Practical Advice
Published June 30th, 2005 in Technology & PRBlake Barbera offers some good practical advice over at Wet Feet PR. The long and short of it is to always check your email recipients before hitting send.
Modern technology makes life a lot easier, but it also makes it more likely for you to make a mistake. Did you know that there’s been a rise in the incidence rate of accidents since seatbelts were introduced. God bless the illusion of safety.
The world is PR involves working with a lot of sensitive issues so it’s always worth taking those extra number of minutes on a job.
That’s probably one of the more disappointing aspects of the PR courses that run around the country. They jump straight into websites, but don’t get the basics right. The end result is that you get a bunch of juniors that are wet behind the ears and unfamiliar with Outlook. Things like Bcc, email signatures and Outlook calendar should be one of the first things any PR practitioner learns about. All I can say is thanks be to God I’m a nerd 
2 Responses to “Practical Advice”
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Not too long ago, I sent a press release to the relevant newspapers I was targeting and forgot to Bcc it. A second after I pressed ’send’, the penny dropped, and five minutes later I had a couple of phone calls from some very cocky journalists. Embarrassed? Yes I was. Will I do it again? No I won’t.
I agree totally. Although we learn the fundamental points of press release writing - The who, what, where, why, when & how; quotes, paragraphs, word count etc. at uni, we don’t learn the basic points of sending them.
I’ve seen a fair few PR courses go by, and I firmly believe they are a waste of time. The content rarely reflects the work involved, and most of the time the people who end up doing the course don’t know what grammar is.
Blame the software if you like, but how it works should be taught before anything else.
Think about it though: is there anything you learn on a PR course that you couldn’t have learned in a few years of technology and english classes back in secondary school?