When your job is making news, it's important to focus on the audience. How one healthcare PR exec approaches her work.
For some people, their job each day is to make news. Some of these individuals are journalists, anchors and reporters, who select which stories are most important for their audiences to read, see and hear. Others are those responsible for getting news to these decision makers in hopes that they'll share it.
Public relations, as a formal practice, has existed for just over half a century, and has become increasingly sophisticated since its introduction. For those of us on the receiving end of PR pitches, PR efforts also seem to be increasing in volume. Our team here at Becker's gets hundreds of pitches each day, and we noticed something over the past few months: We really liked the pitches coming out of one PR shop, particularly from one PR exec, Allie Seifert.
Allie leads PR efforts for DDC Works, a full-service communications agency based just west of Philadelphia. She's been with DDC for seven months and in PR for just two-and-a-half years, but she speaks of her profession with the knowledge and enthusiasm of someone much more experienced. 
Her role at DDC is her first foray into the healthcare industry, and she represents major national clients including McKesson Health Solutions, RightCare Solutions and BioClinica.
The Penn State grad started college as a nursing major — a major the former competitive gymnast selected after suffering a serious injury that meant spending months in and out of the hospital during her high school years.
But, after realizing being a clinician wasn't for her, she switched to journalism and then PR. Her new role — communicating on behalf of healthcare clients — is a perfect fit. "It bridged that love of healthcare I have with PR," she says.
How does she help her clients' headlines appear in the trades? It all goes back to strategy, she explains. "Our main goal for [our clients] is not only to push out pitches and press releases, but we really want to help them grow their business."
Once she understands a client's strategy, she tries to find the intersection of the stories they can tell to support their growth, with the interests of reporters and editors, given their audiences. "I connect those two things: my client's goals and what sorts of things a publication is trying to do," says Ms. Seifert. "It's not just pushing a business, it's about creating a story around what they do versus just pushing a product.
"I think an important but lost art is trying to build relationships with the people you work with, to tailor pitches specific to the needs of the reporter or the audience that the reporter is writing for," she adds.
Ms. Seifert also credits the relationships she's established with reporters and editors, and her voracious reading habits for her success. "It all comes back to the reading," she says. "I had a mentor at my old firm that just hammered that into my brain: If you don't know what's going on in your client's industry or business, there's no way you can help them move forward."