It’s been a little over a year since my first blog post as a self-employed PR professional. Those of you who know me know that it’s been one crazy year both professionally and personally.  The fact that my family and I have survived living in Austin [Lakeway, TX to be exact] and that my venture in PR as a soloist (for the time being, I hope) has been a relative success, I have to say crazy isn’t so bad.

The ‘craziness’ of the past year has brought me to learn many things about PR…and life. Here are 12 [one for each month] that I’d like to share with y’all [that's a li'l Texan slang for all you New Yorkers]:

12. LIFE IS FULL OF SURPRISES. Such a cliche, but it’s so true. Who would’ve thought that we’ll be living so far away from all our family, friends, and of course, the PR/media capital of the world? I still wake up in the middle of the night sometimes thinking I’m in Cambridge Heights in Nutley, NJ.

11. I’M A LITTLE BIT COUNTRY…A LITTLE BIT ROCK ‘N ROLL. Moving to Texas has given everyone in the family an appreciation for the most spectacular natural scenery in the country.  The Texas Hill Country and Lake Travis are must-adds to anyone’s bucket list. We’ve also enjoyed getting to know folks who come from a very different background as us, and realize that we aren’t at all that much different. We do miss the diversity that the Northeast offers in food, culture, people and…FOOD.

10. IN PR, LOCATION DOESN’T MATTER. My friends who work in New York City would probably hate me for saying this, but this is based on my experience. The Internet has really changed the way we communicate. I am just as in touch with what’s going on in New York City from here as I was when I was working there. Ok…maybe location does matter a little. That’s probably why I’m keeping my 201 area code.

9. CENTRAL TIME CAN BE A PAIN. Location might not matter in PR, but time zones do especially in matters of scheduling meetings and TV watching. The one hour difference is enough to get me mixed up in making appointments with people in the East Coast. I’ve also missed live TV events because of this. Obviously, there is a time zone bias going on here.

8. IT’S ALWAYS BETTER TO REP CLIENTS YOU LOVE. Every PR pro’s dream is to have clients that they feel passionate about. In my case, that’d be the PGA Tour or Tiger Woods. No, I don’t rep both as you can tell with all the bad press they are getting lately.  I am proud to say though I do rep the next best thing. If you haven’t guessed it, then read here.

7. LIKE LIFE, THERE IS SUCH A THING AS DESTINY IN PR. I’ve told this story many times and I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of re-telling this story again and again. Many of you who lived near us in New Jersey have had many yummy meals with us at Carino’s Italian. If I recall, I introduced Carino’s to y’all.  In fact, our final farewell dinner, hosted by the Ocampos, was at the Carino’s in Clifton Commons. Then, the funniest thing happened along the way to Austin. The first ever restaurant we ate at after a long yet leisurely drive from New Jersey that took ten days was at Rudy’s “Country Store” and Bar-B-Q.

Then, a Divine Intervention, a few weeks later, I end up meeting one of the most innovative digital marketers in the U.S., Creed Ford IV, Principal at Pictoric Media Group, who runs the digital marketing for Carino’s Italian and Rudy’s Bar-B-Q…a couple of months later I’m playing golf with him and the owners of Carino’s and Rudy’s Bar-B-Q. The rest as they say is history. [If you're on Twitter and aren't following @creedford, you're missing out. This dude will change how restaurants operate. More on that on a later post.]

6. TIGER WOODS IS THE KING OF GOLF AND DOUCHEBAGGERY. Considering I’m in PR, I felt shafted that I, too, fell for his image that he can do no wrong. Nike, Tiger and the rest of his crew should watch out for a class-action lawsuit for all the emotional distress he’s caused faithful married men.

5. NETWORKING IS EASIER FOR A FIVE YEAR OLD. Seeing how my two sons (ages 5 and 6), without thinking twice, approach other kids their age to make friends, is something to emulate. I even blogged about it here.

4. TEXAS HAS ITS OWN INDEPENDENCE DAY. Texans have always said Texas is its own country. They’re right. I discovered this when my client, Rudy’s Bar-B-Q, launched a campaign on March 2nd (3/2) to offer up quarter pound barbecue briskets for 32 cents (a play off the date in case you didn’t get it) for a couple of hours. All payments received from the promo hours, as well as 50 cents for every new Twitter follower and Facebook fan a week leading up to 3/2, were donated to the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund. A simple cause related program that combined traditional and social media generated significant media placements for the client. Welcome to the Republic of Texas.

3. PR, SOCIAL MEDIA AND A HEART TO HELP, IS A WINNING COMBINATION. Besides the aforementioned campaign for Haiti. My client, Rudy’s Bar-B-Q,  also embarked on a cause-related campaign that raised funds for the victims of the Fort Hood tragedy through a partnership with Soldiers’ Angels. In addition, Carino’s Italian restaurants introduced its new loyalty card, Pasta Points, by donating a dollar for every new registration from April 12th-30th to Autism Speaks, the largest nonprofit organization for autism awareness and research. You can view my behind the scenes take form Austin Live with Chef Peit here.  Here are six things about cause-related PR you need to know.

2. I GOT PR’d TO MOVE TO AUSTIN. Kudos to Austin’s PR team for getting the city included in rankings of the Best Places to Live in the U.S. (U.S. News) and the Best Places for Business and Careers (Forbes). Besides the obvious of asking friends who’ve been to Austin, my research showed that Austin is great a hot bed for entrepreneurs and great place to raise a family.  So far, that seems like the case.

1. GOTTA HAVE FAITH. Not talking about George Michael’s song. The craziness of the past year has actually made me more spiritual and to reflect on what’s really important. We may live with less, but we’ve become closer as a family. If it worked for us so it should for you. The ups and downs of being a small business owner requires a lot of faith in oneself. I don’t mean to be preachy, but without the belief that someone greater is watching out for you, the challenges will be tougher to face IMO.  If you don’t believe me, read point no. 7 again.

This may not be so original since I’m borrowing Jeff Foxworthy’s “You Might Be a Redneck…” shtick for this post. You may also view this as a lame attempt, but hey this is my little space online to share my observations about PR, so I shall post what I want. I’ve been doing PR  for about 13 years so I’d like to think I know more than the average PR pro.

You Might Be In PR If...

You Might Be In PR If…

…you can spot every news item/segment on TV, radio, blog that’s pitched by a PR pro.

…you refer to pitch as a letter not a skill for baseball.

…you think ad buys are a wasted investment.

…every time you write “PR” on tweets, you preface it with a hashtag.

…you know what a hashtag is.

…you hate the word “leverage,” but find yourself using it to explain a PR tactic.

…you get excited when you get a media placement in The Wall Street Journal.

…you get ticked off when the boss asks why you didn’t get USA Today or The New York Times.

…it takes you at least a half hour to explain what you do for a living to family and friends.

…your family and friends think you’re in advertising no matter how many times you’ve explained you’re in PR (ya know what I mean).

…you multiply the ad value by 2.5 to get the publicity value.

…you’re a news junkie.

…you know getting a hit is not all about contacts but about the story you pitch.

…you understood what I meant by hit.

…you still call Cision Bacon’s just because you like the traditional and the association with pork (ok, this is just me).

…you know your profession has been ranked as the 8th most stressful job in the country.

…you’ve used Barack Obama’s presidential campaign as a case study for the value of PR.

…85% of the folks you work with are women.

…creative sessions begin with which celebrity can we bring to the table or can the client write a book?

…clients are treated with the same level of service no matter what retainer they pay.

…you have one social media slide, maybe  two, that covers why your firm has social media expertise on new business presentations.

…you secretly despise being called a flack.

…you have a degree in communications or journalism or some other degree that has nothing to do with PR.

…you wish there was a fictional TV series or sitcom about PR people (not starring Lizzie Grubman or Kim Kardashian).

…you read this post and can relate to more than one of the lines plus you can spew out an additional 25 lines without batting an eyelash.

Send in your lines and let’s write a book together. Did I just say that?

My family and I were at a local restaurant recently having dim sum (it may not be as tasty as the ones in Chinatown in Manhattan, but yes, they have dim sum in Texas) when another family sat at the table next to us. We gave them the friendly Texas welcome smile, which we finally learned to do (yes, this seems to be the practice in Texas so don’t be weirded out when you visit and strangers give you a ‘smile’).

The family sitting next to us had a little boy (probably about four years old) and he seemed to like to wander away towards the restaurant’s aquarium on display. My son, who is five, is the same way. So after eating his delightful dumplings, he walked away from our table to the aquarium, and within a couple of seconds was having a conversation in his own little way (he suffers from autism) with the other boy. The communication exchange between the two was what amazed me. He made a connection and while we were at the restaurant, he was engaged in what the other boy was saying and doing.

I thought to myself, that’s a great attitude to have when networking with others. So here are a few things I learned from my five year-old:

- Have no fear. Many people I know are afraid to go up to another person to engage them in conversation even at a networking event. Here’s the best opening line, “HI, I’m ______ (insert your name here).”

- Be loose as a goose. Nervousness may be part of the experience when meeting new people, but it shouldn’t stop you from going up to them and introducing yourself. You’re not proposing in marriage.

- Be open (but not too open). No one needs to know you won the belcher of the year award in college. Find out what you have in common and have a conversation about it. Similar to my five year old and the other boy, they were talking about Super Mario Bros. [Yes, that same game we used to play on a Nintendo 64 is still around.]

- Be engaged and engaging. It’s two-way street. Once you feel like you’re monopolizing the conversation, YOU ARE! So shut up and ask questions and let other people speak. How do you know you’re monopolizing the discussion? Everyone, but one stays in your group, and the one left is slurring his Rs.

- Don’t leave home without it. I’m not talking about your American Express card, but your business card.  It doesn’t matter whether your business card was made by professional printers or by your own personal ink jet printer, just make sure you have cards with your contact info on them.  Some of the folks you meet might just throw them straight into the trash, but some will keep them. Those that keep them might need to get in touch with you in the future when a need arises like when a major crisis transpires at their company.  At every networking event I go to, my goal is to hand out at least ten business cards to the new people I’ve met. Note: this tip didn’t come from my five year-old.

1) Be Sincere. Don’t partner with a nonprofit or promote an important cause for the sole purpose of increasing sales. We all know that’s one of the goals, but your audience isn’t dumb and dumber. They’ll see right through you and your campaign.

2) Be Creative. Tying PR and Social Media programs with charitable giving/non-profit organizations, or causes go a long way with the public’s consciousness e.g. The Pepsi Refresh Project and Tide’s Loads of Hope.

3) Find The Right Partner. If it’s a massive humanitarian effort like raising funds for Haiti, it wouldn’t matter whether your company or brand have ties to Haiti or not. Even the gaming industry donated to Haiti.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the porn industry had done the same.  But if you represent say Anheuser-Busch, it would be inappropriate and outright insensitive, to raise funds for Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD).

4) Check The Calendar. Find the right day, week or month to launch or wrap up a campaign. For example, a client, Rudy’s Bar-B-Q rolled out a cause-related PR and social media campaign last week that culminated on March 2nd, Texas Independence Day (Yes, Texas is its own country), where the chain offered up 32 cent quarter pound briskets on 3/2. All 32 cents payments plus 50 cents for every new Twitter follower and Facebook fan went to the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund. Texans made the connection and the campaign worked (saying this with the utmost humility). Nothing’s more challenging than to convince the media that your cause-related campaign is newsworthy especially when there is no significant amounts of donations involved and if you’re working on a tiny PR budget.

5) The Celebrity Factor. If you have the budget that Procter & Gamble spent on its Pampers-UNICEF One Pack = One Vaccine global initiative, than approach a celebrity that will help build awareness for your cause and your brand.  Similar to point no.3 above, find the right celebrity spokesperson. But most of us probably don’t have P&G’s budget, so the next best thing is to identify a cause or nonprofit that a celebrity you’d love to partner with supports. Your brand/company might just get a free endorsement from him/her and you can always highlight the fact to reporters that said celebrity also supports your cause. Please note I’m not advocating the use of celebrities and public figures as endorsers without their consent like PETA’s use of First Lady Michelle Obama’s photo on a poster.

6) Follow-Through. Once the campaign is over, make sure funds raised are handed to the nonprofit or partner within a reasonable time frame. Reasonable is subjective, but if it takes more than a month to calculate how much you’ve raised and another month to deliver the check, it might be time to find a new accountant.

I stopped at six because it is my favorite number and I’m hoping to get 7 through 100 from you.

I’ve said before that the only thing that PR has in common with Promotions is the first two letters. This post is not about knocking the value of promotions. I have high regard for those who work in that profession. I even represented the industry when I managed the PR for the Promotion Marketing Association at my old firm.

At times though, clients interchange PR and promotions as though they are one and the same. They’re NOT.

Although the differences between PR and promotions have been written about many times before, just Google it and you’ll find many articles on the topic so here’s my 10 short takes on the differences between the two (not in any order):

1. PR is relationship-driven. Promotions is sales-driven.

2. PR is ongoing throughout the year. Promotions has a start and a finish and typically follows a calendar.

3. PR is a management function. Promotions is a sales & marketing function.

4. PR is about influencing the influencers (analysts, bloggers, reporters, etc.). Promotions is about influencing consumers (half-off deals/sales, coupons, rewards, etc.)

5. PR can take years to measure its success. Promotions can be rolled out in weeks, if not, days and its success can be measured immediately.

6. PR is an investment. Promotions is a necessary expense.

7. PR builds long-term loyalty. Promotions builds short-term recall.

8. PR earns its media. Promotions buys its media.

9. PR can be done on multiple levels at the same time with various campaigns for each key audience. Promotions is traditionally a singular approach i.e. can’t be combined with any other offer or limit one per customer.

10. PR never thinks it’s Promotions. Promotions never thinks it’s PR.

Feel free to share your thoughts on PR vs. Promotions. I’d love to hear them.