It should go without saying that whatever kind of publicity you’re putting out, it’s going to reflect back on your, your organization or your business.

But that’s what you want, right? The whole idea of advertising and PR is to make you look good. That door swings both ways, however. Putting out shoddy commercials, press releases or even malformed tweets makes you look bad.

And people remember the bad stuff a lot longer. They’re more likely to tell their friends about the bad stuff. People love sharing stories about bad stuff.

So take it personal. And invest a little bit of ego in it.

Generally, when it comes to criticism as you’re putting material together, I’ll tell you not to take it personally. Listen, learn and move on. Never stop listening and learning. It’s solid advice.

But once your idea is out there in the wild, it gets very personal. People are going to see it who don’t know you, and they’ll judge you on your work alone. They’re making decisions based on that small piece of yourself that you threw into your work.

That’s where your ego comes in. To consistently put out solid material, you’re going to need some of that validation. You’re going to need being driven enough to put in the time and care to make your media reflection something you can be happy with.

Notice that I wrote “solid material,” not “good material.” And “happy with,” not “overjoyed with.” There’s a reason, and we’ll get to that soon.

When I was editing an alt-weekly, my pride was on the line every single issue — mostly because my face appeared next to my column on page 3, letting the world know that I was the editor. Whatever was within its pages reflected on me, and my grinning mug in four-color-process ink made sure it was inescapable.

If you’re producing material for someone else, it’s easy to think that you’re going to be anonymous. Put those thoughts away.

Someone is going to know that you were the author/producer/idea person, and they’ll tell others their assessment of your work. When I produce a TV commercial, there’s no “Stouthouse Media” tagline anywhere in it. The client who hired us judges our work, though, and talks to other business owners. The ad reps at the broadcast and cable outlets we send the commercial to judge our work and decide whether to recommend us to others. The production folks who work behind the scenes to get the spot on-air know it’s coming from Stouthouse.

So it’s your reputation tied up every time with what you’re producing. You don’t always have to like your work – God knows, I’ve produced some spots that were exactly what the client wanted and exactly what I didn’t want — but you have to be able to stand behind it, defend it if necessary, and explain exactly why you did what you did.

Give yourself a pep talk if you need to. If you couldn’t do it, you wouldn’t be doing the job. If you couldn’t do it right, you wouldn’t be worrying about doing it right. Take the steps, take the time, do the work and make it happen.