We live in an inbound world where outbound no longer works. The traditional methods we’ve been so used to when doing PR are outdated simply because they are outbound.

There are two ingredients that you need if you want to make Inbound PR work: a different mindset (a methodology) and a tool stack (technology).

Let’s start with methodology.

When I began working on the Inbound PR concept, I felt that it would be helpful to have a visual that could easily explain some of the thought processes underlying the entire notion and the tactics that would make it work.

So I took the inbound marketing methodology and flipped it into its PR version, focusing on the media as the key persona. Let me throw a quick disclaimer here: Inbound PR can work for any stakeholder group: customers, media, employees, etc.

The Inbound PR Methodology

I'm fascinated by culture. I'm also fascinated by leadership so when I stumbled upon this HBR research on what leadership looks like in different cultures during an online course on International Project Management, I had to dig deeper into it and decided to summarise my learnings in the below infographic. 

Before we get there, though, let's make sure we're all on the same page with what leadership is and why cultural differences play a role. 

Leadership can be defined as the ability of an individual to influence, motivate and guide others.

Regardless of where they work, good leaders distinguish themselves by their judgment, their ability to relate to others and their integrity. Those skills and qualities are fairly universal across the globe and organisations.

However, culture influences the degree to which each quality is practiced and valued.

Disclaimer: This blog post is not legal advice to use to comply with the EU's GDPR. It just provides some useful information but you should seek legal counsel to ensure you comply with the GDPR.

The GDPR or EU's new general data protection regulation is coming into effect on 25 May.  

Lots of companies and individuals have been scared of it over the last year since it was announced. 

Instead, people should be excited because the GDPR is fair towards how people really want to be communicated with, by whom, about what and how often. 

GDPR is full on inbound. 

It states that companies must be transparent and fair with how they collect, process and use personal data. Though it’s a European law, it affects any marketer that gathers data on a global basis.

This basically means that people need to first give you consent that you can collect and use their data to communicate with them and only for specific reasons. 

And that's exactly inbound because inbound pulls people into your business where they willingly share their information with you in exchange for content value vs. outbound where you get lists of contacts who've never heard of you before or have never been attracted to your content (nor agreed to receive it) and blast them emails out. That's now illegal!

We do a lot of research at HubSpot. 

It's how we remain able to deeply understand human behaviour and so manage to innovate by developing new software that people actually want to and need to use. 

We invented inbound marketing which helped thousands of companies out there drive good-fit leads through their own website and content, and then pass them onto the sales department that though an inbound sales philosophy became able to close these leads into actual customers and so grow the company's revenue. 

We preach what we teach and this whole methodology served us well for a long time. But by deeply knowing our own customers we're starting to see a shift where customer acquisition through the described approach above is not only becoming more expensive but it's also not as effective as it used to be. 

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of chatting with Shaun Tabatt for his podcast about my new book Inbound PR. 

Shaun is a really great guy. I had such a fantastic time talking to him thanks to the thoughtful questions he was asking and just generally how nice he is. (Do follow his podcast!)

We had a long conversation about the PR industry, what got me to write a book and who would benefit from it but we also spoke a lot about how I began my career in PR, why I chose it and then why I chose to leave it.

Those personal stories is what I wanted to share with you today so below I have pulled out some of the key conversation points alongside the full podcast recording. 

What propelled you to move in this career development direction? What were the starting points for you?