media update’s Talisa Jansen van Rensburg takes you through five of the characteristics that every great PR pro should have to ensure that they will not blend into the crowd.

Most people develop their habits at a young age and they usually stick with them for their entire life. However, people are able to change and grow, which means that if a person wants to acquire certain traits, all they have to do is work on themselves to achieve that.

Here are the top five qualities that make up a great PR professional:

1. Resilience

Being in the PR industry means that you need to have thick skin because you face many challenges on a daily basis. When you are faced with a challenge, you can't sit and wallow in stress and fear because time doesn’t stand still for anyone.

Being resilient means that a PR pro will get right back up after any bad situation or crisis. And that is exactly what working in the PR industry is all about! You’ve got to learn to roll with the punches and make the best of every situation.
Be sure to read these Five ways to handle a public relations crisis to give you insight into how to become more resilient.

2. Creativity

Consumers are bombarded with content and campaigns on a daily basis. If a PR pro wants to cut through the noise and stand out, they need to get creative.

When your clients bring their problems to you, you need to get creative and turn their problems into solutions.

For example, in December 2018, Aware.org had to deal with the problem of people drinking and driving. This is not a new issue, but they did find a way to bring awareness to it in a whole new way by being creative.

The ‘One on Nicol’ campaign invited people who were tired of being stuck in traffic to get a drink at their drive-thru bar in Fourways. As expected, many people took to social media to talk about how insane and dangerous this idea was.

The outrage was the goal of their campaign — to get people actually talking about the issue. Once people actually arrived at the drive-thru bar, it showed people pulling over and drinking non-alcoholic beverages, and the campaign was really called ‘None on Nicol’.This PR campaign took a problem, got creative and gave people a solution! That is what PR pros should aim for.


3. Flexibility

Working with clients and events means that there will be a lot of opinions that need to be taken into consideration. There will definitely be a lot of changes and new ideas as different people start giving their opinions. It can also happen where events get moved around, which will affect your time management. If a PR pro can’t deal with all the changes, they will have a hard time coping in the industry.

Being flexible will allow a PR pro to go with the flow and change as they need to. This will allow clients to feel more confident in their PR pro since they don’t freak out when things don’t go according to plan and keep a cool head.


4. The ability to multitask

Being a great PR means that you will need to nail multitasking. Following up with press releases, phoning clients, making arrangements and getting to the admin side of things often need to happen all at the same time. If you can’t multitask, you will surely let an area down and it will come back to haunt you later. Dropping balls in the PR industry is never an option — you have to be able to juggle it all.

Multitasking doesn’t mean that your focus is all over the place — you still need to ensure that you have a 100% focus on the specific task that you are working on. But, you are keeping in mind all of the other things that you still need to get to. Multitasking is all about getting your priorities straight.


5. Honesty

If you over-promise and realise closer to the time you won’t be able to deliver — but don’t communicate with your clients or team — you will surely disappoint someone, if not yourself. Being honest is an important characteristic to make your own. If you keep lying to people, those lies will start to build up and lead you to tumble.

As the old saying goes: “Honesty is the best policy.” Being honest with your team, clients and yourself will ensure that miscommunication will be avoided. Honesty will definitely go a long way, ensuring you build a strong relationship with your company and clients.



What are some other characteristics that you think a great PR pro should have? Let us know in the comments section below.

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Now that you know what characteristics every PR pro should have, be sure to read Five tech tools that every PR should use to make your life so much easier.
*Image courtesy of Vecteezy