A tech PR principal I recently spoke with offered an interesting observation. That is, if you were a noob to tech PR (fresh college grad or otherwise) and were sniffing around popular PR influencer blogs and books to try to get a beat on how to advance your career, you might infer (by witnessing their behavior) that this is the recipe to becoming successful as a PR pro:
- Frequent ostentatious displays of one’s connections (referencing relationships with highly popular biz press journalists, identifying a leading analyst as a “close personal friend” – that kind of stuff)
- Contriving a sort of “edgy” personality or persona and frequently mentioning unusual personal life activities to further brand oneself as unique
- Forwarding / retweeting content more than actually READING it (i.e., misinterpreting that it is more important to appear knowledgeable than to actually BE knowledgeable)
- Frequently referring to one’s social networking prowess
- Frequently claiming to have been “first” to spot an emerging trend, etc.
- Being dismissive out of hand of anything “tactical” (requiring grunt work) in favor of anything “strategic”
Posted by Alicia Nieva-Woodgate
March 28, 2010 at 8:58 pm
LOVE your blog posts… Bet the digerati posers will be annoyed with this one!
Posted by Travis Van
March 28, 2010 at 9:22 pm
Thanks Alicia. Not trying to knock anyone off a pedestal. But when the self promotional activities from some of the very most popular PR influencer types is so consistently beyond the boundaries of taste, it raises questions about how much they are truly representative of the industry, IMHO.