One of my favourite things to do during the Christmas period is binge watch Christmas movies like Elf, Home Alone, The Grinch (Jim Carey's version, of course), Love Actually and Mean Girls
If you frowned in confusion at the mention of Mean Girls, you clearly don't remember this iconic talent show scene:
If you've never seen it before (or simply not as recently as me) it's basically a comedy about a girl called Cady who tries to sabotage the most popular girl in school, Regina George
Because needless to say Regina's really not very nice
One of the many plans that Cady hatches to take Regina down (with a little help from her friends) is giving her these "protein bars" that actually make people gain weight while telling Regina that it does the opposite. And, as you can see from the gif below, she succeeds
Here's the thing though, sis, sometimes we are our own Cadys
Sometimes it's because of self-imposed glass ceilings (limiting belief systems) or having no direction
And, when it comes to PR goals, we typically sabotage ourselves by making one or more of these mistakes:
#1 Not breaking our goals down
According to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, "a goal without a plan is just a wish". As such, one of the greatest mistakes that people make when it comes to PR is not breaking their goals down into, what I like to call, "mini steps". For example, I recently had the pleasure of being commissioned to write for Black Ballad. However, before all of this came to pass, pre-pitch, I had to research things like:
Demographics:
Who their target audience is
What their audience's interests and/or pain points are
How my expertise can help them
Whether my topic had been covered before
Submission Guidelines:
Did they have a word count?
Were there particular topics that they like/dislike?
Would I be able to promote myself within the article or did they prefer that, that be confined to my author bio?
Did they prefer submissions to be emailed or sent via a particular platform?
Did they prefer that I pitch my guest post idea or send a fully-fledged article?
Not to talk of the interviews that I conducted with black professional women in order to get their experiences and expert opinions, after being commissioned, so that I could include these in the article. All of that to say, make sure that your PR goals doesn't remain a wish by developing and implementing a plan of action. Not sure how? Go to my home page and scroll down to check out "The Ultimate Guide to Pitching the Media" (the proven, time saving, exclusive step by step roadmap to PR success) now!
#2 Inconsistency
Another common PR mistake is underestimating how much of it’s success relies on establishing a routine, leading to either ad hoc content creation (and therefore pitching) or panic-driven; last minute content creation and pitching. You can avoid this by committing to a schedule of work in terms of how often you will pitch your content (whether it be weekly, biweekly or monthly) and when you will create the content to pitch (whether it be every morning or on a particular day every week).
Other best practices include batching content, which is the process of reserving a particular date/time each week to:
Create multiple pieces of content at once (e.g. 4 articles/pitches which will be pitched every week in a particular month)
Write, send and follow-up on multiple pitches a week (e.g. to podcasts, radio hosts or writing platforms that don't require a full article up-front when being pitched)
This helps to take the pressure off of the PR process so that it’s more organised and less stressful.
#3 Expecting immediate results
In the same way that it's not possible to get abs from doing sit-ups in one day, it's unlikely that you will jump straight into prestigious/large publications:
The first time you pitch
Without having been featured in other (smaller) publications previously
With no connections/relationships that you can leverage
This is why it's important to dream big but start small until you can make your way up, knowing that he who is faithful over the few will eventually be made ruler over many (Matthew 25:21).