This week I had the honour of presenting to PR students at the University of Newcastle (my old university) on the topic of working in a PR agency. Above is the presentation I gave. It was intended to be light-hearted and was pitched assuming minimal knowledge of the agency environment. The simple reason for this is that when I was at uni I had no idea about what a PR agency did or how it all worked.

I often get asked what skills you should have to get a job in PR and how you go about getting a job at an agency. My advice typically covers the following points:

• Do work experience - every junior hire we make is via work experience, I know of almost no exceptions to this. If you want to get a job in a PR agency the best route is to identify the agencies you would like to work for and approach them about work experience opportunities.
• Know the media – understand the media. Watch all the television news regularly and not just the news you like. Understand the difference between ABC, Ten and SBS. Read the papers and not just the one you like best. Know the difference between the tabloids and broadsheets, understand the difference between the SMH and The Australian. Listen to the radio, think about the stories they cover. Read online voraciously. Google News is a good start. It provides a good overview of the Australian landscape but also gives an insight into international media too.
• Read and comment on blogs – read PR, marketing, social media and other personal interest blogs. Understand how writing for a blog differs from a traditional media outlet. Make sure you comment and engage. The beauty of blogs is that it is about  a two way conversation. Take part and enjoy the benefits. This post by the PR Warrior Trevor Young provides a good overview of some blogs to get started with. The fact I am listed in hist post is not the only reason I suggest following his advice either.
• Understand how Facebook can be used to build a community – Facebook is a brilliant platform for sharing photos and staying up to date with your friends, but it can also be a platform for building a community around a particular topic, brand or passion point. Join and analyse some of the Facebook pages of your favourite brands. In fact why not try it for yourself? Set up a page for your football club, your university club or other organisation.
• Have a digital footprint – I always perform a Google search when I receive a new CV. What will I see if I search for your name? Having a blog is one of the most obvious ways to grow your personal brand. Your traffic will not be high to start with, but it is not about traffic rather is more about having your thoughts and opinions there when someone searches. If having a blog is too daunting Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are easier places to start. For extra points you may want to start building an understanding of basic SEO and HTML. Check out my advice on growing your personal brand online.
• Get a university degree - having a university degree is one of the things I look at. A comms degree is the obvious choice, but really I am not all that fussed what degree you have. The reason I mention a degree is because it shows you understand how to research, know how to form and present an opinion and perhaps most importantly can stick at something and get it finished without having someone looking over your shoulder. Having said that I have also worked with some amazing people that don’t have a degree.
• Get involved and help a local charity - if you are a PR student odds are you already know a lot more about PR than the average punter. Why not volunteer some of your time to a local charity to assist them with their PR and social media planning. The experience you gain will likely be invaluable and will make a difference for a needy charity.
• The marketing mix is converging, so understand the whole marketing mix – gone are the days of clearly defined roles between marketing functions. Media, advertising, digital and PR agencies are all increasingly offering similar services as the roles blur. The more you know about all these disciplines the better.
• Finally, be creative in getting people’s attention - PR agencies receive a lot of CVs each and every day, so think about how you can stand out from the rest of the pack. Rebecca Griffith from the University of Wollongong got my attention by posting a job request on the Mumbrella job boards and this effort by an advertising hopeful in America is brilliant.

This is just my advice. What other tips should we be giving to students and others looking to start a career in PR?

I wrote the following post for Media Asia.

The ten blue links displayed when you type your company name into a search engine, not your company’s homepage, is where most people first interact with your brand. What they see on that results page, be it positive or negative, will have a lasting impact.

In the same vein, what is displayed when someone types your name into a search engine should be compared with the front page of your CV. If nothing comes up, what does that say about you? Or even worse, if the only things that come up are photos of your drunken exploits from five years ago, then your search engine footprint needs some serious attention.

Below I have outlined seven quick tips to help improve your search persona and ensure your search engine CV presents the right image.

1. Blog. Having a good blog habit is one of the simplest ways to ensure you control your personal online brand, but simply setting up a free account on Wordpress.com is not enough. You need to generate content, ideally lots of content. The more posts you write the more content a search engine will have to index, and the more content others will be able to link to; both of which positively impact what appears when your name is searched.

2. Tweet. A step down in effort from blogging is Twitter. The major search engines rank Twitter high in their results and are now including Tweets as part of their real-time results. Aided by the 140 character limit, there is an incredibly low barrier for entry into the world of Twitter, so set up an account and add your Tweets to the 50 million odd tweets that are created each day.

3. Use your name. If you want to be found on the web, make sure you are optimising for how people are most likely to search for you, with your name. If available, purchase the URL for your name. Also, ensure your Twitter handle is your name and customise your Facebook and LinkedIn URLs to include your name. Of course this will be more effective for people with a unique name as opposed to all the Bob Smiths or Li Chens out there.

4. Understand how people search. Use the Google AdWords Keyword tool to understand how people search for your skill set. Put in the word that you think best represents what you want to be known for. For example a search on ‘PR’ shows that ‘communications’ is also a highly searched word. Armed with the knowledge of what people are searching for, use the terms in the content you create for your blog and also use them in your online profiles or bios to help align you with your chosen industry.

5. Be everywhere. When it comes to optimising for search engines, the more online presences you have the better. The popular social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn, like Twitter, are featured high in searches for peoples’ name. As such, make sure you have a presence in the social networks that are most important in your market and to your industry. Also make sure you have personalised your URL. Learn how to do it for Facebook here and LinkedIn here.

6. Tag your images. Ensure that images you want to be found of you, perhaps the one of you accepting an award at the Cannes PR Lions ceremony, are tagged with your name and industry and uploaded on a photo sharing site like Flickr, so search engines can easily index your picture.

7. Remove the bad stuff. Just as easily as search engines find the good stuff, they will also return the bad stuff. If there are images of you that you wouldn’t want people to see, delete them. Also think very carefully before you post content to the web. Simply think, “Am I happy with this piece of content representing me to potential employers or clients?” and if you aren’t comfortable, don’t post it.

These are but a small sample of tips for improving your personal search rankings. If you have any others, why not add them in the comment box?

This post of a series of posts I am making on SEO tips to improve your personal search brands. Other posts you can view are:

• SEO your Twitter profile
• SEO your LinkedIn Profile

If you enjoyed this post why don’t you subscribe to my blog via RSS or email by following this link. Or alternatively follow me on Twitter.

As you will see from the above, Twitter is the number two result when you search my name in Google, so is an incredibly important channel for my personal brand.

For those who are interested in growing their results in Google, I believe Twitter is one of the easiest ways along with Facebook and LinkedIn that you can start owning the front page of Google.

Why? Because, Google indexes Twitter highly, it is the easiest way to start creating content and even if you do not Tweet regularly your profile and URL inclusion provides another means to direct people to your LinkedIn or Facebook profile.

For those that already have a Twitter account the good people at Twittip have created a list of tips on  more advanced techniques on how to increase the SEO of your Twitter profile.

Some are obvious:

• Ensure you Twitter handle includes relevant keywords (I have gone for my name)
• Ensure your bio also includes relevant keywords – mine has PR and my company name Weber Shandwick
• List your profile in relevant directories such as WeFollow
• Follow relevant people in the hope they find your feed of relevance and link back to you

But two were less obvious (at least to me, but I am no SEO expert) and are currently on my to do list:

You can even SEO your Twitter pic (avatar)…

Yes, you can even SEO your profile picture! You can’t add tags but, you can rename the photo before you upload it that way when it shows up in the URL it will have the keywords that you named. Be careful not to add spaces. Doing that will not translate the link very well. I don’t recommend changing your profile picture but, I would recommend changing the name of the profile picture and re-uploading it. You can do this by clicking on “Settings” and then “Picture”.

Burn Baby Burn…

Burn Your Twitter feed: Why would you want to use an RSS feed for Twitter? Well, by using RSS, people can subscribe to your posts (and in this case Tweets) and get instant feeds sent to them. Just like a blogger would use RSS feeds to increase their popularity with search engines and help draw traffic to their blogs, you can use RSS feeds to do the same for your Twitter account. So, how do you go about doing this you say? I will show you how to set this up in Google FeedBurner.

First you go to FeedBurner. If you have a gmail account you can sign in with this. Otherwise, sign up for a new account.

Next, in a different window open up your Twitter account and scroll down to the middle of your Twitter page and click on the RSS feed icon. Next go to the top of the page and copy the URL. (It should look similar to this: http://twitter.com/statuses/friends_timeline/104933666)

Next, paste it into FeedBurner. Then make sure that you add your user name and password so that it won’t be locked when people try and look at the feeds (Use the same format as the highlighted text: http://username:password@twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/15473972.rss). Click next and you have just RSS’d your twitter profile!

Last, go through the dashboard and choose important options for your chosen use of your feed. You can share widgets, add pictures, set up a title for the feed and make sure that it pings (connects) with search engines.

Some interesting stuff hey? Do you have any other tips? I would love to hear them in the comment box.

This post of a series of posts I am making on SEO tips to improve your personal search brands. Other posts you can view are:

• Tips to improve your search engine footprint
• SEO your LinkedIn Profile

If you enjoyed this post why don’t you subscribe to my blog via RSS or email by following this link. Or alternatively follow me on Twitter.