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? 

Don't Believe in Inbound PR? This Post Will Change Your Mind was the first post I ever wrote about Inbound PR. That was in July 2015.

I kept on writing and started doing public speaking on the topic around the world. 

Then came the INBOUND16 conference in November 2016 where my pitch for Inbound PR was accepted and I spoke in front of hundreds of people about it. The immediate questions after my talk were: "Is there a book or a HubSpot Academy Certification where we can keep learning about this?" 

I said "Well, no, there isn't. Yet."

Fast forward to March 2017, I had just finished writing the first draft of my 40,000 words manuscript  for my Inbound PR book. 

I've always dreamed about working with Wiley as a publisher because they've published the books of some of my favourite PR and business authors such as Brian Solis, David Meerman Scott and Stephen Waddington so I took a chance and emailed them my pitch. 

And I got a YES. Can you believe it? I couldn't initially. 

Now fast forward to April 2018, the Inbound PR book published by Wiley is a reality. 

And it drops today! 

CIPR's State of the Profession is out. It's the UK PR industry's longest-running and most authoritative research study into public relations practice that delivers industry-leading data on the trends, issues and challenges impacting PR. I cover the research every year. 

In 2018, the study found that the biggest challenge for the PR industry is under-representation of PR professionals at board level - this was the same in the 2017 research. To give you some of the numbers, only 1 in 10 senior respondents indicated they were a member of an executive board.

When trying to figure out why, the study found that PR pros are overwhelmingly engaged in tactical delivery, for example, 76% spend some or most time copywriting and editing.

A longer-term challenge for the PR industry seems to be finding new ways and sources to provide value, specifically when it comes to having to counter the risk of AI and new technologies. 

This too relates back to how the most commonly undertaken activity in PR is copywriting and editing, the second most common is delivering PR campaigns and the third most common is media relations. Elements of these activities, as well as social media relations, are at risk of automation. 

What this all tells us is that if PR people want a seat at the table, they need to break away from tactical communications and assert wider influence over the organisation they work in. 

Most importantly, PR people need to build their business acumen to break through beyond PR. This is something I've realised a while ago and was one of the key reasons I developed the concept and thinking around Inbound PR. 

Today’s consumers, be it of products, news, pitches and really any type of content, are fundamentally different.

Nobody wants to feel “marketed to;” we want to make our own choices based on our own research and experiences online. When problems arise, we demand answers on social media, directly engaging the company in front of a global audience.

We are the most empowered, sophisticated customer base in the history of our existence (so far). 

Unfortunately, PR hasn't yet adjusted to this new reality at scale. There are some who are doing great but most traditional PR strategies are falling by the wayside.

PR professionals must draw upon an enormous breadth of skills and techniques to serve their clients’ interests and those efforts are becoming increasingly ephemeral and difficult to track using traditional metrics.

Enter Inbound PR - the technique that allows you to combine content and measurement with revenue-aligned goals and a target persona-driven content approach that meets your business needs and your customer needs. 

This is a guest post by Anita Sambol from Point Visible.

These days, social media and other online mediums are main sources of information for quite a lot of people, if not all. There are plenty of blogs and websites that talk about the most random stuff you could imagine.

Despite that or maybe precisely because of that, content creation is not an easy job. Creating useful and interesting content takes a lot of time and effort, along with some creativity and imagination.

It’s true that you can talk about almost anything but that doesn’t mean every topic will reward you with the same level of engagement. The best way to ensure you’re on the right track from the start is to base all of your content-related decisions on a quality target audience analysis. That way you won’t have a mismatch between what you want to talk about and what your audience needs and wants to read, watch and consume.

All of your communication should be consumer-centered and revolve around their needs, not yours.