We're just about ready to tell you all about the benefits of working in public relations, but first, you should ask yourself whether you have a real passion for public relations and all that it offers to dedicated professionals and their clients.
Make no mistake: public relations is about serving your clients to the absolute best of your ability.
You need to be a people person, and not just so you can better serve your clients. Chances are you'll be working with a team, and you'll need to be able to collaborate with that team to achieve the best possible results.
While there's room for creativity in public relations, which we'll be talking about soon enough, it's also a business-minded career. You need to have a knack for smart decision-making that will promote your client and make everyone more money.
You also need to be able to handle constructive criticism, from both your clients and your coworkers.
Instead of taking that criticism personally, you'll need to listen carefully and decide whether it would benefit the campaign in question.
If these scenarios and challenges sound like your bread and butter, then you'll probably enjoy a career in public relations.
Now let's look at why public relations is a good career.
It can be argued that public relations is currently more important than it ever has been before.
We live in a time when not just artists need promotion to sustain a successful career, but doctors, lawyers, and other less public professionals can definitely benefit from getting their name out there and managing how their story is being told to the public and especially to prospective customers.
The internet is undoubtedly one of the most accessible and most useful platforms for contemporary PR, but mastering public relations in an online space is far from easy.
But if you put in the work and successfully use all available tools to make your clients happy and create an effective campaign, then you'll be able to rest easy knowing that your work really is important. It has an immediate impact on your clients and their own careers.
In many other industries, it can be difficult to tell whether your efforts are having any real effect, but in PR, you'll know very quickly whether what you're doing is working or not.
That sense of feedback will keep you on your toes for sure, but it's also a reminder that all this time and hard work is significant.
If you hate jobs that let you shut your brain off and coast, then we've got some good news for you.
Public relations involves many individual tasks that will stimulate your brain and keep you engaged at all times.
On any given day, you could be doing all sorts of different things, from contacting media outlets about potential placements to meeting with your client in-person to discuss changes to the campaign strategy.
Especially in the early years of a career in public relations, you'll probably be asked to handle many different tasks, all of which contribute to client satisfaction in some way.
You'll definitely be busy, so be prepared to put in a full day's worth of work every single day.
Also, as we mentioned earlier, the public relations landscape continues to change, which means you'll need to adapt when the situation shifts.
Maybe a certain social media platform will experience a major change in its core demographics, making a previously viable marketing choice subpar.
Maybe a client's upcoming project has its release date delayed, requiring you to bide for time and spin the delay as a net-positive.
When your professional life is this stimulating, it's a bit like going to the gym every day. Your PR skills will keep improving over time simply by keeping up with the demands of the job.
Of course, one of the biggest concerns for anyone exploring different career options is the question of income, and this is where we have even more good news for those interested in PR.
Public relations specialists (a broad title that encompasses multiple roles within PR) reportedly received aa median income of $60,000 a year in 2018.
The highest-earning individuals in this category earned an average of roughly $80,000 a year.
Even entry-level PR professionals could very well earn about $45,000 a year in the early stages of their careers.
Now, of course, none of this is guaranteed, especially as the PR industry continues to change, as we discussed above, but it does give a good idea of what you can expect to earn if you pursue a career in public relations.
Even more importantly, there's really no upper ceiling here. If you achieve a great deal of success in the industry and even end up starting your own PR company, you could potentially be earning much more.
The big takeaway here is that there's still a great deal of demand for PR specialists, and their median income definitely provides evidence of that.
We've talked about this before on the site, but it's certainly worth reiterating here: PR can involve a great deal of creative thought and problem-solving.
Yes, being business-minded is important, and the needs of your client should always be the number one priority, but there will be many times when you have the chance to approach an old problem from a new angle.
Tried and true PR strategies have stuck around for a very good reason: they work. But there's always room for innovation.
Don't forget: if you keep offering innovative solutions that yield impressive results, it will be much easier to advance within a company and make a name for yourself.
As a quick disclaimer, this doesn't mean that in your first week as a PR pro you should try to shake things up, but as you become more familiar with your work environment and the types of clients the company tends to work with, keep your eyes peeled for new ideas and new solutions.
