(W)right On Communications Best of 2017! #GSD

By Julie Wright —President
Twitter: @juliewright

I’m excited to see what 2018 holds for (W)right On Communications, but when I look back on 2017, I’m awed by all that our growing agency achieved! As we like to say here, we GSD–got “stuff” done! But more than that, we made stuff happen, and that’s how we measure success. Here’s a quick glimpse at the events that made a difference in 2017 from where I sit.

Epic Team Outing to Kick Off the Year

JANUARY: We started 2017 off on the right foot with a trip to Universal Studios to bring our hard-working team together for a fun outing. There was just one little challenge: the torrential rain. Talk about team building. Wearing our ponchos like super heroes, we braved the storm and had a blast. The day left us soaked with memories.

In January, we also celebrated Chance Shay’s promotion to Practice Area Director overseeing the agency’s dedicated B2B & Technology Public Relations practice and Land Development PR & Community Outreach practice. With eight years of strategic communications experience, Chance continues to make significant contributions to (W)right On Communications and 2017 was no exception.

Talking PR Measurement in Miami

FEBRUARY: PR measurement was something we continued to invest in throughout 2017. Attending the Ragan PR Measurement Conference in Miami Feb. 1-2 allowed me to hear from industry veterans, academics and PR leaders from MuckRack, Google, IBM and Spirit Airlines–to name just a few of the great speakers.

Ragan’s 2018 PR Measurement Conference is in San Diego Feb. 20 and 21. If you’re interested in staying on top of the latest in PR measurement trends, tech and best practices, it’s not too late to register here.

Launched “Thoughtful Thursdays”—WOC’s Internal Professional Development Series

MARCH: We launched our “Thoughtful Thursdays” in March. These were one-hour professional development workshops that brought our team together (in-person and via our web-conferencing tech) to learn the latest in PR measurement, media interviewing, social media advertising, integrated strategic campaigns, leading effective meetings and more. Sessions were led by Chance Shay, Kara DeMent and me. I really enjoyed these mornings and now look forward to our 2018 series.

Adding Media Integration Services

APRIL: We added media integration services to our agency public relations services. Unlike traditional publicity, media integration opportunities are paid, not earned, opportunities. They can feature your product or service as part of a national, regional or local news or lifestyle program and will often include a lead generation component. Media integration works extremely well for products that are experiential like a resort or destination, and our hospitality public relations practice and its client partners have made good use of media integration since the service launched.

Opening WOC’s Downtown L.A. Office

MAY: We took a space on the 35th floor of the Gas Tower in the Banker’s Hill area of downtown Los Angeles. Our convenient base in L.A. makes it easier for the team to meet with clients and media plus opens the door to new relationships. Personally, I love my Pacific Surfliner trips up and down the Southern California coast plus exploring all that downtown L.A. offers like the sights and flavors of Grand Central Market.

Taking the PR Measurement Conversation Global

JUNE: Grant and I traveled to Bangkok to attend the AMEC Global Summit on Measurement and annual awards dinner. The conference attracted communicators, media researchers and evaluation experts from across Europe and Southeast Asia. One of the highlights for me was meeting Professor Jim Macnamara in person. Somehow, I had the good fortune to sit next to him throughout the two-day conference. As the author of all the textbooks I studied on PR measurement, I was thrilled to meet him in person and hear about his latest projects firsthand.

A New WOC Strategist as Sweet as She is Swedish

JULY: Sandra Wellhausen joined our team this summer, and it felt like we’d found the missing bolt in an Ikea Billy bookcase box!

Nothing Eclipsed August

AUGUST: Pardon the pun, but a lot of effort went into seeing this major solar event. Being able to enjoy it with friends and family was the result of a great team supporting our (W)right On client partners and operations.

Peak Mindfulness

SEPTEMBER: It was a month of mindfulness for WOC with everyone at the agency focused on major client projects from a video for the City of San Diego’s energy efficiency programs to the grand opening of the University of Redlands’ new San Diego campus. Speaking of universities, our friends at the College of Business Administration at CSUSM had Grant and I in to speak to students during their “In the Executive’s Chair” class. But peak mindfulness (you’re expecting puns, now, I hope?) occurred as Shae Geary and I attended the Yosemite Wellness Retreat Weekend hosted by client partner Tenaya Lodge. We hiked Sentinel Dome stopping for yoga as we started off and once we summited. It was out of this world. Check out the link for their 2018 wellness weekend dates!

Are You Guys Dressing Up for Halloween? Of Course.

OCTOBER: It was another fun Halloween at (W)right On’s San Diego office.

Keeping the Creative Visual Communications Flowing

NOVEMBER: We were grateful that KeAsha Rogers joined our team bringing her graphic and digital design skills and passion to benefit our client partners. She had to hit the ground running as we were full-tilt in a sprint ourselves to launch a rebrand for one of our nonprofit client partners. (KeAsha, 16-hour days aren’t the norm—we swear!)

Making a Difference for a Major Nonprofit Client Partner

DECEMBER: December was the debut of Radiant Health Centers, a rebrand for AIDS Services Foundation Orange County which had been providing HIV testing, prevention and education services and comprehensive social services for 32 years. The nonprofit’s leadership saw the need to offer broader services to Orange County’s most vulnerable LGBT community members. Their launch event was a rousing success, and it was a proud moment for the entire (W)right On team. We have had the good fortune of helping many nonprofit clients over the years, but the courage and vision of Radiant Health Centers’ leadership and supporters have really touched and inspired us.

Not to be overlooked, we celebrated Kara DeMent’s promotion from Communications Coordinator to Communications Strategist in December.

What’s in Store for 2018?

We have so much planned for this year, but at (W)right On Communications, we like to take stock of our achievements and not gloss over the high points we hit in 2017.

2018 will mark a very significant milestone in the agency’s history. And to celebrate it, we’re working on exciting plans that will continue our growth, our ability to produce wins for our client partners and opportunities for our team members to grow and achieve. Stay tuned!

 

When Your Passion is Contagious, it Spreads

Contagious passion

By Julie Wright —President

Twitter: @juliewright

Passion is an awesome thing. It gives you the drive needed to push past obstacles and embrace challenges. But passion alone isn’t enough.

To succeed as a strategic communicator, you need what the (W)right On Communications team calls contagious passion. Contagious passion is one of our core values. Why?

Because, if your passion for your client, pitch or charitable cause doesn’t infect others, you can’t advance it. With earned media, shared media and word of mouth driving more brand connections than paid strategies today, contagious passion is essential to your success as a communicator.

Any trending hashtag is a symptom of an outbreak of shared passion across the Twittersphere. It signifies that thousands of people are fired up about this Sunday’s game or the most recent national “holiday” celebrating chocolate eclairs or brandied fruit.

Similarly, a long string of comments on a Facebook post will raise a post’s visibility on the platform. In a way, the Facebook algorithm is fueled by contagious passion. But to achieve that kind of engagement you’ve got to develop content that contains an idea, concept or image people can connect to emotionally. Without that shared feeling, there’s no reason to care and without a reason to care, there’s no motivation to act. Which means failure.

I have a friend who has a contagious passion for slowing climate change. When she tells me about a book she encountered that examines the top 100 solutions for reversing global warming and what it taught her, it’s not long before I’m downloading my own copy of Project Drawdown and telling others about it. In a matter of 24 hours, I’ve infected three other people with this book’s intriguing research and ideas.

I’ve been thinking about our agency culture and the importance of our values, like contagious passion, because we added a new team member a few months ago. During the interview process and since joining the team, she has made it clear that she has a passion for communications, for her clients and for the work we do at (W)right On Communications.

Her client partners have quickly taken to her because they can see, and more importantly feel, that she cares about their organizations and achieving results for them. Her fast start has been remarkable but no accident. She brought the passion and infected others with it.

Think about the last time you were in a meeting where someone renewed your enthusiasm for a project or won you over to their vision or idea. I guarantee you that their contagious enthusiasm played a big part, and you probably applied yourself to the task with more gusto because you were inspired by it.

You can fake passion, but it’s hard to fake a contagious passion. If your words don’t align with your body language—animated gestures, leaning forward, maintaining eye contact—people won’t pick up on what you’re putting out. If your heart isn’t in it, then your passion won’t feel authentic to others or move them. Most importantly, it won’t fulfill you.

And that’s important. You should love what you do, care deeply about what you’re communicating and be invested in the success of your idea, client or team.

That passion motivates you to excel, to learn all that you can about your client or craft and to challenge yourself to grow and reach mastery.

We all encounter wet blankets in our work life. People who are genetic anomalies and immune to passion. They’re a bummer to work with or for, of course, and probably don’t understand why no one listens to their ideas or wants to go to lunch with them. Think Eeyore.

Those people are probably just in the wrong job or career. Or they’ve given up and lost their mojo.

For others who love what they do but struggle to muster a contagious passion, the cause can often be their own fear and insecurities. They’ve put a wall around their passion because they’re afraid to be wrong, to fail or to show that they don’t know something they should.

For your passion to be contagious, you need to get in touch with it. What excites you? What’s worth sticking your neck out for?

If you have a contagious passion for a hobby or a sports team, invest the same zeal into your client’s business or your employer’s industry to find the joy. It’s possible. Often, the more you invest yourself in a topic, the more exciting it becomes. It’s the difference between the college courses you had to take in your first year and those you chose to take in your senior year.

In the same way that smiling can make you feel better, choosing to find the joy can make you feel the passion. The cart doesn’t always have to follow the horse. The main point is to find it, feel it and spread it to others.

We spend a lot of time blogging here about communication strategies and tactics, but communication success starts with passion and the ability to make others care. What goes around comes around, and contagious passion is no exception. I hope you’ve felt mine and that this post leaves you a little more stoked to make the most of your work whatever it may be!

 

Scaramucci’s Top 5 Fails as a Professional Communicator

strategy is choosing what not to do

strategy is choosing what not to do

By Julie Wright —President

Twitter: @juliewright

If any good comes from Anthony Scaramucci’s 10 days as White House director of communications, I hope it’s the realization that being a professional communicator is no cakewalk and, truly, best left to people who have invested their careers in the profession.

Just as it’s easy to quarterback an NFL team from behind your TV remote, it’s easy to watch a White House press briefing and offer your take on messaging, delivery or timing.

The Mooch was more than a modern-day Icarus who flew too close to the sun – or some other fiery orange orb. He was someone who underestimated how hard good, strategic communication is and how costly and unforgiving bad communication is.

I’ve said it before: there are no shortcuts to PR glory.

The following is a list of cardinal communications sins Scaramucci committed in his short-lived career in strategic communications.

1. Having no communications strategy.

What was the strategy?

Based on the sound bites in the first few days, it was hard to tell. Guess what? You can’t communicate successfully without a solid communication strategy that has the buy-in of your team and client or boss. Scaramucci did submit a communications plan, shared by CNN here (thanks to my former boss, Della Smith, for sharing this link), but it is more of a lengthy memo full of platitudes and commandments that are far easier to promise than they are to deliver. And, again, there’s no overarching strategy. It’s a tactical plan and glorified to-do list for Scaramucci and hardly something a professional communicator would recognize.

The strategy should be based on research and data to support clear and measurable objectives. Ultimately, the strategy guides your decisions and ensures that you’re speaking via the right channels with the right messages to reach the right audiences.

The Mooch opened his kimono to the New Yorker. Not exactly the publication read by the President’s base. His approach showed he was communicating to an audience of one and, to be fair, his communications plan did say that “Comms is a Customer Service Operation—POTUS is the Number One Customer.” However, making the boss happy is not a viable communications strategy.

2. Asking questions without knowing the answers

Professional communicators know that you do not ask questions to which you don’t know the answers. You do your research.

Why? Because credibility is as perishable as a bowl of fresh guacamole at the company picnic.

Professional communicators will often put a five- or 10-minute time delay on their email outbox. They’ll read and re-read an important Tweet before they push it out.

They do this in the same way that they wouldn’t walk into a press briefing without knowing exactly what questions to expect and preparing for them, like his former boss recently did in a press briefing where he was asked about Hezbollah.

So, that’s why a professional communicator would not toss out a Tweet like Scaramucci did accusing the White House chief of staff of leaking Scaramucci’s financial disclosure statement. That document was requested by a reporter and it was released 30 days after Scaramucci had been appointed to the Import-Export Bank as its chief strategy officer in late June.

Professional communicators base their communications on research and data. These elements inform your strategy so that by the time you’re actually communicating, it’s on a solid platform that you can feel confident will produce the desired results. You don’t wing it.

3. Not realizing that nothing is off the record.

OK, first, was The New Yorker interview off the record at all? The reporter says Scaramucci never requested that it be, but later Scaramucci implied he thought it was.

Regardless, the first and last rule of expert media training is that nothing is off the record. The generally accepted rule about going off the record is that it’s up to the source to say in advance that what they’re about to say is off the record. You cannot do it after the fact.

A best rule of thumb is that if you don’t want to be quoted saying something, don’t say it.

It’s not a tough rule to learn, but it sure as heck is a tough lesson to learn when you get it wrong.

4. No key messages

What are key messages?

They’re your mantra, your sermon and your three-point shot all wrapped up in one. You figure out what points you’re trying to make in media interviews before you participate in media interviews.

If I had to retroactively decipher Scaramucci’s key messages based on his interviews and Tweets, they would be: “don’t trust Reince Priebus;” “do trust Sarah Huckabee Sanders and expect her to get ‘better;” “Scaramucci loves the President;” and “Scaramucci has no control over the President’s / White House’s communications agenda.”

After all, amid the White House communications team changes, the President Tweeted that the military would no longer allow transgender men and women to serve. A total surprise to all. And again, no strategy, no messaging and no research or planning to understand the implications.

Scaramucci did mention in his communications plan that “Every Comms message needs to have a nexus to Make America Great Again and jobs.” But if he made either of those points in his New Yorker interview, I certainly missed them, and his many other expletives, insults and accusations would have overshadowed any of them.

5. Not knowing who his friends were before making enemies.

Coming into a new position, it is not unheard of to get pressure from a new boss to clean house for them. If the boss wants to get stuff done and his or her team is struggling to advance their agenda, they will look to find new people capable of carrying out their vision.

But when you become the boss’s enforcer, the first thing you do should not be to put everyone on notice and instill fear and anxiety. That just takes a bad situation and makes it worse. Particularly when your communications plan says priority #1 is improving the culture, as Scaramucci’s did.

You start by building your alliances so that by the time the tough decisions must be made, you’ve created alignment with the people who are staying rather than fear and mistrust.

In other words, you figure out who your friends are first. Even if the President of the United States is your friend, and loves you, you need friends in the trenches with you.

It’s a tough job, being a communicator. It’s highly visible. It’s prone to second guessing. And the stakes are often high while involving judgment calls. That’s why experience counts so very much. As does having a strategy, basing it on solid information, having clear messages to guide your communications, staying away from off-the-cuff comments to the media, and surrounding yourself with people you can trust and with whom you can confidently go into battle.

Get one of these five things wrong and you’ll probably lose a little sleep or have some tough conversations with your boss. But get all five wrong and you’re out of a job and an international punchline.

B2B Integrated Marketing: 5 Step Foolproof Guide

B2B Integrated Marketing

By Chance Shay —Director of B2B and Infrastructure Development

Twitter: @ChanceShay 

Marketing communications in silos doesn’t work. If your PR efforts aren’t aligned with your content marketing and your digital marketing is on a different frequency, you’re setting yourself up for a not-so-fun conversation with your CMO. In a time when the average attention span is eight seconds and where humans are producing the same amount of data in two days as was generated in all of human existence leading up to 2003, it’s easy to see why each individual marcomm channel is less effective in isolation.

But with a challenge comes an opportunity. By syncing up all of their efforts, marketers are able to make the overall impact of marcomm efforts far greater than their individual sums. This is integrated marketing.

Integrated marketing communications (IMC) is the only marketing strategy that is effective in 2017. It optimizes the communication of a consistent message from a brand to stakeholders by integrating communication channels and harnessing the benefits of each channel, which amplifies their impact beyond what they could achieve individually.

The entertainment industry has done this for years. At Comic Con, you’ll see the same message about a new movie being promoted on advertisements (paid), conveyed during interviews and editorial stories (earned), used on social media (shared) and said during the panel discussion with the movie’s stars (owned).

B2B brands have to take this same approach, but with a few key changes. To help, we’ve put together a foolproof, five-step guide to help any B2B brand nail its integrated marketing plan.

1) Define the business objective

An obvious first step, but it’s essential that the integrated marketing flow from the brand’s overall business objective. Whether stealing market share or creating a new category, the brand’s big picture goal will drive everything from strategy to KPIs and execution.

2) Know thy audience

More than just understanding the type of business that’s a good fit for your service or product (i.e. a SMB in cleantech with $10-25 million in revenue), a brand must have a rich, granular picture of who is most likely to purchase their product and why. The “why” is important for establishing and framing the unique selling proposition for any good or service, but the “who” is the most important for structuring your IMC plan. Is your customer likely to be innovative or more risk adverse? What’s important to your customer in how they operate their business and the culture they create internally? Is a top tier trade outlet or a general news daily with huge name cachet more influential to them? For example, if the decision makers for your prospective customers are millennials, you’ll want to know they are 247% more likely to be influenced by blogs or social networking sites than older generations. That impacts strategy in a meaningful way, so get as holistic a view of your audience(s) as possible.

3) Set SMART communications goals that support the business objective

Like with most sound strategies, for IMC planning you must start with the end goal and work backward to develop a plan for how to get there. What is it – in a specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time dimensioned way – that you’re wanting the plan to achieve. Is it to drive a 20 percent increase in free trial sign-ups? Is it to grow website traffic for key landing pages by 30 percent? At the end of the day, for B2B brands it all boils down to driving revenue. The marcomm component is meant to move new business prospects down the marketing funnel from being brand aware to being brand loyal. Setting SMART goals and KPIs for your integrated efforts will help ensure you’re on the right track.

4) Select your weapons of choice

Not all platforms and mediums are right for every brand. In some industries, trade shows have a higher demonstrated ROI than weekly vlogs on YouTube. For others, the best way to reach decision makers is on LinkedIn and not through content marketing. The first question to ask when determining where to focus marcomm resources is, “Where are my customers spending their time and how are they influenced?” Almost as important is asking yourself, “What channels allow me to showcase my brand’s strengths?” If your brand offers something innovative but a bit dense and niche, then Instagram as a platform would be challenging to generate traction. Instead, speaking opportunities at conferences where you (or your CMO) have more time to explain nuances would be more impactful.

Remember, you have all the PESO (paid, earned, shared, and owned) channels at your disposal.

For Paid, consider if your audience is actively looking for your solution or if you have to be proactive in helping them realize they need your product or service. When thinking of earned coverage, would contributed by-lined articles support your communications goals or would an analyst evaluation be better? On Shared channels, selecting the platform must flow from determining the strategy for how social media will help reach the communications goal – whether by creating a community, showcasing thought leadership, engaging in the digital conversations prospective customers are having or otherwise.

Part of how IMC for B2B brands is different than for consumer brands is how owned content is leveraged. Owned content should be valuable to your customers and your customers’ customers. Your customers want to know you “get them,” but they also appreciate content that reinforces their value. The ROI is clear when you consider that B2B companies that blogged 11+ times per month had almost 3X more traffic than those blogging 0-1 times per month. If your content is targeted, that increase in traffic means an increase in leads. Of course, that’s just one data set, but wouldn’t you like 300% of the traffic you’re getting now?

5) Use an umbrella to make it rain

Traditionally, an umbrella blocks the rain from hitting you. But for B2B brands, you need an umbrella that covers all of your IMC to bring in new business and make it rain. The umbrella, of course, is an overarching theme or idea that ties all of your marcomm efforts together. It could be owning a position or using some fun, quirky euphemism to convey the unique selling proposition of your product or reinforce a brand identity. This doesn’t mean that all efforts across all platforms need to look exactly the same. In fact, solid marcomm utilizes the most impactful features of each platform, but the umbrella campaign theme or concept keeps everything cohesive and consistent. When deciding an umbrella theme, think big picture about how it would translate across each of your decided platforms and whether it syncs with your strategy for how you intend to utilize each channel.

With audiences diversifying and a fragmented media landscape, there are no silver bullets for achieving communications goals. To be effective in moving the bottom line needle, communications – from advertising to PR, from social media to content marketing – need to be intentional in both strategy and timing. Check out a few ideas here, then follow these steps and you’ll be on your way to crushing the IMC plan and impressing your CMO.

Influencing the C-Suite: 3 Tips for B2B Influencer Marketing

By Aisha Belagam

Twitter: @AishaBelaPR

Fashion bloggers jet setting to tropical destinations wearing the trendiest floral prints. Genetically blessed Instagram influencers promoting weight loss pills after an early morning session at Equinox. From selfies to flat-lays, these are the types of personalities and formats that typically come to mind when you hear the term ‘influencer’. But these personalities won’t do much for your B2B marketing strategy.

American Idol business jennifer lopez american idol american idol xiii GIFAs with B2C, B2B influencer marketing is about connecting with influential people in your community and leveraging them to build trust and credibility, driving your message. In this digital age, where social media is becoming a regular part of everyone’s lives, influencer marketing is becoming a vital part of the communications strategy. And yes, you can and should use it for B2B companies. The C-Suite is engaged on social media and 84% of CEOs and VPs say they use social media to help make purchasing decisions. Here are three tips to consider when developing your B2B influencer marketing strategy:

1. Where are they and who do they look to?

Who and what influences your target audience? Don’t get deflected by focusing on who has the most followers. A million followers do not necessarily equate to a huge influence on your target audience. This isn’t a popularity contest. Plus, upcoming thought leaders are more likely to have the capacity to pay attention to your brand. Focus on influencers who receive a large amount of engagement on topics relevant to your vertical. These are the thought leaders you’re looking for. The analysts, industry experts, authors, speakers, and media folk who are actively involved in industry discussions, leading the way with their expert insight and educated opinions. You’ll find most of them on LinkedIn and Twitter.

       2. Look within

Who understands your brand better than your team? No one. That’s why you should leverage the CEO, employees, and clients as part of your strategy.

Employee advocacy is a powerful thing. Encourage your employees to promote your brand, whether it’s through social posts and blogs, at speaking opportunities, or by getting involved at industry events. Empower those with the most knowledge, the ones who work on your brand daily, to become the thought leaders opining and engaging, increasing your brand’s visibility.

C-level executives are an integral way for B2B brands to make a personal connection. They are the thought leaders bringing the brand to life. Using C-level executives is a key way to build relationships with analysts and the media, increasing coverage and establishing credibility.

Share results. Success stories from your customers can be packaged into consumable case studies, infographics, and testimonials. It’s great to have your team promoting your brand, but there is an obvious bias. Your customers, on the other hand, don’t have the same stake in your company and their experiences add a layer of authenticity.

      3.  Don’t just promote your own agenda

Build a real relationship with your influencers so they are engaged before you need them. It’s a two-way street. Think about how you can help them while promoting your brand. Reference them as experts, quote them in your blog posts, give them access to your products or services, engage with their social content, and stay top of mind. When the time comes, they will be more familiar with you and more likely to go the extra mile to help your brand.Empire FOX music love happy best GIF

Influencers can help a B2B brand through numerous channels. Think about your goals and identify what your brand needs. Influencers can do everything from collaborating on social content to hosting a webinar, from being an ambassador at your tradeshow to quoting you in their latest interview.

As interest in traditional forms of advertising plummets, influencer marketing is becoming a more important part of the integrated strategy. Collaborating with influencers in the ways outlined above can help your brand become more influential in itself.

Want to learn how your brand can leverage influencer marketing? Drop us a line. With proven influencer marketing results with national brands in both the B2B and B2C sector, we can work with you to develop and implement an integrated strategy that brings your brand targeted, measurable results.

No Shortcuts to PR Glory, Then or Now

By Julie Wright—President and Founder

Twitter: @JulieWright

How PR Worked Before the Internet…

I started out in PR before the Internet or email. It was the era of fax machines, the Yellow Pages and 400-page media directories that you combed through to research and build your media lists. There were few shortcuts on the way to mastering your PR skills, but in some ways, all of today’s technology and automation tools might actually be shortchanging entry-level PR people and getting in the way of developing PR fundamentals.

Back in the day, once you had your list built, you then had to call each reporter until they picked up the phone and then use your verbal skills to hold their attention more than eight seconds to pitch your story. Those calls helped you develop a thick skin, fast. That real-time feedback taught you which approaches worked or didn’t.

Unfortunately, in today’s email environment, you’ll never really know what they loved or hated about your pitch. (Unless you follow @smugjourno or @DearPR to monitor Tweets from journalists losing their s*** after being addressed with the wrong name for the 10th time in one day, sent another off-topic pitch, distastefully news-jacked or sent a 120 mb attachment.)

In the pre-email era, entry-level PR pros had to work the phones but that process made us better, faster.

We had another tool beside the phone. It was called the fax machine. Part of paying your dues was standing over one feeding it hard-copy press releases with your fingers crossed, hoping to hear the modem answer. (If you don’t know what a modem sounds like, it’s kinda like a DubStep drop.) That sound let you know that your brilliant press release was transmitting.

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If you were sending a fax to a busy newsroom, you could often expect repeated busy signals and multiple attempts to get your press release through. Faxes could only be sent one at a time. You could punch in several fax numbers, but they’d be delivered sequentially and not simultaneously.

Think about that, for a moment.

You, literally—and I mean literally–experienced the sensation of your pitch colliding and competing for bandwidth with other pitches. The idea that your pitch was one of hundreds being sent to an outlet or reporter was not just a concept. It was something you actually heard and saw.

Anyhow, damn. Those days could be a real grind. Some labor-intensive, inglorious work. Like walking uphill both ways to and from school. But it was just what you had to do so you did it.

So, here’s my point: While the tools may have changed, I honestly do not think that the fundamentals have.

PR still requires an awful lot of legwork to do right and over the past quarter century, I have found that there is no substitute for that hard work—particularly as you are starting out. Generating a Twitter following, mastering Facebook’s algorithm, researching blogs for your thought leadership project—it’s a different grind, but to succeed you’ve got to do the work.

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The practices I learned in the early 90s as an entry-level Gen Xer gave me sound fundamentals. It was a methodical process—detailed, diligent and it kept you close to your media contacts. You worked hard to find each contact and cultivate it. You knew the value of each contact and sent your pitches out into the world with each recipient in mind.

If I wanted to target my client for a radio interview, I had to listen to that radio show. If I wanted a trade or consumer magazine to feature my client’s project, I had to read the magazine. There was no website to consult or Google to search.

You had to be dialed into your media list, totally aware of who each contact was and why the hell they’d want to do a story on your news. I think this is one of those basics that has been lost in the race to automate our work, and it is the bane of the remaining working journalists who are inundated with off-topic email pitches. It’s also the bane of PR professionals who know that it takes time to do this job right but get pressure from clients who think PR is just distributing press releases to massive lists.

What Can You Do Today for Maximum Career Growth & Success?

What would happen to your pitching skills and PR instincts if you adopted these old school practices. What if you voraciously consumed the very same media you were expected to earn coverage in? What if you approached every single media contact on your media list like a wedding guest—knowing their background, your relationship to them, whether they’d want the ribeye or the vegetarian option and who they’d want to sit with?

I tell you what. You’d be successful. You’d be a rock star.

In today’s environment of cheap, plentiful and immediate information, taking pains to research and document each entry in your media list probably makes you feel like you’re doing it wrong.

Stifle that impulse. Take the time. If you have a passion for communications and telling great stories, then focus on your fundamentals. Do what might feel like drudgery. It’s called paying your dues. We all did it. If we wanted it, then we did it.

So if that’s you, don’t miss the opportunity to shine because it looks like hard work.

Put that extra care and attention into your work. Invest extra time in your day for attending a webinar to build your knowledge. Spend a little extra time every day reading up on your industry and talking to the more experienced people on your team about what you’re learning to get their take and advice.

And for god’s sake, show up. Network with journalists, other PR professionals, peers and business leaders. Volunteer on a committee so you can practice your leadership skills outside of the office to get more confident contributing during team and client meetings.

It may sound old-timey but work hard, pay your dues, take chances with your new knowledge and you will get noticed and rise quickly. I assure you, don’t be afraid to do these things for you will have one of the most exhilarating and rewarding careers imaginable.