Ketner Group’s newly named President and CEO Catherine Seeds, has greater than 24 years of expertise working in B2B tech PR companies.
Seeds, an integral a part of the company for over 20 years, will construct upon Ketner’s success and uphold the company’s dedication to fostering a strong tradition. This dedication has been acknowledged by Ragan’s High Locations to Work, the place the company has been acknowledged for 3 consecutive years. As well as, the company has been honored as one in every of PR Day by day’s High Companies for 2023.
In her new position, Seeds will oversee the company’s enterprise growth, partnerships, HR/operations, consumer success, and company tradition initiatives alongside her senior management workforce. Nonetheless, she can be taking over the position of parliamentarian at Cedar Park Excessive College, the place she plans to contribute to the group that gave her daughter her schooling and the place her son might be becoming a member of subsequent yr as a freshman.
As Seeds takes on these two new thrilling roles, we needed to get her ideas on the way forward for the communications business.
What ebook, podcast or different media do you suggest to different comms execs?
My favourite podcast proper now could be Mobituaries, hosted by Mo Rocca, who can be a correspondent for CBS Sunday Morning.
I extremely suggest this podcast for all communications execs! The idea behind Mobituaries is so easy, but so good. It takes a better take a look at “dearly departed” folks and issues that had been by no means actually given their second within the highlight. As Mo places it, “Even when the names, you’ve by no means understood why they matter till now!”
I feel my love for this podcast stems from my childhood, listening to Paul Harvey’s “The Remainder of the Story” radio segments with my mother throughout the summer season whereas we went on her Meals on Wheels drop-offs.
Each Paul Harvey and Mo Rocca are grasp storytellers. As a PR skilled, I’m at all times on the hunt for a very good story or somebody who can seize a room’s consideration with their capability to serve up an incredible story!
What’s your favourite device you utilize frequently for work?
Apart from my cellphone, I (and the remainder of the company) use a device/platform known as Qwoted almost on daily basis!
Briefly, Qwoted is a platform that connects manufacturers with journalists. It permits our workforce to arrange profiles for every of our shoppers’ spokespersons in order that we are able to get extra tailor-made alternatives for them and get notified each day concerning dozens of media alternatives. Qwoted additionally permits us to see who else is pitching a particular alternative and get alerted when our shoppers are coated within the media.
The platform has made such an enormous distinction to find one of the best media alternatives for our shoppers, to not point out an exquisite car to develop higher relationships with key commerce and top-tier reporters and to remain on high of trending business information.
What excites you most about the way forward for communications?
I’m excited, and hopeful, for PR professionals to take care of optimistic relationships with the media. There isn’t any denying that the previous couple of years have been arduous on journalists and the newsroom, which makes PR execs extra essential than ever. It’s our job to be the go-to useful resource for media when writing tales, to not blast them always with irrelevant pitches.
Instruments like Qwoted and even Twitter are nice platforms for us to search out alternatives, however you can not substitute real relationships with key media in your shoppers’ area. That is the idea of media relations, and I’m excited to see how we as a occupation develop to fulfill the short- and long-term wants of our friends in journalism.
What communications problem retains you up at night time?
Truthfully, what retains me up at night time can be the factor that excites me about the way forward for communications.
It looks like on daily basis on Twitter our workforce sees one other journalist who has complained about one thing a PR individual despatched them. And it’s utterly justified! I fear that just a few dangerous apples, or those that simply don’t know any higher, are creating extra of a crack within the essential relationship between PR and the media.
PR is easy in idea, nevertheless it does take work, analysis and strategic considering on the a part of a PR skilled to verify what they’re sending to a journalist is related and really newsworthy.
What’s the most important problem you’ve overcome in your profession?
For me, the most important problem has been years within the making – that’s being a working mother and dealing my approach from being an account govt to an company proprietor. I’ve been a mother for 18 of my 24 years as a PR skilled, so I definitely have had my fair proportion of late nights, engaged on weekends and journeys on which I missed child issues.
I’m blessed to have an exquisite husband who’s a real companion in all issues and is supportive of me and my work, however there is no such thing as a denying mother guilt! My two youngsters are a bit older now – my daughter begins faculty and my son begins highschool within the fall – so it’s a bit simpler now.
As arduous because it was at occasions, I used to be actually fortunate to have had one of the best of each worlds and my youngsters acquired to see first-hand the aftereffects of me working for a family-first and employee-first firm.
What’s the greatest recommendation you’ve ever gotten?
My dad and mom have been an enormous inspiration for me my whole life, and have given me tons of life classes that I carry nonetheless right now.
First, my mother at all times taught me to do the correct factor, even when it actually sucks to take action. Ha! She would at all times say, “Our household at all times does what’s proper, even when it’s arduous.”
My dad, he at all times jogged my memory to decelerate and assume issues by means of. I used to be an enormous worrier–nonetheless am!–however when you actually take the time to sluggish issues down and assume by means of an issue, the correct reply will come alongside.
Isis Simpson-Mersha is a convention producer/ reporter for Ragan. Comply with her on LinkedIn.
COMMENT
