Excuse me if this comes out wrong, but I have a confession.

For nearly 20 years, I’ve worked in public relations. I’ve seen a ton, and I’ve done a ton.  Over the years I must have placed hundreds, even thousands of news stories for clients.   Yet every time a client story runs… I still get excited.  Sometimes more excited than the client.

You know the saying about how the sausage tastes good until you see how it’s made?  Reverse the process and that’s what it feels like when I read some of the stories that we’ve helped place.

The process is the hard part.  Some people get scared by it, but it’s my favorite part of the job.  How do you help make a clearly negative story less threatening to a company’s future?  How do you get what started as a small yet positive mention into a larger feature that will be re-shared for years?

It’s one of the reasons I love my job so much.  The story’s end result doesn’t always showcase the strategy, time and energy put in behind the scenes.  It’s why some of my favorite stories aren’t necessary the same favorites that my clients may cite. It’s also why a client sometimes can’t understand why I get more excited about some stories compared to others.  But maybe I’ll just keep that secret to myself.