PR and Media: What Skills Do International Students Need for?

Whether you’re interested in brand public relations or advertising media, it’s essential to have certain job-specific skills. Good core skills form the foundation of your role and ensure further progress in your work. So, what skills are valued in public relations and media jobs? What skills do international students need to work in public relations and media? 

This blog post will break down the two main categories of public relations and media jobs: Brand Public Relations and Advertising Media.

Brand Public Relations Roles

For brand public relations roles, the main tasks involve maintaining brand image, monitoring market sentiment, and managing various relationships. Therefore, the first skill needed for public relations work is planning and insight. This doesn’t mean you need to plan a complete scheme like a market planner or event operator. Instead, it involves participating in existing activities and maximizing brand exposure or showcasing the brand at the right time.

Planning Skills

For brand public relations, planning skills are more of a comprehensive ability. It involves planning an article, planning an exposure opportunity, and integrating existing channels and processes. Sharp market information capture ability, including analysis, grasp, and mining of information, is also crucial.

For example, some companies can increase exposure by beautifully “riding the hot spot”, not only enhancing the brand image but also not causing user aversion. This is a manifestation of skill.

Writing Skills

In many public relations roles, applicants are required to have certain writing skills. Writing press releases or other types of articles is an essential part of brand public relations work. A good quality article can bring a positive impact on the brand. When a company encounters a problem, a “correct” statement can also save the brand from disaster. 

Therefore, for many brand public relations roles, recruiters tend to recruit applicants who study journalism, media, and communication. The reason is that these applicants have relatively strong writing skills and are more likely to write articles that meet job requirements.

Communication and Coordination Skills

Communication and coordination skills are “hard currency” in brand public relations roles. This skill mainly reflects effective communication with departments, media, government agencies, and coordination of internal and external relations. 

Communication and coordination skills are one of the key factors that can determine the success or failure of brand public relations. Making accurate decisions in the face of rapidly changing markets and environments, and effectively coordinating all parties to cooperate and make appropriate responses, is a manifestation of skill.

In addition to the above core skills, brand public relations roles also need to master certain public relations basic knowledge, have a certain understanding of the brand industry they serve, and stress resistance is also an indispensable ability in brand public relations roles. Advertising Media Roles

For advertising media roles, the main work content can be divided into expanding negotiation channels, monitoring situations, and optimizing effects. There are many platforms and channels for advertising on the market today, not only with various display methods but more importantly, the effects of advertisements are mixed. 

For people who don’t understand these media, it’s almost impossible to move. Therefore, for international students who want to work in advertising media roles, the first skill to have is the understanding of various media channels and advertising display methods. 

For example, which channels are suitable for company brands to launch, which display can get more exposure under product form, where is the range of the type of people to launch, whether there is a preference for the display time of advertisements, etc., all need to have a basic understanding. Understanding the operation mode of advertising media is the basic ability to do a good job in advertising media work.

Data Analysis

At the same time, for advertising media roles, data analysis will play a very big role. In work, it is often necessary to measure the effect of advertising. At this time, it is necessary to monitor the data of the launch, count and analyze the data to judge whether this launch has achieved the set goal, where there are deficiencies that need to be remedied, and then make further decisions through data. 

For example, how is the exposure effect brought by different channels after launching, the cost-effectiveness, whether the conversion is in line with the basic situation, etc., these places are actually judged through data, and then remedial measures will be taken according to the results of data analysis, or the next launch will be optimized to allow the brand to get more exposure.

And data analysis is not just analysis, but a series of overall behaviors from data collection, data cleaning, statistical analysis, data application, etc. For advertising media practitioners, whether they have good data ability is also one of the key factors that can make them advance.

At the same time, the work of data analysis is basically throughout the entire work before, during, and after the period. Many decisions to invest or not to invest, how to launch, are decisions made based on data. Therefore, in most job requirements for advertising launches, applicants are explicitly required to have certain data analysis capabilities.

Coordination and Planning

Coordination and planning ability is also a very important ability for advertising media roles. Companies with large volumes often do not just aim at a single channel when launching advertisements, but multiple channels. There will also be situations where multiple advertisements and multiple channels are running at the same time in the same period, which greatly tests the applicant’s coordination and planning ability. 

For example, negotiations with different media cooperation, evaluation of current resources, and cooperation with advertising communication, etc., are all manifestations of work ability.

Advertising media roles are a job that requires comprehensive judgment, comprehensive analysis, and multi-task line execution. For job seekers, like brand public relations roles, it is also a job that requires relatively high skills. If you feel that you are a person who likes the media industry, is good at communication, and is sensitive to data, you might as well try advertising media roles.

In Summary

For public relations and media roles, you need to have a certain basic understanding of the work you are engaged in, and have good communication and coordination skills. Specifically for brand public relations, recruiters will definitely look at the writing skills of applicants. And advertising media roles will require practitioners to have good data skills. For international students who want to work in public relations and media roles, they need to constantly polish the core skills required by the position, so that they can be more handy at work.