Is Your Agency Giving Out Pay Increases?

With this week’s blog theme focused on salary issues, thought it would be fun to take another poll on this topic.

Although pay raises are supposed to be kept secret, we all know how the rumor mill works and how to get an idea about just how much of an increase you may or may not see as you approach your annual review.

So with the Dow above 10,000 points, for the time being at least, it would be nice to get a sense of how agencies are doing from a financial perspective and whether or not employees are earning increases again.

Please take the following poll and let’s see the results!

Jul 27 2010

How to Get a Higher Salary as a PR Professional

HR pro Lisa Hutchins offers advice on how to earn a higher salary

Determining your worth should be a huge factor in your negotiating a higher salary for yourself, and with that in mind I’ve provided a checklist that all PR pros should follow heading into an annual review.

1. Documenting your progress is something that you should never shy away from.

2. Keep files such as examples of your best work, client or co-worker emails to your manager “for a job well done” and any other recognition you have.

3. If you got a top placement in a newspaper, magazine, radio or television spot, keep those placements on file as well.

4. Be sure to self-review yourself throughout the year to monitor your progress so you are able to secure a higher salary during your annual review.

5. Don’t settle on a certain salary that you would like – after all, who doesn’t want a very high salary? Be realistic with numbers that you are comfortable with.

6. Most importantly, review your job description and consider what’s expected of you and whether the salary your company is offering adequately covers those expectations.

7. Talk with your mentor about your approach and be sure to speak with your HR representative, who can help prepare you with getting that higher salary.

8. Caveat: Evaluate the financial status of your company. If you have lost clients in your group, you may have to negotiate at a lower scale.

9. Do your research on salaries for your level and experience before you successfully negotiate a higher salary. PR Week publishes its yearly Salary Survey and Guide based on cities and titles, with an average of salaries and the median salary for the position.

Lisa Hutchins is a human resources professional who has previously worked at leading PR firms such as Ruder Finn and Cohn & Wolfe. A frequent contributor to PR at Sunrise, her responsibilities have included recruiting, employee relations, and miscellaneous employee changes. In addition to her HR experience, she has also as a PR pro on an array of accounts and campaigns, including GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer. Follow Lisa on Twitter via @lisahutchins.

Jul 22 2010

Five Secrets to Being Good at New Business Presentations

Any PR pro will tell you that they want to be involved with the biggest and best clients. But in order to do that your agency needs to trust you with an important new business RFP (request for proposal). Not only do you need to have the skills and have proven over time that you are an exceptional worker, but you need to be able to speak in front of an audience and be a positive representative of your agency.

At the end of the day, no matter how experienced you may be at giving presentations and speaking to prospective new clients, it’s always important to take a step back and remember some important points.

1. Practice, practice, practice – If you think you can just walk into a presentation or a pitch and get all of your key messages across without practicing … well, lets just say that I hope I’m not part of your team trying to win the business!

2. Speak Up – Not sure you understand everything as much as you should? Think you have an idea that’s worth bringing up? Don’t hold back. There are no right or wrong questions when preparing for a pitch.

3. Don’t assume everyone in the room knows what you’re talking about – Treat the presentation the same way you tell your client to approach an upcoming TV segment. Just because you think the prospective client should know everything about PR and social media doesn’t mean that they actually do. Ask the people in the room if they understand what you’re talking about, make sure you repeat yourself if you think the message is getting lost, and try to use simple explanations in your discussion.

4. Be confident – You are in the room and part of this important business pitch for a reason. Don’t doubt yourself and be professional. Just make sure you don’t come off as if you know everything and you’ll be fine.

5. Work the room – Be proactive and introduce yourself to people before and after the presentation. Start a conversation. Allow the client to get to know you. You may have the best ideas out of any agency presenting, but your agency will not be selected if the client doesn’t have a comfort level with you and your team.

Jul 19 2010

What All Companies Can Learn From The Old Spice Campaign

: Old Spice Leveraged A No-Name Actor In Isaiah Mustafa For Its “Smell Like A Man, Man” Campaign

By now everyone has seen the Old Spice “Smell like a man, man” videos and has read the New York Times story about this creative, smart program. So what can PR pros, marketing exec’s, and companies of all sizes learn from this overwhelmingly successful campaign? Here’s a few of my thoughts:

1. You Don’t Always Need A Celebrity For A Campaign - Sure, celebrities help (unless Mel Gibson is your spokesperson) get people’s attention and create awareness of your product, but not every company has the budget to enlist an A-list celeb for its campaign. With Isaiah Mustafa, Old Spice used this former NFL Europe player as the face of its product. Why did this work? Because the idea was great and the company believed in it.

2. All Of Your Resources Must Have A Place In Your Campaign – From Twitter to YouTube to the Old Spice Web site, the company did everything it needed in order to promote this program. Bottomline, if a company only puts a small amount of effort into publicizing its campaign and not using all of its available resources, it will never achieve the type of success it was hoping for.

3. Involving All Company Social Networks Is Critical – Engaging with its audience and inviting them to ask Mustafa questions via the Old Spice Twitter handle and Facebook pages was great. But having Mustafa answer random questions and even help a random guy propose to his girlfriend on the Old Spice YouTube channel was brilliant. And not only did he answer questions, but several videos were posted with amazingly fast turnaround time. We all talk about the need for real-time answers and information, and Old Spice did everything it could to quickly record its responses and get them out the door.

I could go on and on about the many things that companies could learn from this campaign, but what else would you add to this list?

Jul 14 2010

Social Media Poll

With so many articles being written about how to attract fans on Twitter and Facebook, I haven’t seen nearly as many that discuss what to do when you are popular and already have thousands of followers. This leads into this week’s poll question below.

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