Good news for everyone in PR! For the second year in a row, U.S. News & World Report ranks PR Specialist is one of the best jobs in America.

Here’s how U.S. News & World Report defines the PR specialist role . . .

Your main goal is to generate positive publicity for your client and improve their reputation. As a PR specialist, it’s your job to cultivate and maintain close and productive relationships with journalists, bloggers, and opinion leaders. You’ll be asked to create print and Web-based communications materials—which may include story pitches, press releases, Q&As, presentations, video scripts, and speeches—ensuring they are consistent with your client’s image and message.

Would you add in social media? PRSA does.

“With the onset of social infrastructure such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Pinterest, combined with the versatility of Web tools, the jobs of public relations specialists are growing at a fast clip,” says Gerard Corbett, chair and CEO of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA).

PR Specialist Outlook Shows Promising Growth

The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects public relations specialists employment growth of 22.5 percent between 2010 and 2020. During that time period, an additional 58,200 jobs will need to be filled. Because of its promising outlook, the public relations specialist profession landed the No. 41 spot on the 2012 list of Best Jobs, right behind marketing manager.

PR specialists also snagged the title of number one creative services job of 2012, ahead of “Architect” and “Artist and Designer.”

According to The Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median annual wage for public relations specialists was $52,090 in 2010 with a range of $30,560 to $92,500. The highest paid PR specialists work in Victoria, Texas; San Jose, California; and Washington, D.C.

Looking for a job? Check out PRSA’s public relations jobs center or browse a list of Chicago’s top PR firms.

Wondering about my career path? Read this post on how I got started in social media marketing and PR.

Winning an award is a good reason to publicize accomplishments. It’s even better if you can bring your clients into the story, too. Here’s a look at a recent CoryWest Media client success story.

When our client, Drury Design Kitchen and Bath Studio, enters a design contest, they usually take top honors. In 2011 they swept not just one category, but the entire NKBA 2011 Chicago Midwest Design Vision contest itself.

Follow these six steps to make your news worthy of attention from the press and the public.

1. Lead with a strong headline

After reviewing several options, this one won out:

Best in Midwest Kitchen and Bath Design Goes to Drury Design

It includes keywords, the company name and is short enough to appear full-length in most search engines.

 2. Add plenty of images

Here, we used an image of every award-winning design, the designers and the company’s logo. If you’re using artwork, be sure to watermark the images to protect your copyright.

3. Craft a clever summary

Pull the reader in with an opening line that leads in to the key points. In six sentences, the intro gives a comprehensive, yet quick, overview.

Old is new again – and award-winning at that. With more homeowners choosing to invest in their old house, the remodeling market is on the upswing. If you’re looking for the most beautiful kitchen and bath designs in the Midwest, here they are. Sweeping the 2011 National Kitchen and Bath Association [NKBA] Midwest Design Vision awards, Drury Design took best of show and 10 other awards for client projects in Elmhurst, Burr Ridge, Hinsdale, Lisle, Geneva, Bloomingdale and Wheaton, Illinois. “Winning 11 awards is quite an honor. But more than that, the wins recognize our client’s vision to modernize their homes and progress their lifestyle with a signature design,” said Gail Drury, certified master kitchen and bath designer (CMKBD) and Drury Design’s CEO. To view Drury Design’s client portfolio and subscribe to the company’s kitchen and bath design trends blog, visit http://drurydesigns.com.

4. Include success stories

Because some editors will want more detail, they’ll find two compact before and after stories included in the release.

5. Distribute online via PRWeb

We like PRWeb’s reporting and tracking features. Plus, the site itself has a high page rank and strong following via RSS feeds by industry. Most of the time, our clients choose the $369 premium distribution package.

6. Share the news release via social networks

After the release is distributed, keep the attention going by sharing the news via your company’s blog and social networks.

When do you publicize your success stories? What would you add – or would you like to know more about?

Looking to grow business in new directions? Here’s some advice from today’s guest blogger, Brad Shorr.

PR Firms Can Find New Clients with Digital Agency Partnerships

The firm I work for is an Internet marketing agency. We specialize in things like search engine optimization and social media marketing. And, if you are a traditional PR firm, we are not the enemy. On the contrary – digital agencies need firms like yours, and need them badly. There are a lot of (ugh, I hate this word) synergies that make collaboration practical and profitable.

The reason we need you is because our clients do business in the real world. We primarily handle online work for niche B2Bs in industries like credit card processing for non-profits and quantitative respirator fit testing equipment. Yes, people look for and buy these services and products online, but the companies that sell them also …

• Attend trade shows and conventions
• Speak at local educational events
• Create news with new products and services
• Receive awards for community involvement and industry leadership
• Launch training programs and public service initiatives

All of these activities happen and affect people somewhere. Quite naturally, the companies behind them want more than an online press release and a new web page. They want things such as …

• Stories placed in local, regional, national, and or international newspapers
• Stories placed in leading industry trade journals
• Monitoring of print publications for mentions and interview opportunities

For these three services and many others we often seek out a PR firm that is familiar with the client’s industry, has connections to the print media, and is comfortable collaborating with another agency.

In addition, we sometimes need help in creating and shaping a story line for a local event or award that has been received. We’re frequently asked to help coach executives in working with the media. On more than a few occasions we have been asked to develop a crisis management plan. These are all services where we can use the expertise of a PR firm.

Having traveled in digital marketing circles for a while, I’m quite sure there are hundreds of agencies just in Chicago that are faced with the same challenge: We can create an email marketing campaign that will knock your socks off, but we can’t place a story in the local newspaper to save our lives.

As I said – we need you.

Some digital agencies position themselves as full-service marketing and PR firms; on the flip side, there are established PR firms that claim strong expertise in various online marketing disciplines.

If the claims are real, that’s great. But, if agencies make sweeping claims merely to block out competition, collaboration is a better way to go. No agency can be all things to all people, and clients are sophisticated enough to understand this. As a client, I’d much rather work with the right team regardless of company affiliation.

Identify the digital agencies in your market. Talk to them; find out if they have a need for PR services that compliment what they do well. You may be presently surprised at how many opportunities there are to win new clients and sell new services to your existing ones.

Brad Shorr is Director of Content & Social Media for Straight North, an Internet marketing company based in Chicago. Connect with Brad on Twitter.

Public relations and social media is the fourth episode in the social media marketing video series.

Looking for video tips? Check out these three in a guest post, originally run here in April 2011 by Bob Tripathi, the Founder & CEO of Internet Marketing Training company Instantetraining.com.

3 YouTube & Video Marketing Tricks You Should Not Miss

by Bob Tripathi

YouTube has changed the video landscape with user generated video content and as a result grown so fast that it prompted Google to pay $1.5 billion to acquire the company.

According to ComScore, in March YouTube drove about 143.2 Million unique viewers with an average user spending 275 minutes watching videos on YouTube.

If YouTube were a search engine then it would be the second biggest search engine after Google.

On YouTube, a video can go viral almost instantaneously, if optimized correctly, and generate huge amount of video views. So I met up with Greg Jarboe, Author of “YouTube & Video Marketing: An Hour a Day” and trainer for our upcoming Social Media for Business training workshop to get his insights on optimizing video.

Based on my conversation with Greg Jarboe here are my top 3 takeaways:

1. Embed Video in a press release

Greg narrated the story of Journalist Jill Carroll of Christian Science Monitor who was held hostage in Iraq and was going to do an 11 part series about her experience.

While promoting this 11 part series for Christian Science Monitor they came across some video outtakes of Jill Carroll’s interview video with ABC News. While going through the footage, Greg and team came up with the idea of embedding the video in a press release to give people a feel of what was coming.

Two things they did were:

1) They hosted the video on YouTube and

2) embedded the video in the press release.

Turns out Greg and team were stunned at the number of views their video got on YouTube and the buzz generated through the combination of video and press release.

The point is lot of us are announcing news through press releases almost regularly but not leveraging video. I would say if you can create a press release then you can also create a video.

2. Do Keyword Research on YouTube and not on Google

[I love this one! - editor]

Search engines play a huge role in driving quality traffic that converts. This is due to the fact that search is mainly used when the customer is closer to the purchase decision mindset. As a result, optimizing text in a document or the text surrounding the video can be huge.

On YouTube that means optimizing video title, description, and inserting the right type of keywords as tags.

A common fallacy for search and social marketers is to go straight to the Google keyword tool and use the same keywords that they would use for optimizing non YouTube related content. Instead, Greg suggests using the YouTube keyword tool. This way you get keyword intelligence based on what people are searching for on YouTube.com and not on Google.com

3. Share your video on social media

Besides optimizing your video by using right keywords in tags, description, and title, your video will rank higher in YouTube results if you have a high number of video views and ratings.

This, in YouTube’s eyes, is the popularity factor and one good way to kick start this process is sharing the video with the group you are already popular with. That would be your Facebook friends, Twitter followers, LinkedIn contacts, and so on. This way your video starts getting some traction with video views and with proper optimization as described above hopefully it will start ranking higher on YouTube.

Thanks so much to Gary Bohringer of Bohringer Creative for producing the series. Since its beginnings in 1993 Bohringer Creative has focused on personal service.

How do you incorporate public relations into your social media – or vice versa?

In researching how Pinterest benefits businesses, I came across so many helpful articles that I wanted to group them together as a collection. Using list.ly, I came up with 50 Pinterest for business resources. Feel free to share, embed, add more resources and comment on those listed. Thanks for helping curate and grow this list!