How being a parent can help you in tech PR

It’s fair to say that nothing can ever really prepare you for having children - I certainly have a growing number of grey hairs as testament to that! However, I’ve come to realise that in many respects a lot of the skills you learn as a parent are also applicable to tech PR.

So, with that in mind I (and the other Spark parents) have put our collective heads together to come up with some examples of where being a parent has helped us in tech PR:

• Identifying key influencers and media – as a parent you need to regularly keep abreast of the tv programmes or toys your kids are into. It is no different in tech PR whereby you need to regularly keep tabs on what key influencers are reading.

• Event organisation – as any parent will know organising a kid’s birthday party is extremely stressful. The fear of forgetting to invite one of your child’s friends, getting the wrong birthday cake, not buying enough party bags… the list goes on! So, when it comes to organising client and journalist events they should be a walk in the park 😊

• Keeping calm – being able to keep calm in the face of 100th request for something to eat that morning or a sit down protest in a toy shop is a must. Indeed, having a calm head also helps in tech PR, especially when you are having to juggle multiple client and journalist requests on any given day.

• Being able to decipher and distil messages – with young children you end up spending a lot of time trying to understand and articulate what they are trying to communicate. It is the same in tech PR where a lot our job involves translating what a client does for a media audience.

• The art of persuasion – persuasion is a key element of parenting, as kids don’t always do what you want them to do (especially the first time of asking). There is satisfaction to be gained from convincing them of the merits of eating vegetables or tidying their room every once in a while. In tech PR, the same can be said when it comes to pitching journalists where the art of persuasion can often come in handy.

• Building a story – linked to persuasion is the importance of building a story. Certainly, when it comes to trying something new or different, kids are lot more receptive if you can create a back story and reason they should care. Journalists also need to be convinced about the merits of writing a particular piece of news, so it is important as PRs we are able to tell an interesting client story.

Tech PR may not always be child’s play, but the synergies between parenting and PR are closer than you think. If you are a tech PR parent do tweet us with any further pieces of advice.