They will get you nowhere and waste your time. Instead, jump in and attack the problem and execute at every possible angle.
• Expand your horizons by looking at the project from outside of your usual perspective. Ask yourself – and colleagues — if there are alternatives that you could potentially go after. Be sure to look at your entire hand before playing your cards.
• Offer incentives for the journalists you want to work with and develop a good working relationship. Make yourself easily available and accessible at all times so that they will want to work with you in the future.
• Let the client or internal marketing team know what the response has been by providing updates and feedback. If it’s not going well, prepare them.

Not every event or story idea is going to be a hit with the media, but you may be surprised with what you can accomplish if you go the extra mile.

Liz Rucci is an assistant account executive for Poston Communications, based in Atlanta.