Helping agency employees to improve their PR skills

Most public relations agencies hire employees with a mix of experience. Some already have a proven track record in generating media coverage, while others have only just begun to learn the ropes.

In this episode, Chip and Gini explore how agency leaders can help their team members to develop the skills and knowledge needed to produce excellent results for clients.

The key is understanding the needs and learning styles of each individual so that the appropriate type and level of support can be provided.

Resources

* Spin Sucks Community

Key takeaways

* Chip Griffin: “Do you want to invest the time and money in training or do you want to invest in the salary of someone who already has that training and experience?”

* Gini Dietrich: “There’s no real replacement from learning from people who have more experience. You can’t replace that with an online course or professional development.”

* Chip Griffin: “Just because they have a job history does not mean that they have expertise.”

* Gini Dietrich: “Make sure they don’t drown, but do allow them the opportunity to fail because that is where they will learn. It’s where we all learn.”

Related

* How to help junior agency employees grow

View Transcript

The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.

Chip Griffin: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: Gini, can you explain this whole PR thing to me? I, I don’t really understand it, and I, I think I need to know how to do it.

Gini Dietrich: Sure, no problem.

Chip Griffin: All right. Right after this.

So. PR. Yes. It’s what a lot of our listeners do. Mm-hmm. At least it’s one of the services that they offer. And when you hire a new employee, you gotta figure out, how do I teach these people how to do PR if they’re not someone who comes into it with PR experience? And this is a question that came up in the Spin Sucks Community lately, so I thought it would be a good one for us to talk about.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I mean the, the specific question was curious for all you PR pros who own… who run your own service agency, have you come across any great sources on resources on how to approach training, new hires to do pr? And it’s an interesting question cuz it was posted and I was like, huh. I guess we do it by just giving them the work to do and coaching them through it. Like I, we don’t necessarily, you know, send them out for professional development specific to quote unquote PR. Like, we may do things on writing, we may do things on, certainly we make everybody here go through the Peso Model certification. We might do some things on media relations but we, so we would take cer certain skill sets, but just to say, oh, you’re in PR now and, and you’re working in PR, we’re gonna give you that kind of professional development is really more on the job training types of things.

Chip Griffin: So, I mean, let’s back it up a minute. When you’re hiring,