One in a series

Publicity can be taught in school. It can also be learned being an intern at a publicity firm. What we are now facing are "poor" publicity skills.

I am not referring to the vocabulary or grammar that is used when you are communicating. Those are called the hard skills, like math. These are the soft skills that are not taught in schools or at any job.

Here is an example.
When you type someone an email you probably:

• Do not use capitalizations
• Or you type in all caps
• Your sentences are combined without punctuation
• Your signoff is your first name

Everyone is guilty of this, including pr professionals, who should be very communication sensitive. We are seeing more poor publicity skills when contacting publishers, pitching stories, or sending press releases, all through email. It is becoming habit and we are always in a rush, so who cares about publicity skills?

But if this were a typed letter, you would make sure the structure of the letter and the wording make smart business sense.

You can improve your pr skills by:

• Learning when and how to use style and "tone of voice"

• Knowing how to acknowledge, respond and signing off

• Knowing good practice guidelines for delivering your email service

• Developing practical skills for responding to emails

These are simple tips but seem to be forgotten when we communicate through email as we contact the media. Professionalism will always rank higher and gain more respect than those who think casual or informal communication is the key to favorable publicity.

See Also

• Develop Good Publicity Skills
  How to communicate to the press