We speak a lot about storytelling nowadays.

It's become an important part of any marketing or communications initiative because we struggle to reach our audiences and keep their attention. There's way too much noise out there so standing out is almost impossible. 

Being able to tell good stories is what allows you to be seen and read, it's how you show up in the newsfeed. 

But telling a good story isn't easy. It's an art in itself. An art that when backed by a bit of science and practice can be mastered. 

So today I want to dig a little deeper into what actually makes a good story. What is that science-backed essence we need so that our storytelling stands out?

As it turns out, there are seven key things your story needs: 

I run a webinar a while ago for a group of my HubSpot customers on how to get more conversions with inbound marketing. 

It's a difficult topic but an important one because everyone who's doing inbound marketing wants to generate leads. 

A lot of companies create content and put landing pages out there hoping to get some good conversions out. But publishing just something and hoping for the best doesn't work. You need a proper strategy behind this. 

Another common challenge is staying up-to-date with everything new in the world of marketing and digital and keeping up with your customers and their constant change in behaviour. 

So today, I want to share with you those slides that will offer you both strategic and tactical tips on how to increase your inbound marketing conversions. 

But before I get to the deck, I want to summarise the key points for you. 

It's been a while since we've had a "Why Work in PR?" interview but today we have Angharad Welsh sharing with us her PR career story and offering some very actionable advice for students and young professionals who want to learn more about the industry and how to get into it. 

Angharad and I have never met before but I discovered her article for the #FuturePRoof book project where I also wrote a chapter and I was intrigued. I found that, in addition to #FuturePRoof, we had a few other things in common, like Cheltenham where she lives and where I used to live and Muddywall - a magazine we both used to write for.  

I dug into Angharad's online presence a bit and I found that she had an interesting story to tell, coming from a broadcast journalism background. So I emailed her and I invited her to do an interview for the series. She accepted and I was delighted. 

Before you move onto the interview, don't forget to follow her on Twitter @Welsh_PR and check out her website too. 

(If you've missed any of the previous interviews, you can take a look as well: Richard Bailey, Pippa Hanson, Jessica Hodkinson, Chryssa Skodra, Farzana Baduel, Scott Guthrie and Sarah Hall.) 

Why Work in Public Relations: Interview with Angharad Welsh

As a marketing agency consultant at HubSpot, I've so far worked with over 150 agencies. The one thing the majority of them struggle with is their own content. Yes, their own marketing.

I know, sometimes this does sound funny since that's exactly what these agencies offer to clients - marketing services . Surely, they should be able to be doing this for themselves, right? Yes, able they are. Not always committed, though. Why? Because client work comes first. And so does winning new business. 

But the most successful agencies I've worked with, have learned how to find the time for their own marketing and are nailing it. They experiment with their own stuff rather than with those for clients. Basically, they become their own best client. 

To get to this point is not impossible. You just need to treat yourself like a client. Get the goals, sign a retainer of activities, develop the marketing plan (including buyer personas, content plan and schedule) designate an account management, get this on a project management tool and then stick to it. Review, rinse and repeat. That's it. 

Okay, hold on a second, maybe it's not that simple. 

We've spoken about PR measurement and how it's always been PR's biggest challenge. We've also delved into Inbound PR and how the concept provides a framework to really measure outcomes not just outputs.

But we haven't really dug into how you should plan your PR campaigns and programmes with metrics in mind. 

So today I want to introduce you to AMEC's new integrated evaluation framework which enables professionals to use the Barcelona Principles 2.0 to plan and tie PR activities back to organisational performance. 

The framework was launched in June and its interactive version is pretty cool. Most importantly, it's very intuitive and simple to use so that any new practitioner (or even a student) can follow the steps to plan, execute, measure and report on a fully integrated communications campaign.

The Planning Stage

The framework spans through each PESO channel and looks at the following points to get you to start planning your PR programme (note, the order is important):