19 Things PR is

Last week, MakePR‘s Jackson Wightman highlighted 19 things PR is not to help those looking to take a DIY approach to public relations navigate the profession a little more smoothly. This week, we’re flipping the script.

Here are 19 things PR is:

1. Capable of significantly reducing organizational costs if applied correctly.
2. A craft that requires fundamental understanding of human needs and wants.
3. A field whose practitioners include charlatans (alas).
4. A profession the Internet changed profoundly.
5. Once again, about relationships with various publics and not just the media. (That is, a profession that’s finally doing what it originally claimed it would do).
6. Sometimes plagued by dumb, shallow idiotic spin.
7. Overly enamored of buzzwords.
8. Best conducted by people with high emotional intelligence.
9. Sometimes prone to taking itself far too seriously.
10. Misunderstood.
11. A craft that once chased media and now has become media in many organizations.
12. An activity that requires strong writing skills.
13. A craft whose practitioners tend to make media relations sound more complicated than it is.
14. A marketing channel whose value will only increase in today’s fragmented media environment.
15. Regularly misperceived, especially by journalists.
16. An industry with enormous growth potential.
17. In need of easy-to-comprehend standards of measurement.
18. A craft best learned on the job—not in a classroom.
19. A great complement to any other marketing channels an organization employs

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 cost) 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.