Despite some negative ninny naysayers, practicing PR for government organisations is an excellent and rewarding option as it often takes a strategic, holistic, best practice approach, it is founded on a thorough process and great rigour, it is generally well-funded, it provides excellent career opportunities and it inherently exists to benefit all society.

As a PR practitioner-turned academic, I am often asked how I keep my students interested in the material. The one sure-fire recipe is to bring a theory to life by giving a real-life personal example: Been there, done that, have the scars (or the trophies) to prove it, so let me tell you about the time that I did it….

Age delivers experience, one of the strongest influences on competency and excellence that exists, with PR being no exception. Whether it involves any form of writing, managing a crisis, developing strategy, integrating public relations into broader business and marketing activity, managing teams and working with colleagues, or simply having developed a humility that comes from the realisation that everyone makes mistakes – it’s what you learn from them and how you deal with them that matters most – age=maturity=PR/business ROI.

Being a sole operator, running your own PR business, is definitely the best and most rewarding way to be involved in public relations. You report to yourself, you keep your own hours, there is no office politics, the commute from the bedroom to the office has no traffic – other than 3-wheelers, dogs and battery-powered helicopters – and you choose the nature of the clients, industries and type of work you get involved with. So, really, it’s one big party, right?

Work-life balance is a vexed issue in any professional field and PR is no different. But it does have its idiosyncrasies. And those of us who work in the discipline do have our choices – in-house (corporate, government and NFP), agency and independent sole operators all have pros and cons. But with about 80 odd per cent of PR professionals being women, I wonder if work-life balance is one of the reasons there are so many of them in PR?

You know what, I don’t think so!

Drawing an ethical or moral line in the sand for which organisations it is appropriate for me, as a public relations professional, to work with or for has long been something I have agonised over. I have refused to work with tobacco and gambling organisations in the past, yet have been comfortable working with a nuclear reactor and high-greenhouse gas emitting companies. Is there a line that PR should not cross…tobacco, gambling, petrol…name your ‘poison’?

Over the 14 month existence of this blog I, and you the readers and participants, have been fortunate to be entertained and informed by a number of intelligent, insightful guest blogger posts, as well as by interviews with public relations, marketing and other business communication professionals that have covered topics as diverse as market research and setting KPIs, visual communication, getting the best out of annual reports and what it takes to be successful in a PR career. This post revisits some of these memorable posts that have each provided highly useful advice.

I once was lost, but now am saved. So it seems, anyway. At a major juncture in my life and one year after starting this blog, I thought it an opportune time to explain how my discovery of the public relations profession pretty much saved my life. Maybe not in a fully literal sense, but close enough to it. Key out takes: do not rest until you fulfil your belief, or intuition, in yourself; you can begin a career later than in your 20s; hard work and talent create a career.

Working in a PR agency is one of the most exciting, valuable and positive experiences any PR professional can have. In the early years of your career, in particular, you are less hamstrung by process and get your hands on a range of projects. Agency employees are often perceived as experts; it presents a range of professional and life opportunities; and you are surrounded by peers who understand the discipline and provide excellent support.

After having worked in PR for 16 years, both in-house and ‘in-agency’, I believe working in-house is clearly where one can make a more significant difference to an organisation and its stakeholders, as well as being more rewarding environment in which to work: you write the strategy, pull the strings and don’t have the hideous ogre of new business to deal with.