Frances Lee
Director of Operations

What It Takes To Be A Successful Project Manager

April 8, 2020

Ever wonder just what it takes to be really good at public relations? Aside from being aces at communications, storytelling and building strong relationships, PR requires serious project management skills — including the ability to juggle multiple ‘projects’ and tasks simultaneously. It’s no simple feat, but there are processes involved with project management and once you’ve mastered them, they will carry you far, both in your PR work as well as your personal life. 

One of the most essential parts of project management is to understand your process for doing the project, and then meticulously follow through with the incremental steps that lead to on-time delivery. A good project manager is detail-oriented and task driven, while simultaneously being able to push projects forward — which are both necessary components of public relations.

Here are four fundamental steps every good PR person uses to successfully manage and complete the project management cycle:

  1. Use a spreadsheet for each client to help organize deliverables and stay on track against deadlines. As PR folks, we live and die by deadlines and deliverables. Organize each PR activity — such as media relations, PR campaigns, social media campaigns, contributed articles, analyst outreach, etc. — by a specific deadline to ensure you, your teammates and your clients are aligned and no balls get dropped.
  2. Schedule and maintain weekly calls with clients to help track projects and provide updates to clients. When both you and your client have full sight of all of the deliverables in the pipeline, you are both better able to provide and follow up with the necessary details and information to complete each project.
  3. Hold internal team meetings to ensure everyone knows what’s happening on the different sides of a particular project or line item, and each person on the PR team understands who owns each specific task or their part of it. This is essential so that people are working in parallel and not on the same thing.
  4. Maintain and manage a steady workflow to keep projects moving forward in a successful, timely manner at all stages of each project, and to keep team members engaged, enthusiastic and challenged. Public relations requires you to have multiple projects in play at various stages of completion. In order to be successful at all of your projects and tasks, you need to ensure they are in various stages of completion, so your workflow remains constant enough to keep you — and any team members you are managing — engaged.

Successful project management is an essential function of PR. Multi-tasking and adaptability encourage teams to juggle different components of the process, allowing them to keep on task without affecting the integrity of the project. On-time deliverables, satisfied clients, and meeting KPI standards define successful project management in the PR world — and will go a long way to achieving solid results and a stellar reputation as a PR professional.

Frances Lee
Director of Operations

What It Takes To Be A Successful Project Manager

April 8, 2020

Ever wonder just what it takes to be really good at public relations? Aside from being aces at communications, storytelling and building strong relationships, PR requires serious project management skills — including the ability to juggle multiple ‘projects’ and tasks simultaneously. It’s no simple feat, but there are processes involved with project management and once you’ve mastered them, they will carry you far, both in your PR work as well as your personal life. 

One of the most essential parts of project management is to understand your process for doing the project, and then meticulously follow through with the incremental steps that lead to on-time delivery. A good project manager is detail-oriented and task driven, while simultaneously being able to push projects forward — which are both necessary components of public relations.

Here are four fundamental steps every good PR person uses to successfully manage and complete the project management cycle:

  1. Use a spreadsheet for each client to help organize deliverables and stay on track against deadlines. As PR folks, we live and die by deadlines and deliverables. Organize each PR activity — such as media relations, PR campaigns, social media campaigns, contributed articles, analyst outreach, etc. — by a specific deadline to ensure you, your teammates and your clients are aligned and no balls get dropped.
  2. Schedule and maintain weekly calls with clients to help track projects and provide updates to clients. When both you and your client have full sight of all of the deliverables in the pipeline, you are both better able to provide and follow up with the necessary details and information to complete each project.
  3. Hold internal team meetings to ensure everyone knows what’s happening on the different sides of a particular project or line item, and each person on the PR team understands who owns each specific task or their part of it. This is essential so that people are working in parallel and not on the same thing.
  4. Maintain and manage a steady workflow to keep projects moving forward in a successful, timely manner at all stages of each project, and to keep team members engaged, enthusiastic and challenged. Public relations requires you to have multiple projects in play at various stages of completion. In order to be successful at all of your projects and tasks, you need to ensure they are in various stages of completion, so your workflow remains constant enough to keep you — and any team members you are managing — engaged.

Successful project management is an essential function of PR. Multi-tasking and adaptability encourage teams to juggle different components of the process, allowing them to keep on task without affecting the integrity of the project. On-time deliverables, satisfied clients, and meeting KPI standards define successful project management in the PR world — and will go a long way to achieving solid results and a stellar reputation as a PR professional.