19 Things PR is Not

If your startup is undertaking DIY PR, you must understand what the craft of public relations is, and is not, about.

Here, to guide you, is a quick checklist of what PR is NOT:

1. An activity whose sole focus is writing, editing, and hawking press releases. 
2. The business function whose only raison d’etre is publicity.  
3. Ever guaranteed to generate media coverage. 
4. A way to get free advertising — pure and simple. 
5.  A business function whose only purpose is to deal with the media. 
6. Ever 100 per cent controllable. 
7. A profession filled entirely with unctuous jackasses. 
8. Journalism’s bitch. 
9. A highly scientific discipline. 
10. A discipline that has figured out, with any sort of consensus, how its true organizational value should be measured. 
11. A business function that many CEOs emerge from. 
12. The vocation that idiots who could not make it as journalists go into. 
13. Always best carried out by former journalists. 
14. Very well done (at least in 2012) by people with no grasp of social media.
15. A complex voodoo priesthood that can only be carried out by geniuses with tons of experience. 
16. Capable of whitewashing all sins. 
18. Necessarily or invariably the adversary of media. 
19. A synonym for spin.  

Jackson Wightman is a Montreal-based PR agency owner. He recently created MakePR, an integrated online program of study that teaches small businesses and startups how to score media coverage on their own, without the help (or expense) of PR pros. MakePR’s program features guest experts including PR agency owners, bestselling authors, and journalists from the Globe and Mail, National Post, Mashable.com, Flare, LOULOU, and PR Daily. Readers of Notable.ca are invited to subscribe to the course for $100 off the regular price by using the coupon code NOTABLE.