A PR Pet Peeve

I love what I do. I love being able to help people share their business, experience and energy with their targeted audiences. I also take my profession seriously and feel it is very important to work with clients to find what is newsworthy and timely to talk to media about. I shun clients from engagement in "shameless self promotion" since the key of public relations, in my opinion, is to find what is newsworthy and share it with the media without expectations and with respect of their busy jobs. My ultimate goal is for a media contact to cover a client's news in a timely manner, but even more important is to build solid relationships with media contacts. I have worked hard to cultivate good, trustworthy relationships with media contacts so they feel they can call me to get information, regardless of who my clients are and so when I contact them, it is for a reason that they or their audiences may have some interest in. I understand that media folks are busy, working on deadlines, trying to meet a variety of demands, and don't have enough hours in the day to often get done all that needs to get done.

What creates my pet peeve is when I continuously get no response from some media folks when I have good, valid, and newsworthy reasons to be in touch with them. I work very hard to not be a flashy, stick-up-my-bum, sales oriented PR person. And while I understand media folks work in a very fast-paced, deadline driven environment, everyone has stresses to deal with and deadlines to meet. In my opinion and upbringing in respectful business practices, there is no excuse to blatantly ignore people and provide no response to emails or phone calls. Rudeness sucks. I mean, everyone is just trying to do their jobs, so we can enjoy our lives outside work. And, I wish people in general would not judge others by their business position - you never know who you can enjoy a good beer with!

Maybe these will be my general wishes for humanity this Christmas. Don't judge, respect others, and realize everyone is just trying to make it in this crazy world.