If you work in marketing and PR, you know there’s been a sea change. The old “push” tactics the industry once relied on no longer work well in the digital age.

As a PR professional, journalists and media folks are your consumers and today’s consumers increasingly reject top-down, interruptive messages trying to sell a story.

What they accept and crave is relevant content that draws them in, engages them, and helps them write the stories they know their readers want.

They want tactics that are inbound.

The problem, however, is most PR firms are still outbound organisations trying to survive in an inbound world.

What’s Not Working in PR?

I promised to write more about project management this year based on your interest so I'm starting a project management series today. 

First, we'll cover important project management fundamentals - we've gone through an overview of them with three infographics and we've also discussed the most popular project management methodologies and the differences between projects and operations.

Today, we'll go through another foundational topic: projects, programmes and portfolios. 

A lot of people don't know the difference between these and intercept them, making their work less focused and less specific which in turn leads to an organisation that's not as well organised as it should be so that it's efficient and effective. 

What are Projects, Programmes and Portfolios?

Let's take a quick look at these three terms:

2020 is here and I hope you are excited and ready for it. 

I also hope you've got your goals set up and if you work in marketing or PR, you have your work goals as well. 

But to achieve those professional goals, you'll have to be aware of what's going on in the industry and consider what might make your job easier or more difficult, what could be an opportunity or a thread. 

Threads especially must be considered early as these are risk factors that can ruin your efforts. 

So what should you expect in the world of content marketing in 2020? 

Quite a few exciting things. And some pretty logical focus areas. 

I've picked out three key trends that in my opinion are crucial and you can check out the other seven in a nice infographic below.

Content Marketing Focus Areas in 2020:

A few weeks ago, I shared how I started my career in PR and where it got me. (If you haven't read it, check it out and come back.)

In my early days, I used to do a lot of traditional media relations as in pitching journalists and national media. Shortly after that, came the influencers - the bloggers and the YouTubers. Instagram wasn't big at that time. 

I wouldn't say that the influencers changed the game on how to do proper media relations. Regardless whether you're pitching journalists or bloggers, YouTubers and Instagrammers, the principles are the same if you want to do it right.

But the very key principle is to treat them like human beings who have their own goals, needs, ways they like to communicate and make decisions. 

You need to be a bit like an anthropologist if you want to succeed when working with influencers. 

But let me tell you about a typical scenario that I used to encounter almost every week when I started working in PR and had to deal with influencers.

Happy New Year everyone!

We closed 2019 talking about the importance of setting personal and professional goals for 2020 and I want to start 2020 with an analysis of the best posts of 2019 and why. 

I do this every year and it helps me plan the content that I should be creating in the new year based on the popularity of past posts. 

At the end of the day, I write to share my knowledge with you but I also want to ensure that what I write is of value to you as my readers. 

So let's get started. 

Top 10 Blog Posts Written in 2019 Based on Traffic