How Digital Networking Can Help Your PR Career

It has been proven over and over again that networking and building relationships will help you navigate your career. From landing your first PR job, taking a better position or simply connecting with established professionals in PR (or any other field for that matter), networking is a must for your career.

While attending networking events in your area and touching base with PR pros is great, digital networking can also open up possibilities at another level. You CAN go global.

Think about it: you already use social media daily, you are on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and any other platform out there, so why not use them to your advantage and get in touch with professionals outside your region? 

Connecting with other PR pros is great and highly recommended if you want to start a career in PR.

However, one of the most frequent requirements you will meet in your job search is to be a social media savvy. That can mean: knowing how to use the newest social channels, how to communicate through them, how to engage people on them, how to read their analytics and so on.

Networking, just like learning, doesn’t have to stop at what´s around you or what you learned in school. If you want to learn more about PR, go online, read the best blogs out there, get in touch with PR pros, comment on their blogs, keep track of what they’re doing and learn as much as possible.

You can be a passive learner by reading everything you lay your eyes on or you can interact with people, ask questions, state your ideas and learn in the process.

That´s actually digital networking: interacting with PR pros, learning from them, asking questions without the fear of looking bad (as long as you are polite, people will kindly answer you), commenting on their blogs and work, being part of their community.

Digital networking can help your career. 

Just to be clear, digital networking is not you waiting for someone to help you after you have asked a couple of questions or commented on a few blogs.

Digital networking is about building relationships through social media and membership platforms. Just like traditional networking is an ongoing action: you read people’s posts, you connect, you comment, you share, you interact and again and again.

What´s in it for you:

• Access to wisdom: You have access to resources and information otherwise hard to find in your region. You get exposed to different situations and people, you learn how they like to talk, write and interact. You grow.
• You go global: Being active on social media and engaging with professionals worldwide exposes you to content, information and practices from all over the world. You get to connect with people from the U.S., Canada, Taiwan, Germany, UK or Australia (for example). You learn from them and they from you.
• You learn best practices: I know you were born with a tablet and a smartphone in your hands and you know how to use them, how to connect. However, it is not the same connecting with a PR pro you admire as it is with your friends. You have to understand boundaries, you have to earn their friendship and respect, not take them for granted or worse, believe they owe you something. They don’t!

PR is known as the profession where you never stop learning, where forever students learn new skills, new practices, new tactics everyday.

The only thing constant in PR is change.

So, if you still want to make it in PR (I hope I didn´t scare you), connect and learn from the best through Women in PR North America. Do you use digital networking in your job search? I’d love to see your comments below!

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Corina Manea is a PR professional, social media strategist, founder of NutsPR and client service manager for Arment Dietrich and SpinSucks. This article was republished with permission from NutsPR. Connect with Corina on Twitter. 

American Women in Public Relations™ (Women in PR USA®) and Canadian Women in Public Relations (Women in PR Canada) has been formed to enable groups of public relations women leaders across the Americas to come together to share ideas, contacts, experiences, and to advocate for major issues directly affecting women working in the PR industry today.

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