Whither the PR generalist?

November 29, 2009 · Posted in PR · Comment 

I have had the good fortune (and to a certain extent misfortune) to be a generalist during the course of my career in higher ed public relations. When I was first hired at SF State, most of the other staff were mainly tasked with media relations (and sometimes publications writing). Because I had the interest and skills (and because I had already been doing some of this as a student worker), I was the one who did media relations and internal communications (two print newsletters that I wrote, copyedited and did the layout on) and web communications. As e-communications became increasingly more important I branched out into e-mail newsletters, web content management (I acted as the managing editor of the online news site) and crisis communications (since so much of the activity in this arena involved e-mail and web). When I was hired at Dunwoody, I became involved in even more arenas (including acting as managing editor of the alumni magazine) because it’s such a small institution with a minimal marketing/pr staff (there’s me, my boss, and a coordinator).

I love being a generalist. I enjoy having a wide variety of projects and relationships, and I work well with all types of people — IT professionals, reporters and editors, faculty and students, graphic designers, etc. It’s fun. But it also means that it’s difficult to keep up in any in depth way with all the skills one needs to keep sharp in order to act effectively. I feel that I have enough knowledge of analytics/seo, web programming and layout/graphic design to contribute to and even manage projects featuring in-house experts or outside vendors. But what happens when, as is increasingly the case in the world of smaller budgets, you have to DIY?

So here’s my question — one that I will explore and attempt to answer for myself over the next few months — what other skills do I add to my generalist set? I’m assuming that to be an effective PR/marketing generalist one should already be a good writer, editor, proofreader and public speaker: basically an overall effective communicator. One should also be somewhat capable of traditional skills: parsing market research, facilitating a focus group, art directing a photo shoot, interviewing senior management and faculty and students, staging a press conference, basic photography and image editing, basic html, etc.

But what else? Here’s what I’m looking at right now:

  1. Web analytics. Yeah, I can do the basics of Google analytics, but right now it’s all mainly surface metrics.
  2. Photography. I’m an okay photographer. I can frame a shot and crop and color correct it. But I have yet to master the real mark of an expert — lighting.
  3. Videography. Both behind and in front of the camera. Editing. Both quick on the fly, low-res stuff for YouTube and more polished work.
  4. Advanced programming. I need to get better at CSS, for sure, but I wonder if PR folks need to know more about programming, especially app programming. Not necessarily enough to do all the work — this is an area where you need a specialist — but enough to be able to create help plan the concept, develop features, not get ripped off, etc.

As I look at these four areas, I’m struck by how much the younger generation has some of these skills — at least the basics — natively. I consider myself a digital native, but I cut my teeth on an Apple IIe. As much as I enjoy social media, my core love is blogging (yeah, I’m a Gen Xer). And while I can do photography and video, it’s not native to me the way it is to people in their teens and twenties. Perhaps there’s no need to worry about all this — I’m one of those who firmly believes that core of PR is to tell stories authentically, artfully and in the modes and media the audiences you care about prefer. But I’m going to do an inventory of my skills and the needs of my college over the next month or so and figure out where I need to go more in depth. Any suggestions of what to focus on and how to go about it are very welcome.

Tags: <, , , >