After a little over a year of having my email open to anyone and offering PR students to reach out to me for advice and help with their PR dissertations, I'm now done with this free service and free will to help. I'm shutting the PR mentoring down. I've kinda had enough. 

I don't  usually start or seek a rant, but I need to say all of this hoping that someone will be able to explain it to me. 

I can't even count the number of thoughtless, pointless emails I've received over the past year:

• My advisor says I need to narrow down my topic – can you give me a narrowed one please? 
• I like PR and social media – can you tell me what a good topic is that I should go for? 
• I want to conduct research around PR and have this brand's Facebook page – can you suggest a topic for it and what the hypothesis should be? 

Square2Marketing – one of the most successful inbound marketing agencies in the US – wrote an interesting post about how stories are the foundation of inbound marketing. I agree. 

But stories are also the foundation of PR. PR people have always been great storytellers. It's what they do day in and day out – they tell the stories of their clients by engaging with various audiences, whether that's through writing press releases, blog posts and longer content formats like ebooks, or utilising social media, or even drafting speeches.  

It's what PR people excel at – content.

So it turns out, content is the centrepiece for both inbound marketing and PR, which is one of the reasons why inbound PR makes perfect sense. 

Do you use Medium?

Turns out you should. It's the next big thing. Actually, it's already a pretty big thing.

For those of you who don't know what Medium is, it's basically an online publishing platform for anyone to share stories. It's kinda of like a magazine for personal blogs. You should check it out. 

I started reading it regularly a few months ago. It's cool because I simply chose the topics I am passionate about and every day I get a daily digest email with the latest posts for those topics. Many things there are different than my usual list of regular reading which is why I enjoy this so much, for example there are lots of personal posts (like this or this or this) rather than just the usual industry-related stuff that I follow and so it's nicer to start the day with such an inspirational piece or some sound leadership or business advice.  

I only posted something on Medium a couple of weeks ago because I feel it needs to be more personal there, different than what I usually publish here or on LinkedIn. I'll certainly be exploring it more but what I noticed is how people like, recommend and highlight pieces of your post. It's really cool to see which thoughts of yours people find most interesting and worth remembering.

Continuing with my blog series "Why Work in PR?", we have Sarah Hall today sharing with us her PR career story and some valuable advice for students and young professionals looking into joining the industry. 

I met Sarah on email a few months. Yep, we've never met in person but email and Twitter were enough to discover that we have many things in common, especially a passion for reviving the PR industry and particularly the agency world. 

With years of experience in PR, running her own agency now and seeing the pains of the industry, Sarah was the one who started the #FuturePRoof book project and reached out to me to see if I would be interested in contributing a chapter on Inbound PR too. Of course I was. I was so grateful to her for the opportunity. And so I invited her to share with us her story. 

Before you move onto the interview, don't forget to follow her on Twitter @Hallmeister and to follow @WeArePRoofed 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 and Scott Guthrie.) 

Why Work in Public Relations: Interview with Sarah Hall

Ask anyone about leadership and they'll tell you that emotional intelligence is key.

Read any management or leadership book and you'll get that same answer too.

In his article for the HBR "Leadership That Gets Results", Daniel Goleman explains that emotional intelligence is the ability to manage ourselves and our relationships effectively.

Unlike IQ which is largely genetic and barely changes from childhood, the skills of emotional intelligence can be learned at any age but it takes practice and commitment.

It also takes time because the emotional centres of the brain, not just the neocortex, are involved.

The neocortex is the thinking brain that acquires purely technical knowledge and cognitive abilities very quickly. The emotional brain, on the other hand, needs repetition and practice to master a new behaviour and change a habit because it has to first unlearn the old one and then turn the new one into the brain’s default option.  

Daniel Goleman also explains that emotional intelligence consists of four fundamental capabilities: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and social skill.