Small Business Marketplace - Consider Small Businesses A Career in Public Relations

How about a Career in Public Relations?

There's thousands of small businesses in your own community that need creative public relations solutions.

Many people seem to think that the only people that need public relations help are large businesses. Think outside the box and find that you could develop a full time career in public relations around just the small businesses operating in your community.

A career in public relations is one which is among the most competitive, most industrious, and most enjoyable of jobs, according to the many who hold a coveted career in publications, anyway.

This makes sense, as PR is rife with responsibilities, those that can make or break a company.

A career in public relations means helping a company or organization establish, maintain, and/or enhance a reputation. It means being either a public relations specialist, a media specialist, or a communications specialist (all variations on the same title, really), and working in advertising, the media, the community, in a milieu of interested and/or invested individuals and groups, in political circles, and anywhere where two or more parties are interrelated say, in a business to business situation, a private and public connection, or a consumer and business relationship.

A career in public relations will typically require such endeavors and tasks as writing, public speaking, interstate or international travel, program orchestration, presentation design, contact and liaison, and information disbursement.

A career in public relations involves, as the Public Relations Society of America explains, many possible manifestations the PR agent working in a range of capacities and with such organizations as public information, investor relations, public affairs, corporate communications, employee relations, marketing or product publicity, and consumer service or customer relations.

A person in a career in public relations can expect to earn his or her salary, one which implicitly covers the standard work week plus the unexpected, the overtime, the emergent, and the critical. This is especially true if working with smaller businesses.

Remember that many small business owners are trying to grow a business without a huge marketing budget. It will be your job to develop ideas and cooperative advertising opportunities that benefit groups of these smaller business owners.

You can expect to start at an entry level when first venturing into the career in public relations, and then can move as high as vice president of a company, usually, devising the overall plans and working with other PR specialists in researching, developing, and implementing the communications plan(s) most suitable.

Commensurate salaries, then, start at about 20k and can reach to 250k, respectively (according to Public Relations Society of America and Bureau of Labor Statistics), depending upon the region where he or she practices his or her career in public relations. This is really no different that a small business owner themselves. Start small and grow is the ticket.

Also according to PRSA and BLS, the required qualifications are not set in stone, are not standard by any means, but the person intending a career in PR can make him- or herself best suited and most marketable by getting a bachelor’s or post-secondary degree and combining that with some tried and true, hands-on experience.

This combination, whether the future PR specialist goes into the public sector or works in government relations, whether he/she engages in counseling or research, or whether he/she goes into the community, into media, or into finance will be a lucrative and satisfying one!

And although these credentials are nice and especially important when working in the corporate world, what the small business owner wants and needs are results. Deliver the added benefits to them and your reputation and income will soar

ROI - Return on Investment -- The amount expressed as a percentage, earned on a company's total capital - It's common and prefered stock equity plus it's long term funded debt - calculated by dividing total capital into earnings before interest, taxes and dividends.

North American Product Classification System (NAPCS) -- A multi-phase effort by Canada, Mexico, and the United States to develop a comprehensive list of products, product definitions, and product codes that will be organized into an integrated demand-based classification framework that classifies both goods and services according to how they are principally used. It is intended that NAPCS will be used throughout the statistical community to coordinate the collection, tabulation, and analysis of data on the value of products produced by both goods- and services-producing industries and on the prices charged for those products. The focus in the initial phases of NAPCS will be directed at identifying and defining the products of services-producing industries. NAPCS will be a complementary but independent classification system to NAICS.

Nonprofit organization -- A nonprofit (or not-for-profit) organization is an organization that is not operated for the purpose of making a profit for its owners or shareholders. It may or may not also be a tax-exempt organization.

Monthly Retail Trade Survey -- Provides current estimates of sales at retail and food services stores and inventories held by retail stores. The United States Code, Title 13, authorizes this survey and provides for voluntary responses. Companies with one or more establishments that sell merchandise and related services to final consumers. Retail firms provide data on dollar value of retail sales and sales for selected establishments; some firms also provide data on value of end-of-month inventories.

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