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!

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. 

Given that I come from a PR background, my friends at Prowly asked me a few weeks ago for my top tips on how to build good relationships with journalists.

Edyta from Prowly had reached out to a number of great PR people to get their thoughts on the topic and compile them all into a very helpful post. 

I've so far had a terrible experience with PR pros pitching me as an influencer (check out some examples here - I promise, you'll have a good laugh), so I was delighted to share what I thought on the topic. 

Below, I'm republishing my part of the interview on how to do better media relations.  

#1 Media relations: the media are evolving at an incredibly high speed, but certain standards for collaborating with them remain unchanged. What are they, in your opinion?