Changing career in the middle of your life is never easy and after 20 years at the North Devon Gazette I hadn’t imagined I would be doing anything else.

Setting up my own PR company had been an idle ambition for a long time, but I hadn’t expected to be out on my own during a global pandemic.

But the then parent company (Archant) decided it wished to bring in a new way of working, which I felt would not be a good fit for me. 

It was an incredibly difficult decision, because I owed a lot to the Gazette, but in the end I opted to take redundancy from my post as chief reporter rather than apply for the new role.

I knew I had what it took to be successful at PR – that is, PR that actually gets businesses or organisations noticed and in the media, rather than the flashy but often thin press releases that used to cross my desk as a journalist.

So Viral PR was born! ‘Viral’ simply because it was born in a pandemic, not because I can guarantee viral publicity, although of course that’s something we’d all like to see!

When I was a journalist, many stories did not see the light of day simply because the PR submission was rubbish, not enough detail, poor quality or no pictures and a poor response time when I asked the contributor for more.

I can do all that, I thought. I know exactly what a journalist requires, the news style they need it written in and equally importantly, to be available when they need it and not dead to the world after 3pm on a Friday.

Unfortunately, the pandemic meant many businesses had no spare cash, or indeed did not know what they would be allowed to do from one week to the next.

So it has been a struggle, I admit, as well as a culture shock. With advice from some great people I had to navigate the intricacies of building my own website from scratch, creating an SEO friendly Google listing and much more.

There have been some good successes but I am still working to carve out my own corner of the industry.

People know me, they knew me at the Gazette and without any false modesty, I think I have helped a LOT of local people and businesses over the years.

The success stories with clients have been brilliant though – a North Devon lady with a massive collection of portraits and memorabilia of Her Majesty the Queen made it into the local papers as well as the Daily Mirror.

An amazing Wiltshire youngster with muscular dystrophy called Carmela has been on BBC Breakfast News plus ITV West Country thanks to her mum’s new children’s book, Ilfracombe’s own Blue Poppy Publishing and my public relations efforts.

Quite unexpectedly, I also found myself within the world of books, after being asked if I could edit a book.

I thought: ‘It’s only a long story, how hard could it be?’ and although there was a learning curve, I think I can now say I’ve edited a book!

Via Olli Tooley at Blue Poppy and subsequent reaction, I have represented some of his book titles, as well as the new novel The Coven by Devon’s own Lizzie Fry.

I left a job I enjoyed and had no intention of leaving, with a huge learning curve on the sudden career change and there is much more to learn, but I have proved I can do it and do a good job.

I still need more customers and it is very scary being on a tightrope without a safety net, but I’m not quite ready to get a job stacking shelves just yet!

Update: an earlier version of this blog was not very kind to the Gazette or to Archant, its former owner and upon reflection I have come to realise that and apologise for any upset.