PR can be a touchy subject – especially if you’re an outsourced PR company and not an employee within the company wanting publicity.

In either case, here are four mistakes that you’ll never want to make when working in PR.

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Public relations is an important part of every business, and it’s usually a good idea to involve experts when dealing with such an essential aspect. Let’s look at what’s involved with outsourcing this important part of your business.

To start, let’s look at some pros and cons:

Pros

• Less work: If you’re constantly busy and don’t have time to write emails and make phone calls, outsourcing PR may be a good idea. You may also feel your time is better spent doing what you do best, i.e. design, engineering.
• Particular skills: A PR company that has skills you or your team don’t have means they can do things you aren’t capable of (i.e. Google Adwords, although you can find specialized companies to do this).
• Relationships: If the PR company you’re thinking of hiring has a solid relationships with the media in your industry niche, they’ll be able to reach out to people you may have a hard time getting through to: For example, if they have an in at CNN, they may be able to get you featured in the Business section: If you’re a new, unknown company to CNN and you try to make the contact yourself, you probably won’t hear back from them.

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As I sit and type this, it’s nearly three in the morning. Working late, once again.

Or am I? What IS working late? Is working late just working past 5:00 pm – or is it working for a certain amount of consecutive hours in a row? Or is “working late” just a term we often use when we think we should be elsewhere, i.e. with the family?

In today’s day, business happens 24/7. If you’re a startup company – or any company for that matter, you probably can’t get away with 9-to-5 hours.

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They may not be aliens, but they aren’t your next-door neighbor either.

So how do you go about contacting a new media contact for the first time? Do you follow them on Twitter and send them a DM? Do you email them? Make a cold call? Or do you simply just show up in person, and knock on their door?

Depending on the industry you’re in, the first medium of contact can differ. If you’re contacting someone in the web or tech industry, chances are an electronic form of contact will work best. Sometimes though, an old-fashioned handshake can work best.

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And so do you.

Whether you’re the CEO of a Fortune 500 company or Joe Schmo starting your first business, you’ll need the right tools to do your job effectively. This is obvious, right? Well, not so much. Oftentimes a business owner will only buy what they need – not what they should have.

A mechanic could work this way as well – instead of buying a (more expensive) ratchet set, they COULD get by with just an open wrench. If mechanics worked this way, they’d take twice as long to get the job done. And no, this doesn’t mean they’d make twice as much money – soon the customer will realize they can go elsewhere, and pay half as much for labor costs. Does an oil change shop really need that fancy (expensive) drive-in setup to change your oil? No. Do they make more money because of it? Yes.

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