New Year, New Decade, New Focus

New Year, New Decade, New Focus As befitting the start of a new year, we've all made a bunch of resolutions and promises to do more (or less), work smarter (not harder) and generally do much better in 2010. This, too, applies fully to PR.

And me? This year, I have sworn to do more for clients (within reason!) and do better overall -- personally and agency-wide. So here are my PR resolutions for a new era and a peek at how we're going to be doing things 'round here this year:

Do not overpromise or under-deliver

For many of us in 2009, we fell into the trap of saying "yes" to clients instead of saying "let's think about this," or "no." The desire to hang onto clients -- at all costs -- magnified those actions, and not necessarily for the best (see my earlier post "Great Expectations"). Instead, we're starting the year by laying down new ground rules, à la this is how we do it.

Spend more time feeding our minds with quality content and journalism

If the retailer's motto is "an educated consumer is our best customer," then our mantra is an educated PR pro is the best PR pro. Staying current and accurate are keys to success in our industry, and that means doing more than a quick Google-search worth of research before writing an article or release. Digesting quality news from quality outlets helps put stories in perspective, builds mental bridges between ideas and concepts, and generally lends depth to the work we do.

Embrace social media and mobile not by becoming self-taught "experts" but by learning from leaders in the respective fields

Social media and the mobile channel have matured as serious means of communication, and so should be our understanding of it. This does not mean relying on our mastery of personal Facebook profiles to design an effective social media strategy, or letting our iPhone obsession define our knowledge of the mobile space. These will increasingly become the core outlets of our outreach efforts, and we should give them the respect they deserve -- by letting the actual experts teach us.

Read the rest of my resolutions on Media Post.