What I have come to realize through my time in school is each major has "musts". For public relations, we have to have a certain set of skills that will provide us with the tools we need to succeed in our careers. Here is my top three PR major musts:
- AP style: Being a public relations major, the hardest thing for me to learn has been AP style. AP style is very different from how I'm use to writing. Some rules are very tedious and almost counterintuitive. It has taken a lot of time and memorization to get the hang of AP style; however, it is a crucial part of effective writing for publications. Newspapers, radio scripts and TV publications use AP style to write for their channels. A big part of a future PR professionals career is media relations and writing for media channels. Knowledge and efficiency is the style they write in is very important. Click the image to go to the AP Stylebook online.
- Knowledge of current events: Having a good understanding of currents events is also very important. Just think about it, when you are about to launch a campaign, you have to make sure the timing is perfect. You don't want to launch a campaign for a new kind of airplane two days after a plane goes missing in Malaysia. The current events will also help you monitor trends and keep up with the ever-changing marketplace
- Public speaking: Working in PR, you need to be ready for everything. At some point in your career, you might get thrown up to host a press conference, manage a social media crisis as the spokesperson or just need to present a campaign to board members. You need to be able to get up and act professional in front of a group of people.
I've learned these three skills are very important to being successful, but there are many more PR professionals need to master in order to succeed:
- Effective communications
- Teamwork
- Social media competency
- Editing/proofreading
- Etc.
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