Words or Numbers?

If you’re like me, getting out of high school and pursuing a Bachelor’s Degree in Communication meant not only following my dreams, but also saying goodbye forever to endless math homework and abstract mathematical concepts. That was true for the most part, because in order to meet the credits to graduate I only had to take one basic math class. Yet, when practicing public relations I’ve had to deal with numbers in a variety of ways. While I may never work with strange theorems, angles, and high-tech graphing calculators ever again, I still have found the need to understand the correlation between numbers, analyzing data and performing single math equations to fulfill adequately my tasks.

As public relations professionals, the art of storytelling plays a central role in our daily lives; and if you’re a seasoned PR specialist your ability to sway clients and your target market with your words should be astonishing. Nonetheless, we now live in an informational era, where each day our target market demands more and more information about topics and it’s our job as managers of our customer’s communication strategies to provide this information. Words are not cutting it for people anymore; they want detailed and precise information. This means numbers. Therefore, you need to know how to analyze data and come up with conclusions to include in our press releases and into our campaigns as a whole. We have to build the story with words and support it with data.

Career Kickstart

Kickstarter and other “crowdfunding” platforms have become extremely popular, taking the fundraising and social media scene by storm. This site is already even part of Time Magazine's Best Websites of 2011. That's because every week, thousands of people upload their creative projects to the website and pledge money with the hope of getting their dream project funded. The catch is that on Kickstarter, a project must reach its funding goal before its deadline or the money is not given to the user.

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The imminent benefit of using this platform is, of course, getting the necessary funds to kick-start projects. Yet, Kickstarter is about more than just money; I find this website to have a superb underlying public relations power. Kickstarter allows the user to share their stories, their hopes and dreams. Since most people love compelling stories that exhibit genuineness and passion, and feel good supporting a captivating cause, if it’s a good idea, communicated in an attractive fashion, it’ll spread exponentially. Therefore, the buzz-generating power of this platform is surreal.

Even if the project doesn’t get funded, the storytelling aspect of Kickstarter provides space for people to discover creative ideas, identify with the storyteller, and for the user to get free exposure. Ultimately, this is what publicists want.