If you are the one who ready to take PR as your career, you probably should read these important things that support this interesting career. PR professional requires multi-discipline and various knowledge as foundations to get the job done such as basic communication skill, analytical thinking and strategic decision making. However, there are at least two compulsory studies that PR professional should have, they are marketing and journalism. These 2 discipline may don’t have a similarity by each other but for me, PR professional may have clear understanding about PR when they have understood about this.
Learning about marketing for PR professional is always fun since marketing teaches about simple thing which is about exchanging value between or among stakeholders. This is a basic thing in business or social life in general. In advance, when we think about exchanging value then we will be directed on to whom we will deliver the value. This idea leads to segmenting, targeting and positioning. In strategic PR, this step is fundamental because we should know to whom we will communicate or deliver some messages. By doing segmenting, targeting and positioning, PR professional will be able to meet specific stakeholders expectation to build mutual understanding and good relationship.
In Journalism, PR will not only learn about how to make a good press release but also to understand how people today is highly influenced by mainstream media to shape public opinion. The world as we know is overwhelmed by media messages either print or electronic. Furthermore, citizen journalism platform such as Kompasiana becomes a new media that has role to make major public opinion about some issues. Yes, I’ve heard some people say that a journalist can be a good PR but a PR may not be a good journalist. I can say that I agree with the argument because by having experience as a journalist, PR professional will have an ability to know how media works and how a PR strategy can be fully supported by the media.
Then where marketing and journalism meet and make an excellent PR?? First in marketing you may have known a term called branding, which is the process to avoid a product for being a commodity. In branding, there is a story to tell to customers and this gives emotional benefits to customer. Meanwhile, in Journalism we know famous theory called social construction of reality, a theory that briefly says about how our social world is constructed by things around us including media and creating reality. Then, branding that emphasizes on how a product is having a story is supported by journalism skill to construct reality to customer/stakeholders mind. This means people live in a story and PR professional should define which story that people should live. By combining this two special skill, PR professional can run their PR plan successfully for the sake of organization or institution they work at. So are you ready to be an excellent PR professional?
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