#2 My PRstack

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Pile ’em high and set ’em free

It’s publication day for the second MyPRstack book in which experts share the tools they use in their modernised public relations workflow.

I trace the firing shot back to Brand Anarchy. In this book, former consultancy colleagues Steve Earl and Stephen Waddington challenged PR practitioners to develop their expertise beyond media relations.

Two collaborative publications followed: Share This and Share This Too in which practitioners and academics looked to this future of evolved public relations practice.

Race won? Not at all: Waddington and collaborators were only getting into their stride.

The first MyPRstack book (free PDF download) provided expert insight into the tools and techniques used by pioneering practitioners. It’s freely available and you should read it.

But if I had a quibble, it was that it was written by experts for experts. For a first book in the series, it was rather advanced. So I recommend Stella Bayles’s ebook Public Relations Digital Resolution for those needing an engaging narrative to explain the need for MyPRStack.

Now we have book two (free PDF download), published today.

Let me immediately say it has much greater range than the first book so will be more widely useful to a community of practitioners who are not all equally up to speed with digital tools and techniques.

The book contains 30 chapters divided into sections (content, engagement, measurement etc). Contributions have come from pioneering practitioners but also from academics and even PR students. This university lecturer loves nothing more than learning from students – and acknowledging when this happens. After all, no one has a definitive vision of the future, and age confers little advantage when we’re discussing digital developments.

So, the purpose of this book is to help modernise PR practice: getting there involves harnessing the talents of industry leaders, educators (Waddington is both) and students.

Once we only had words: now we have words and data, and can prove the reach and effectiveness of our campaigns.

Contributors are mostly UK-based, but I’m pleased to see Gini Dietrich is an exception. Her 2014 book Spin Sucks (see our review) is an essential read covering public relations and content marketing in the Age of Google.

I’m looking forward to learning more from this second book, but in the spirit of collaborative learning and sharing, I’ve first tasked my class of students with teaching me something they’ve learned from both #MyPRstack books.

Practitioners and educators: we’re all still learning, and increasing numbers are keen to share in teaching too.