Public relations professionals are known for their strong communication, strategic thinking, and relationship-building skills, all of which factor into effective leadership. This may be why those in PR and communications frequently rise to roles in the C-suite.
On this episode of PR Explored, my guest Shonali Burke and I discuss why PR is an ideal training ground for leaders. An early adopter of integrating public relations with social tech for social good, Burke is well-known throughout the PR industry as a visionary and inspiring leader, influencer, and faculty member at The Johns Hopkins University. Burke’s growth mindset and commitment to people-focused storytelling for ethical and measurable business outcomes have powered her dynamic career success. Soon to start her new role as Managing Director of People’s Light, a well-regarded professional nonprofit theatre in Malvern, Pa., Burke will make history as the first Indian American managing director of a U.S. theatre.
We talk about how skills gained through working in public relations can take you all the way to a leadership role. We also explore how Burke applies “Social PR” – a phrase she coined when launching her first online course in 2015 – in and for the arts, and discuss why, in an age when AI rules the world, being human is even more important now than ever before.
Show summary:
In this episode of PR Explored, host Michelle Garrett welcomes PR legend Shonali Burke for an in-depth conversation about trends, data-driven storytelling, and effective leadership in public relations. Shonali shares her rich background, from growing up in India to becoming a faculty member at Johns Hopkins and coining the term ‘Social PR.’
The discussion touches on the importance of integrating PR with social media, the significance of data analytics in PR strategy, and the challenges and opportunities within the nonprofit and arts sectors.
Additionally, Shonali talks about her new role as Managing Director at People’s Light, emphasizing ethical considerations and transparency in communications, especially with the advent of AI.
The discussion also touches on the importance of leadership in aligning PR and communications for organizational success. Shonali emphasizes the need for continuous learning and the strategic use of data in crafting impactful stories.
00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome
01:07 Shonali Burke’s Background and Career Journey
02:42 Data-Driven Storytelling in PR
03:25 Personal Challenges and Career Resilience
04:52 New Role and Breaking Barriers
06:51 Insights on PR and Leadership
11:24 Challenges in PR Measurement
14:07 Nonprofit and Arts Sector PR
20:58 Creativity and Efficiency in PR Campaigns
24:53 Impact of PR on Audience Growth
27:56 Leveraging Earned Media for Increased Engagement
28:28 The Role of AI in Building Trust
29:59 Ethics and Data Security in the Digital Age
36:34 The Evolution and Impact of Social PR
38:29 Integrating PR, Social Media, and Content
44:30 Leadership and Communication Strategies
52:33 Final Thoughts and Farewell
Show notes:
Shonali Burke on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shonaliburke/
Shonali Burke’s website: https://shonaliburke.com/
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
How Working in PR Provides a Path to Leadership
Michelle: [00:00:00] Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of PR Explored. I’m so happy, to be here today with a very special guest. But first, I just wanna say that PR Explored is a video podcast where we delve into trends and topics related to public relations. I’m your host, Michelle Garrett. I’m a public relations consultant and writer, and my guest today is Ali Burke.
Hello, Michelle. Hi everyone. So excited to have you here You are, a PR legend, so
we are really excited. I know a lot of people when I, shared that you were gonna be the guest we’re really looking forward to seeing you. So thank you for being here and for spending some time today.
Shonali: It’s my pleasure, Michelle. And I’m just so delight that you and I are chatting after quite a while.
Normally our interactions are email and life gets so [00:01:00] busy we don’t get to actually talk. So I just love spending this time with you. Thank you.
Michelle: I am thrilled. So thank you so much. and I know I want you to tell us a little bit about yourself, but of course you are many things and people may know you from your time.
as a faculty member at Johns Hopkins, of course, everybody, I’m sure a lot of people at PR just. Have followed you, on social media and of course, you coined the term social pr, and now you are heading into a brand new role, and I want you to tell us about that too. But I just, I wanna open the floor up to you and.
Just tell us a little bit about your background.
Shonali: Thank you, Michelle. So for those of you who don’t know me, I grew up in India. That’s where the first part of my life was. And I was, originally, I trained as an economist. that was my undergrad degree, but I’d always acted and so I did my masters in theater and that was [00:02:00] my first career.
When I moved to the States, I segued into PR and marketing, and I started working with a PR agency in San Francisco that specialized in theater, PR, and marketing. So it was a wonderful transition for me, not just into the country and how to learn how things work in this country, but to stay in touch with an industry and an art form that I love so much.
I found that I was really fascinated by how PR. Tell stories in ways that can help people connect better, and that fascination is what drove my career over the next. Several years, decades on. And what I also became really interested in, and Michelle, this is something you and I share, I got very interested in data and analytics and understanding how to ethically and effectively measure public relations so that we could tie to business outcomes.
So that focus on data-driven storytelling, teaching myself, getting my hands [00:03:00] dirty with analytics and metrics was huge for me. Another legend as you’ve so kindly said, Katie Payne is a long time mentor of mine. I learned, a lot of what I learned in the early days I learned from Katie and then fast forward many years in when after working at the A-S-P-C-A, after working at agencies, I ran my own business for many years, as I was also teaching at Johns Hopkins. I had a series of significant life events that saw me take myself off the grid for a while, and I’ve talked about this before. so it’s not a secret. I had, two significant bereavements, my husband and my mother. And, I was fortunate that I was able to. Take some time to really figure out how to engage with the world in, in, in a, when I was not prepared to do so at all.
That saw me going back to school for business analytics and actually then saw me rejoining the conventional workforce [00:04:00] at Arena Stage, which is then iconic and historic nonprofit theater in Washington DC and I shared my origin story with theater to show you how that. Cycle really came all the way around.
And I found that I just loved being back in theater and that everything that I’d worked and learned about and kept practicing and how to do data-driven storytelling to help people connect even better with things that excite them, really coalesced, to help arena rebound out of the pandemic. And so the next step for me in my career progression was really to move into a managing director role.
Really being the administrative and business head in a co-leadership model, for a nonprofit theater, because that is what I just love. That’s, who I am, my core, and I’m. Absolutely delighted that, as of June 1st, I will officially be full-time with People’s Light in [00:05:00] nonprofit theater in Malvern, Pennsylvania, one of the most beautiful parts of the country as their managing director, co-leading this remarkable 50-year-old theater into its next chapter with Zack Bergman, my, my partner.
also on the personal side. ’cause I know whenever I share that story people go, oh my God, that was terrible. And yes, it well was, but my personal life also rebounded. and I have a wonderful fiance who’s got two wonderful children and they have a wonderful crazy dog and I have a wonderful crazy dog.
So everything works out and you’re moving, of course.
Michelle: And you also have broken a glass ceiling, if you wanna just talk a little bit about that. I have, and the funny part is
Shonali: that I didn’t realize I had done that, but after we made the announcement, of my joining people’s light. My colleagues [00:06:00] back from the National School of Drama in Delhi were just over the moon and somebody said, wow, now we even have an Indian American running a theater in the United States.
And I was like, oh my goodness. That’s true. So I, believe that indeed I am the first, or I will be the first Indian American managing director of. A US based, theater.
Michelle: Yay. That’s incredible. I think that’s such a, that’s a, just, we need more of that. So I’m excited for you and it seems like you’re really, you took a lot of, it was obviously a thoughtful process to get to where you’re going, yeah.
So, that’s exciting. Thank you. So let’s talk, we have so many things we could talk about and as we were preparing for today, I think, we thought about some directions we could [00:07:00] go in and I think one of the ones, that, interests me the most and I think that we can, shed some light on for people listening.
today is maybe let’s talk about some of the things that you’ve learned along the way. working in a PR role, what are some things that you’ve learned that you think have really helped you, grow in your, as a leader, grow in your leadership skills?
Shonali: I would say in no particular order.
the first one would be, really understanding how to. How to analyze and interpret data. that was something that I got very interested in early on, and I’ve always been very results driven, very outcomes driven. And this whole line of, we got this many impressions and da, dah in pr, which many people still [00:08:00] believe is the holy grail of how you measure public relations.
It doesn’t make sense to me because how did we know we were putting butts in seats or, at my first agency job, my boss would say. It’s our job to put butts in seats and heads and beds because we did a lot of entertainment and we did hospitality with some hotels. Nothing about impressions tells you that I.
And what is, what I love about data is if you look at it and you really take the time to go through it, It’ll tell you stories. And it’s telling you stories of what people like, what they don’t like, what is driving them to action, what is driving that path. Through your website or your purchase path or whatever it is, what are the trends in people renewing subscriptions, for example, at a theater or another subscription based entity.
what are their entry points? What are their exit points? When do they drop off? What are they map, what, are the maps between their [00:09:00] ticket buying, patterns and their donation patterns, for example, and you can. you would need to customize this obviously, for your industry and your area, but it’ll really tell you these stories.
And so then it’s our job to take those stories and do. Even more with them for the betterment of the organization to achieve our goals, to make our work more efficient, to help our staffs and our teams understand what’s working and what isn’t working and why we’re gonna go in a certain direction.
And then it’s also our job to use that data and those data points to tell better stories externally to the range of our stakeholders. So I think PR professionals Who are not scared of jumping into the numbers and the data, and that’s still a strong fear. So I think it’s gotten a little bit lessened in general.
I think they will find themselves, with an edge because the storytelling that we do that is an odd. And we work really [00:10:00] hard at crafting those messages, those stories, the way we pitch stories to the media or to influencers. content creation, that’s a whole art in itself. And you’re able to bring those skills together.
That’s just magic. And I. My desire to do all of those things without necessarily knowing how it was gonna benefit me, I had no clue. No clue that, if I do this, I am gonna get blank. Never did I think that. What I focused on was, if I learn this, I can do my job better. We help the company better, our audiences, better the people we are trying to serve.
It’ll help us uplevel how we are showing up. And I think that’s what’s really important to keep at your core. So those are some of the principles that I think have been the through line of my career and work. And really focusing on how we can be of best service in the moment. What do we need to do, and understanding how powerful communications of the story [00:11:00] is.
Putting it all together is really what I think helps one get ahead. I
Michelle: love that. And I would say that a lot of times I feel like we are just almost order takers and we just, oh, do this thing and we rush off and do it. And we’re not really thinking through or setting a bar to begin with. Like, where are we going with this and how are we gonna tell if we got there?
And those kinds of things. And I think you mentioned Katie Payne, who I a adore as well, and I, but she’s really disappointed in where measurement is. in our industry, in the PR industry. I, it’s, it feels like you mentioned fear and I think that’s still, there’s a lot of fear behind it and I just, it just feels to me like people aren’t asking enough questions or the right questions, and so I appreciate what you, I.
Yeah.
Shonali: And it’s really sad. It is sad. and it’s exhausting, And I remember talking with Katie, I dunno, several years ago when we were, had met up somewhere, and I [00:12:00] said, how do you do, you keep saying you’ve been saying the same thing for I don’t know, 30 something years.
Yeah. And what I love about Katie, and we all have, and at some point you’re like. When are we gonna stop saying this? When are we gonna move beyond add value equivalency for heaven’s sake, it’s 2025. Why are we still talking about add value equivalency?
And I, in an A very, I think an in an irony of the digital age and the fact that so much can be measured digitally, there are folk who do not have the.
I would say a foundational grounding in public relations and the art of the story. The art of message mapping and tracking and measurement. And so you’re slapping a one size fits all on everything because it’s easy to do, but it’s, apples and oranges. and I know we, we don’t need to go into all of that now because then that would set me off on a and then we’d be midnight.
But it’s sad at times. And I, I would [00:13:00] challenge, PR professionals and their marketing counterparts or whoever is leading in that team, because it could be anyone, right? to really think of how we are serving and laddering up to organizational outcomes and what, not just what accurate metrics are, but what are the meaningful metrics at hand.
What says to me, because of this piece of data, I got this insight. That helped me do my job better. That moved the needle for our business KPIs or nonprofit KPIs.
Michelle: Yeah, no, we could talk about measurement all day and but we won’t do.
Oh, but there are a lot of tools and resources. I’ve had John Burke on, and we’ve talked about, what they, what A MEC offers. And so there’s some free and paid, ex excellent resources out there for people that want to dig more into that, I think. But it’s, a, it’s an [00:14:00] issue. there are a lot of issues and.
Definitely measurement is one. let’s talk a little bit about, nonprofit and arts sectors a little bit. so how does that differ do you think, from doing PR for other organizations?
Shonali: In my experience, because I moved into the nonprofit world relatively quickly and my clients, were, nonprofit primarily. And then I went to the A-S-P-C-A.
My experience was that they were actually ahead of the game because, there is deep consciousness of being responsible with. With your budget. Not that there is, I don’t mean to imply that there isn’t, for-profit entities, but when you are a nonprofit, oftentimes you’re functioning at a very lean, sometimes a budget, shoestring budget level.
You’re [00:15:00] really trying to figure out, how do I maximize this? How do I maximize what I have? And certainly at the A-S-P-C-A, and I will say that the AA, I think was very advanced, even. Even back then.
We were
Shonali: talking about almost 20 years ago, because they were very early in Google Analytics and correlating outputs and outcomes.
In fact, that was one of the big, projects that Katie and I did together. We instituted the measurement program at the A that ended up winning one of the Jack Felton Golden Ruler Awards, in the late two thousands. so I think that there can be. A lot of efficiencies because you’re having to figure out how to do this much with this much.
And so you look at the digital tools available, the grants available, Google grants, for example, or of all of the different grants that you can use and marry those insights to propel your earned. And your organic and your, social content as well. Tying that back [00:16:00] to, better connections for your patrons, for your audiences, for your donors.
Because it is so outcome driven. I think it’s actually helpful to have that background coming from the nonprofit space. I think one of the potential drawbacks of the for-profit space, depending again on where you are, because it could be different if you’re in-house or you’re an agency or anywhere else.
You again, might be more of the order taker than the person setting the strategy. and that’s where I think you have to really step up for yourself and for your team, and also for your client, and really say, help them articulate what they’re trying to achieve and what we are collectively trying to achieve.
Together. And I think that’s where I found, I have, I gained the most satisfaction in my work when, we would have these conversations and say, what exactly are we [00:17:00] trying to do here? So I think, again, this is a little bit of a generalization, but it’s easier sometimes to fall into the land and the patterns of cliches and standard frameworks because.
There are often a few more resources that you could put towards them in the for-profit world in general. Versus the nonprofit world when you may not have as easy access to the kinds of resources that you need. So necessity then becomes the mother of invention. Now it could flip as well, you could, have a nonprofit that is.
Not doing any of that and it’s trying to follow a for-profit framework. and I think what is important in both cases is making sure that you’re centering your mission. Your vision and your values, and really building everything out from there. Yeah,
Michelle: I think that makes a lot of sense. because always the, smaller [00:18:00] organizations, the nonprofits, the arts and so forth, they don’t have that giant budget and they don’t have the capacity for waste.
I think that we see, in a lot of maybe bigger corporations and things, so not to say. we’re being wasteful, but sometimes
Shonali: it’s not intentional. But I think what ironically happens sometimes is that because there’s this, we don’t have all of this, so let’s just do this.
So you stay. You could stay in the place of very basic metrics. That’s one-on-one that aren’t giving you insights, but it’s some kind of numbers, some kind of tracking.
That’s good enough for a team report, an executive report, a board report. Because if we don’t also invest in our own learning, in our own growth, then we’re not gonna know how to expand on that reporting and how to go deeper and how to pull more insights.
so it can be a bit of a double-edged sword. Yeah, [00:19:00]
Michelle: I just, I’m always, I work with a lot of smaller companies and by smaller 500 or so employees, but, the large, I’ve worked with companies as big as Adobe and HP and that’s a whole different thing ’cause they might have three or four agencies that they work with and, any number of campaigns going on at the same time, it’s a whole, it’s just, it’s crazy.
And I think within that, all that chaos and just, it can get You can just lose sight of, the overall goals and things. And so sometimes there is a little bit of, waste there or just things that are, being, duplicated and so forth. So I think with the smaller orgs, you have to be careful.
obviously you’re forced to be careful ’cause the constraints are so much different. I.
Shonali: I think you’re absolutely right and I think one of the key, elements to look out for in each case is to make sure you’re not working in silos, because that’s where the duplication of, effort and the inefficiencies [00:20:00] start to happen.
and when you’re streamlining and when you’re working cross-functionally and you’re breaking it down, it’s just so much more efficient so that you don’t have four reports that are saying the same thing for 75% of them. But then really the 25% is what’s different? that could just have been one report, and had, four different levels of insights from the four reporting groups, for example.
So I think that awareness of. How are we, in greater service to our cause? And I know that kind of language is often associated with nonprofits and cause driven associ, organizations, but I think it’s true across the board, for-profit entities as well. Because ultimately there’s something you are trying to bring to the market, to your audience, your customer, to the consumer that is making their life better, and that is supporting your, organizational goals as well.
Michelle: Don’t you think [00:21:00] too, that you just have to get a little bit more creative in general when you’re working with a smaller, budget and this, smaller team. You just, you have to find that creativity.
Shonali: Yeah, and I think that’s where, I would say that’s maybe a yes and rather than a blanket.
Yeah. Because I think you’ve gotta be creative everywhere, To find, to make sure you’re being, you’re as optimized as possible. but I think a really good example of this, and you may remember this from when we did it several years ago, was the Blue key campaign that we did for, USF, for U-N-H-C-R, the UN Refugee Agency.
And if you
Shonali: remember, we were launching, taking this concept that they had developed of a $5 blue. key, literally that was in a pin or a pendant this big, and not just selling it to, on their website for a revenue generator because it’s a $5 key. How much are you gonna make from five bucks?
But really more as a way [00:22:00] to expand the fold. Introduce people to the organization, introduce it to the mission, build out their community online and offline, and talk about budget strapped. we were very lean. we, my, at the time I was running my own business. It was me and a couple of, my team that we worked on for close to a year on this project.
And because there was not a lot of budget to invest in Tools that we might, that could have really, And create some fancy stuff. we got very creative and innovative. We really learned how to work Google Analytics. We learned how to work excel. And what was good about that was not, it just gave us the data and confidence to do more of what was working.
But what was key in that success, Michelle, if you remember from, back then when we would talk about it, was that we were very consistent in what we [00:23:00] were tracking. How we were doing it and how we were reporting. And I loved that experience. we really were embedded with the in-house team and we worked extremely efficiently, extremely well in tandem with all of the different, pieces that were in play.
And it, was a remarkable, remarkably successful campaign, achieving the community goals. It had the visibility goals, it had the, growing the email list. Partnerships that we put in place all over the country with other aligned, causes. So I think for me, that was a good example of, being on a budget.
Making you be more creative, but more effective as well.
Michelle: I think that’s a great example because, it’s possible. I think everything has to come together and it just doesn’t always happen. But when it does, it can be really, [00:24:00] I don’t wanna, I don’t know if magical is too strong.
Magical. It’s magical, but sure, we can use that word about why not
Shonali: pr
Michelle: we.
It’s, like I said, it’s, it doesn’t always happen, but when it does, it’s really, it’s, it can be very fun and rewarding. I think that’s, that’s the thing about nonprofits that I think is, people forget, is that it’s very rewarding to do work in a sector that, is actually hopefully helping someone or, Promoting something that’s, bringing something to humanity versus just trying to sell something. Yes.
Shonali: However, I’m also very happy to buy the things that people sell. I know there’s nothing
Michelle: wrong with it, but, but I think. Another question that I would maybe ask is when we talk [00:25:00] about the arts and PR and comms and the arts, what are some of the best practices?
We touched on that, but you also mentioned about growing your list, and I wanna know like how much of a difference can, your PR and comms team make to your audience growth? The engagement of the audience, draw more people in, let’s talk about that a little bit.
Shonali: Once you put your frameworks in place and once you have your systems and protocols, it’s magic. And we did this when, when I was at Arena stage, we went from having almost nothing, nobody, was looking at Google Analytics or anything like that to really pulling together an efficient and comprehensive reporting and.
analytical process and system, and particularly with email, ’cause that’s something I learned relatively early in my career. That is where, a good chunk of your revenue will come from. If you actually look at the [00:26:00] sources and where sale are. Especially for nonprofits, I’m gonna say it is coming from email.
When you look at, the kind of the, earned revenue, That is because you have the opportunity with email that you don’t, with social media and the all of the social outposts that you have, or even if you still maintain your blog or some kind of content home connected to your website, but you have the opportunity to be invited in to people’s homes with an email.
Because that’s really what, it’s doing. And so you have the opportunity to really build up a relationship with them. And so if you use your PR skills mapped to the, to smart techniques and using and optimizing email systems. ’cause they’re very advanced these days and several are very, affordable.
Having [00:27:00] smart pods where you’re segmenting and you’re having different trigger points and so on, it is remarkable how focusing on. Maintaining that relationship, but actively bringing in your calls to action on a regular basis. Which you can wrap up or ramp down depending on where you need to be in your, in your revenue cycle and where you are in the season, for example, with theater.
it is really remarkable and consistently we saw when we would look our, when we would look at our weekly reports. And analyze everything that had happened, not just for, sales of the show that was running, but future sales that were happening do, a retrospective as well.
Consistently email was the highest driver of that revenue because that’s what got people to the website.
What a click through. To make that purchase now, certainly, the story being compounded and amplified through earned media was remarkable. Every time we had major earned media, there was definitely, [00:28:00] an increase in visits to our website, people clicking through and so on. So we learned also to time those.
If we knew that this was gonna run or this run, then how quickly can we get out that email that leverages the story that brings with a level of credibility? It’s being reported to you by a trusted source.
Michelle: Yes. And trust is important. Yes. And that’s gonna, that’s gonna segue into a question about AI because I think, once we were preparing for this, you were talking about AI and how important it’s to be human, in fact, I think to the trust level.
The humanity. it’s all, an ai, it’s all a thing. So let’s talk about that a little bit.
Shonali: This is another one of those where should I begin and, where do I end? I, think, I’m going to. I won’t [00:29:00] quote him accurately. but my friend and our friend Jeff Leviston, who is working very deeply and has been, I think ahead of the curve forever, essentially, he wrote Welcome to The Fifth of State, before anybody was talking about blogging and stuff like that.
and as he points out, a lot of people are talking about AI without really knowing. How to use it and how to leverage it. And the truth is, and it is just that complex. when you’re talking about generative ai, yes, there are all of these different tools that you can use to do for certain things, which you should, use them to make things like research, information gathering, correlation of data more, efficient.
And. I think most people, because most of us are not data scientists and technology whizzes, that’s where the utility is. [00:30:00] However, an AI assistant is only going to be as good as the data that it’s trained on. And the props that it’s receiving, which is why there’s this huge push. Awareness and attention to the different ways.
different entities are trying to secure and organize data. and what is worrisome to me is when that is not done ethically or transparently, because I think with the. With the, advent of the technological age, which we didn’t even know we were coming into, it’s all oh, that’s right.
We, this was suddenly became the social media age, but we didn’t even know that’s where we were going. And I think all of us got so caught up and entranced by the connectivity that some of these platforms gave us that we didn’t pay attention. Right to the [00:31:00] small print and we didn’t pay attention to the consequences.
And I will say for myself, certainly, I think once I realized that, I don’t know that it was a conscious decision necessarily, but I knew that was, I made peace with it because I could either opt out of the data age completely. Or I could be in it, but to be in it, I have to use it. And if I have to use it, then I have to be okay with how.
My data may be used. That doesn’t mean I don’t pay attention to it and I’m not scrolling the fine print and I’m not making sure that I’m opting out and all of that. And that’s what I think most people didn’t do, which is why when you had a very big social media platform that shall not be named, change is terms of service abruptly.
People were up. Arms going, oh my God, what are you doing? The fact is they were always doing it. They just [00:32:00] made it easier for you to see that they were doing it. Yeah. So I think we are at this point now where that’s a lost argument as it were, and there’s no point really, going down that road because it’s done.
We’re way beyond that. What I do think is important for people, all of us human beings. To be cognizant of is what, is the intention moving forward? How are, now that we know to be aware of these things, what do we need to be paying attention to? And I think it is incredibly important for us all to be looking at where are the checks and balances here?
What are the ethics? Behind this and surrounding this, does that align with my ethical and moral compass? How we are using data, how we are using these platforms, is that in the best service of our organization, of our constituents, of our stakeholders, [00:33:00] and of ourselves. and to make sure that, when we see something that’s not okay, we call it out.
Michelle: Yeah, I just, I feel like you, AI just, again, we didn’t really, there was no time or thought given into putting any guardrails around it. It just the horse is out of the barn and it’s okay, now, and I just, I feel like we’ve, we do have to make a decision. whether or not we’re gonna, participate and we really, I feel like we we almost don’t have a choice, although I know like my kids who are, 18 and 23 now would say, we’re not too keen on ai.
it’s hard because, Not everybody is on the same page with it, and nor will they be. So I feel like we have to make our own decisions and choices about [00:34:00] that. But the ethics around it, the environmental impact, I feel like we’re not really talking about that. yeah, I think
Shonali: that’s exactly, it takes a lot of energy to power these things.
Are people paying attention to that? No. So I think going back and they
Michelle: get mad sometimes when you bring it up, Uhhuh
Shonali: and, I, so you know, it’s, what you said earlier, making sure that we’re informed, making sure that we are going back to trusted sources and who are those trusted sources, because that’s such a bone of contention.
Now, we’ve entered a world where half the world doesn’t trust the other half, and there are alternate realities that people are living in, that they’re convinced. Are the true reality. and I think that is where, to me, going, making sure that we intentionally support the media channels that we know are engaging in rigorous [00:35:00] research and fact-based reporting.
Because a fact is a fact, it cannot be made up. You can dispute it, but a fact is a fact. is I think where we as leaders and at this point maybe elders in the industry feels weird to say that, but can really help remind our colleagues and those who are more not as seasoned professionals maybe to say, Hey.
Let’s just take a step back and have we thought about blank, Have we thought about how we are making sure that, we’ve done all of our due diligence here and that we are, when we are communicating to our stakeholders, whether it’s through the media or through our own content or anywhere else, that is verifiable and that we can stand by what we are saying.
Yeah.
Michelle: it just [00:36:00] forces organizations of all kinds, I think, to just pay more attention to, being transparent and being out there and, telling it from their side and again, not getting, I. Maybe caught up in, they, they have to be first to tell their story. They have to be out there and they have to be responsive.
And if anything comes up, they have to be ready to address it and nip it in the bud or it can go in a direction. And of course, social media created that situation. And I don’t know if you wanna, do you talk about social PR at all? I know that’s, sure.
Shonali: I, I love that you remembered that because I feel like that’s, I haven’t talked about that in so long.
Excuse me. So you’ll remember as I was exploring and developing how I approached. Holistic PR and social was very much a part of that. And one thing that I kept [00:37:00] running into both when I was working in the agency world and then in my own business was, clients and organizations treating. PR and social, like two separate animals.
And social meant you were gonna, at the time, you were the, I was the Twitter girl, or I knew how to run a Twitter chat, which of course I did because I launched Measure pr and I did that for many years, as But it’s so much more because what the magic, the promise of social, when we all fell in love with it.
Excuse me. Was that. We could connect with each other at the click of a mouse or now at the press of a, screen. And you could connect with somebody around the world in a different time zone, in a different culture and share idea and conversation in a way that just had not been possible before.
Because how were you going to make that connection? And [00:38:00] to me, that’s not something different from. what public relations does, if anything, it amplifies it. It makes it possible for you to amplify your storytelling, not just your legacy and your foundational storytelling, but it allows you to amplify your story and, give a different layers, connecting with so many different swaths of people and stakeholders.
Multiple channels. But they have to work in sync because your PR can’t be doing one thing and your social’s doing another thing, and which is leading, at which time is a strategic decision, which is leading the message, which is leading the story. But there are also limitations of platforms. whether even short form storytelling, short form platforms, even though you can do threaded comments and all of that, there’s still, that’s very different than a long form essay.
Or a, an in-depth [00:39:00] report that you’re reading on a trusted website or a newspaper or a magazine, story, in multimedia that goes behind the scenes. They’re all different. And so I started to work, think about integrating these two, and that’s how I came up with the term of social pr because it wasn’t just, PR is the media and social is Twitter.
It’s all working together, and our job as public relations consultants
And
Shonali: experts
Is to do a better job of connecting with our audiences, helping our organizations connect better with our audiences so that we can have those mutually beneficial relationships that is still today in the definition of public relations per PRSA.
Continue to build and grow those for the benefit of each. and that’s when I created the framework, the social framework, et cetera. I launched my [00:40:00] course and so on, and it worked really well and I’m very proud of how many people adopted it and, the, when I would teach about it or, companies that started to use that approach.
it makes me feel like I gave something to the industry and helped maybe, move. How we work forward a little bit, at least at the time.
Michelle: I think. Absolutely. you did. And, thank you. And I would say I see silos. We were talking about silos a little bit ago between social and pr even now, and I don’t understand, I.
Why we just can’t collaborate, because obviously each can help the other. And as you mentioned, sometimes one takes a lead, sometimes another takes a lead. I also think content, belongs in there too. So those three, content is
Shonali: what powers it. Yeah. Content is what powers it. I think Michelle, it comes down to insecurity, [00:41:00] lack of trust and power, right?
Because whoever’s controlling these things has the power.
Yeah,
Shonali: you have power, you have the budgetary power, and that’s why these tough wars are, they have been going on since time in Memorial and they shall go on.
Michelle: It’s, so counterproductive. because, and I also feel that, PR praise are well versed in all of those areas. before there ever was social media, before there ever was content marketing, those terms were coined. We were doing those things, right? Because we ride and we share and we connect and we, we’re good at all of those things.
So that’s why I feel like, public relations pros are such a great fit for so many different roles, but it is, you do have to figure out how to work together and everybody has to want to work together, I think, to make it effective.
Shonali: [00:42:00] And, I think that’s why, going back to what we started with, understanding how to parse and talk about and interpret data becomes so important because that is the language of business.
And so for you to advance. In your career, particularly if you’re ambitious to get to the C level, running a company and so on. If you’re not gonna speak in the language of business, then that’s obviously going to set you back and that’s where, putting aside that fear of numbers, and there’s plenty of tutorials.
You don’t even have to go back to school necessarily. There’s some excellent. Oh, huge numbers of resources, and, good resources available.
You teach yourself how to do that or people you can lean on through trainings. so many, XL PR pros do that, whether they do it individually, they do it through associations, P-R-S-A-I-A-B-C, et cetera.
so there’s no dearth of resources like there [00:43:00] was 20 something years ago. And so I think it’s incumbent everyone to figure out, what do I need to learn to do a better job? And that will take them down the path of data
Michelle: and, I think leaders, we’re talking about leadership today.
I think leaders need to be open to having that conversation with their PR and comms team as opposed to just saying, we want you to show us how many, share how many impressions this press release got, or whatever they have to be. I feel like sometimes it’s just, again, it’s just, it’s. Put down onto the PR and comms team from above, and this is, this is what they provide because this is what leaders are asking for instead of the leaders having the conversation, having a meeting, or having a discussion or being open to that education piece about, this is not really how we do this anymore.
Let’s talk about what’s more effective or just, offering, just being open to hearing some other solutions or options.
Shonali: Absolutely.
Michelle: Because I find that, as [00:44:00] often it’s not necessarily the PR person’s, they haven’t fallen down on the job. It’s not that fear is holding them back.
They want to do a better job, but it’s just that it’s, this is what’s come down from above and this is what they have to work with. So I feel like. Education never stops, but it has to be a two-way, street or otherwise. I, some leadership doesn’t wanna hear, what you have to share with them as a PR or comms person.
So Yeah, absolutely. which actually leads right into, the next question because we see, a lot of. Leaders would probably benefit, from working with their PR person ahead of opening their mouth publicly. because we see them having to clean up a lot of messes. The PR team has to come in and clean up.
’cause we see, I feel like almost every week now we see, someone from the C-suite, from a big company out there. [00:45:00] Just talking off the cuff publicly. Maybe they weren’t prepared or didn’t know they were gonna have to do it, which means maybe they should decline to do it and I don’t know, but we are cleaning up the mess instead of preparing and thinking through, you know what?
They should say ahead of, the time when they would be called upon to answer a question or something like that. So let’s talk a little bit about what you think, how leaders can lean on their, PR team a little bit more effectively than they are. Yeah,
Shonali: it’s. I think the prob, the, root cause of those problems and situations is that it is a very dysfunctional organizational culture.
that’s the root cause. It’s not anything else. it’s basically the organization doesn’t know how to function effectively and efficiently when that could be. [00:46:00] That’s been its history. It could have been, it grew from something very small very quickly. That’s, that has to be changed at the leadership level.
But if the leader themselves doesn’t recognize it, then how’s it gonna change? you’re probably not gonna have a coup where, the staff rise up and force you out. so it’s just gonna be in that cycle of dysfunction. So I suppose one way to. Start to address that would be, when a lot of leadership will go through, MBA programs and so on, is for, leadership and organizational dynamics and the importance of communication and organizational communication to really be a much more substantive part of the curriculum.
and I honestly can’t speak to the first two, but in my, in, in terms of. How [00:47:00] well they are or aren’t addressed.
I think there’s a lot of awareness around leadership, coaching and so on, but my experience of non-communication programs at whatever level, including graduate, if they’re not in a, an MA comms for example, then the communication piece is not really addressed.
And I think it has to be because those are the executives who are stepping into leadership roles.
Those are the people who will. Enhance or change the company culture. Those are the people who will say, this is how we function. Here’s how we all come together. Here’s how I want us to come together in service of our mission, our customers, our audiences.
But if they don’t even have that awareness, how are they gonna do it? And the only place they’re gonna learn is either from their mentors. If they were lucky enough [00:48:00] moving Up in their career. and or in school, nine times out of 10, most people are not gonna be looking elsewhere. I don’t think people are that self-aware that they’ll go, oh wow, this is really an area in which I could improve.
Who can I find to help me with that? I don’t think that’s most people. And I do think, however, that once you are put into that mode of growth, then that is encouraged and you become more self away. But you can’t go from zero. To 75 without those stepping stones in between. Does that make sense?
Michelle: Yeah.
I just feel leadership and, PR and comms are, should be going this way because they should be getting closer together because it’s just, it’s never been more important for, I think, the, leadership team to believe in the power of communications and to [00:49:00] be out there as A spokesperson because media love that. But then again, at the same time, there’s a responsibility to, deliver the message, in a way that isn’t gonna cause more problems than it solves, So that’s the thing that, they have to do it to get that experience.
But then, you have to prepare to do it effectively. Yeah.
Shonali: They have to do it, like you say. And they also have, someone has to say, Hey, this is what you need to do. And that’s what I meant. Like that kind of council needs to come from their trusted source, which is likely to be peers. They’re, peer leaders and or people that they’ve learned from or they consider mentors.
I think I have, I don’t know if I’ve been very fortunate. I have been very fortunate because at every single point in my career, I never had leadership not include me in those critical conversations. [00:50:00] Certainly when I was in the agency world, I was oftentimes running those accounts. So I was talking directly to the, the SVP, sometimes the CEO and when I was in-house, It was very much, she’s running comms, she needs to be at the table. How are we about X, Y, Z? And there were multiple times where even though I was not executive leadership at that time, but in that, moment in time, my function leading the organization’s response. So when you think about the A-S-P-C-A and all the things that happened there, or at later times with clients, later on in my career.
my leadership always recognized the importance of having the communications expert in the room and guiding the process, shepherding it really, I. Yeah.
Michelle: And, but I don’t always think that happens. So I think maybe all it takes is one, misstep [00:51:00] to, to realize the importance, of that,
Shonali: close relationship.
I’m not a misstep, because that’s a double-edged sword as well, right? Because if the misstep itself is not then handled. then that just graduates that cycle. That’s why I think there’s the opportunity to educate up and for the proactive PR expert and, person to, be thinking of, Hey, so I put some stuff together and I just put together these use cases of when such and such happened.
Here’s how they handled it, because it is our job, especially when we are not yet at that leadership level to build trust, not just with our team, with our peers, with our colleagues, but with our executives as well. And if we say, I just wanna share some ideas on how handled these things. I thought this was very interesting because I can potentially see such and such.
Could develop six months down the road. And I’m just gonna leave this here for now. [00:52:00] I’d love to know your thinking about it, just so seeding that conversation. That’s where I think we all have our own responsibility to, to participate in the education of our colleagues and our leaders as well.
Michelle: Absolutely. Yes, I do. And I just hope that they stay open to what we are, there to,
Shonali: share. And
that’s where, if you tie it back to the business results They will, because at the end of the day, that is what they want to see happen and that’s what they’ve been hired to do.
That’s great. No, I love
Michelle: that. I think that would be a great note to end on actually.
Because we are almost outta time. But, I can’t thank you enough. Chanel, this has been such a great conversation and I’m so grateful for your time. Congratulations on all your wonderful news and on your new role. And, I hope everybody will, follow you on LinkedIn and I shared your site as well.
And, [00:53:00] is there anything else that you wanna leave us with? Anything else we should do to keep up with your, all of your.
Shonali: My goings on. Michelle, thank you so much for having me. I’m so glad it worked out, and it’s been just such a delight to talk with you. You know that however, I can support you and be of service, I always will.
and thank you also to everybody who joined now or later. I hope I have been able to help you in some way. You’re always welcome to shoot me a note, through LinkedIn, through, the phone on my website if, there’s an idea you have or something you wanna brainstorm with. I, do a lot of offline mentoring and stuff.
So I’m always happy to, chat with, professionals and people seeking advice. I would say the other thing that I would love everyone to do is to check out my new home at People’s Light. we are a wonderful, Theater in Melbourne, Pennsylvania. Like I said, the work that we do is remarkable and, it’s just, it’s an incredible [00:54:00] gathering place.
really a hub for the community, to come together and explore the world through a range of incredibly, excellent art. So peoples flight is@peoplesflight.org, and if you’re ever in the Philadelphia area or passing through, come and see us because as they say. You like the way you feel, I guarantee it.
Michelle: That is a great, commercial for people’s light and yeah, I hope a lot of people take you up on that. but I wanna thank you again. I want to thank everybody who’s tuned in and, we’ll be back in a couple of weeks to talk about mental health in PR and social media, which is gonna be another great topic.
And, thanks everybody. Thanks Shanel. Thank you so much. Bye bye.
