PR is about the story, not relationships

by Matt Heinz

Maybe 10-20 years ago, PR was more about the relationships you had with the right press. Reporters and their publications were the gatekeeper to getting your story heard, and PR professionals were the gatekeeper to those gatekeepers. But even then, relationships were only as good (and ultimately as successful) as the story you had to offer.

Today, story matters more than ever. Yes, a good relationship with press helps you break through the clutter and get a few extra minutes to pitch your story. But a good story stands on its own.

Plus, you don't have to rely on a finite set of traditional media outlets to give your story a voice to the masses. Today, you can publish on your own. Self-publishing won't have the audience others have, but that's not the point. Share that story in a public forum, that both press and your direct customers/prospects/constituents can read, and a good story can get legs, find unique angles through other storytellers and redistributors, and be shared with countless others.

Traditional PR was about telling the story of the company in question. Press releases touted what a company recently accomplished. Those are stories, but not very interesting stories.

But it's more than just shifting focus from relationships to good stories. The stories that get noticed and retold today are about others. They're about the impact you have on your customers, their industry, and the people they work with in turn.

Tom Peters wrote recently that people don't care about your story. They care about their own story. Your job, he said, was to become a primary character in your customer's story.

So if PR today is about the story, and the best stories are about the impact you can have on others, how does that change the storytelling your organization is doing today? What do you say, where do you say it, and what do you want people who read or hear that story do next?


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Matt Heinz is principal at Heinz Marketing, a sales & marketing consulting firm helping businesses increase customers and revenue. Contact Matt at matt@heinzmarketing.com or visit www.heinzmarketing.com.

Personal Innovation - Shine Your Star

I had a nice conversation with a friend from London today that I haven't spoken with in a while and we got onto the topic of careers. We started talking about my article on Personal Innovation and how in most professional occupations there are the stars and then there is everyone else.

We talked about how stars in certain professions might only be 5% better at something than their peers but get paid 5x to 50x more than the rest. There are certain professions like professional athletics where this is particularly true. But at the same time in many professions including lawyers, consultants, managers, speakers, even cooks and hair stylists, the stars are those who are best at marketing themselves. So if you really want to become a star, you have to hone the skills necessary to market yourself and/or your ideas.

If you read my article about The Commodity Marketplace for Employees you'll get a lot more background on this topic. Today I want to focus on a good point that my friend brought up. He had consciously tried to build up an 'aura' (or a "reputation for greatness") in his organization and had been somewhat successful in doing so. But after succeeding at building his 'aura', some coworkers who had previously been helpful in building it, suddenly stopped supporting him. Why did they do this? Well, they began to feel that his 'aura' had become stronger than their own, and a potential threat to their own career ambitions.

So, if you are really good at what you do, is building yourself into a star doomed to failure?

Definitely not!

This is one of the hazards of focusing your personal innovation efforts within your organization. While it is important to have a reputation for greatness within your organization of a certain level, it is more important to focus on expanding your reputation for greatness outside the organization and here is why:

1. To build a reputation for greatness within your organization you are dependent on your peers and managers saying flattering things about you and throwing their support behind your efforts, but at some point this support will likely decrease or cease
• The only exception is a company growing so fast that there is endless opportunity for all
• This is because people eventually become threatened and will not want to be seen as inferior


2. Building up a reputation for greatness within your organization really only helps you
• It might help your manager if he/she can show their bosses that they are a great developer of talent and deserve to move up to the next level
• It does not add value to the organization


3. Making yourself a star outside your organization increases the awareness of other companies to your promise and potential
• It also increases the profile of your organization as being a thought leader
• Upper management will eventually recognize this thought leadership benefit
1. Improved reputation
2. Free advertising
3. Free public relations

Let's face it, becoming an internal star will probably only get you a 3% annual raise instead of a 2% annual raise, and possibly on the fast track for promotions (but only until you become a little too threatening to the wrong person). If you truly are a star, begin preparing yourself mentally for the possibility that you may have to leave your current employer to be compensated appropriately, continue to execute brilliantly and start polishing your star.

If you do a good job building up your self-marketing skills and show that you do have something unique and valuable to say, then you will become of greater value to another organization than to your current one, and to a sufficient level where the other organization is willing to campaign to acquire you.

So, the following questions remain:

1. Are you really a star?
2. Are you committed to the hard work and learning necessary to shine your star?
3. Are you ready to leave your current employer when the time is right for a new opportunity or to create your own?

Well, are you?

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