What is PR work after all? A few success stories and many failure stories

This is Umi Fujisawa from Public Relations

Do you know what a public relations job is?

After joining Beyond, "What is a PR job?" and wrote an article called, "What would you do if you suddenly became a PR person for a company?", and it's been a year since then.

⇒What would you do if you suddenly became a company spokesperson? 2017.12.18

With no prior experience as a company employee and zero knowledge of IT, I was suddenly put in charge of public relations work and have also been involved in marketing and recruitment activities, but when I look back over the past year, I wonder, "Have I really been able to do the job of public relations?"

What has helped you grow as a publicist?

What exactly is a public relations job?

still unanswered "What is public relations work?" I will share some success stories and many failures , including the marketing and recruitment activities I have undertaken over the past year

What I've done in the past year

This is the work I have been doing as a public relations officer since joining the company

• Email newsletter
• Social Media
• press release
• Blog
• study session
• exhibition
• Website renewal
• Recruitment activities

When looking at the job description, questions arise such as, "What's the difference between marketing and public relations?" and "Does recruitment fall under public relations?" However, I feel that there is no need to make a clear distinction or difference

Let's look back at public relations, marketing, and recruitment as all connected

A few success stories

My blog is showing up in search engines!

My blog posts are now appearing on the first page of search results

For example, if you search for the keyword "study for infrastructure engineer," an article written for recruitment purposes titled "How did an infrastructure engineer who obtained his qualification within one month of joining the company study?" appears on the first page

⇒How did an infrastructure engineer get certified within a month of joining the company? (August 29, 2018)

Even in the early days of my blog, when I knew nothing about SEO, when I searched for "public relations company" it was a keyword with low competition, and an article titled "What would you do if you suddenly became a company PR person?" came up on the first page

By the way, this article was also written using keywords such as "public relations work."

the result

We've had more inquiries! (I'm not sure if this is due to the blog's influence.)

Even if they don't end up contacting us, I think more people have learned about Beyond for the first time through our blog

In order to generate more inquiries from the blog in the future, we need to increase the number of technical articles related to our services, rather than just articles about recruitment and events

Many stories of failure

・The e-mail newsletter fades away

I decided to deliver news about Beyond every two weeks! So, a month after joining the company, I started sending out email newsletters without really knowing what I was doing, but they were unpopular and died out after about six months

When I thought about it, I realized that I don't read email newsletters, and hardly anyone around me reads email newsletters from other companies

▲We distributed announcements, blogs, etc

・The promise to update Twitter once a day faded away

It disappeared so quickly that I'm not even sure if it lasted three days

I've hit a wall of no content, so I've ended up just announcing blog updates

Still, I've gained about 20 followers in the past year

Tweets by beyondjapaninfo

Forgotten press releases

There was a suggestion that it would be good to issue a press release every month, so we sent out three articles in February, April, and May

Exhibiting as a silver sponsor at "GAME CREATORS CONFERENCE '18," the largest game industry study group in the Kansai region

Beta version of "Appmill" released, a low-cost, easy-to-start website monitoring service

Beyond Inc. invests in Otafuku Lab, a company developing artificial intelligence for a shogi AI engine and a mental health check service

However, no press release was ever issued after that

This is because they did not release any new services or come up with any new projects

And so the press release was forgotten

・The "it's enough if I just do a few blogs" feeling

To be honest, among the 20 articles there are some that I even think "Is there really no need to write this?"

(For example, an article simply announcing that an in-house DJ has been created)

⇒[Company system] The company DJ was born

・Only talk to close friends and family at social gatherings after study sessions

the Beyond Study Group hosted by our company , a social gathering is also held every time.

Although the social gathering was an opportunity to deepen interactions with the customers who had come, there were cases where employees did not have the courage to speak to them themselves and ended up talking to people from the company

In other words, I was taking the easy way out

Since you can talk to your family at any time, you need to have a wide range of connections, just like a public relations professional

・I went over budget because I attended too many exhibitions

2018 was the year we exhibited at the most events to date, including the Game Creators Conference , Google Cloud Next , and Tokyo Game Show

This resulted in the marketing budget going over budget

However, it is certain that exhibiting at the event has increased our name recognition

・Even if you are standing at a booth at an exhibition, you cannot explain your services

At exhibitions, we usually introduce our services to customers who visit our booth

When I first stood at the booth at Tokyo Game Show

"We are a company that operates and maintains cloud servers."

I was able to explain this much

but

"What is the scope of API development?"

When asked complicated questions such as

「？」

So I ended up asking my boss for help

If you can't explain your company's services, you're not fit to be a PR professional...I'll do my best next year

・Recruitment staff with no job hunting experience

I first joined Beyond as a part-timer and then became a full-time employee, so I have never had to look for a job

However, as a recruitment officer, I conduct interviews and visit schools

There was nothing to be done in vain

These are some of the success stories and many failures I experienced in the public relations work I did in 2018

I've failed in many ways, but I want to believe that none of my attempts were meaningless

I will always keep in mind what I learned this year so that I can make up for it next year

Next year's goals

• Just go outside
• Develop and implement new plans

I feel that these are the two things we must do in 2019

When I think about what public relations work is, I would like to call any act of spreading information about a company to the outside world public relations, without defining what exactly public relations work is

So, rather than just doing public relations on my own, I will approach my work with the belief that every employee has a role to play in public relations!