There’s been a lot of debate over the future of PR. From PRSA’s #PRDefined initiative focused on revitalizing the definition of PR, to the evolving role of communications professionals and agencies. Historically, “traditional PR” has been heavily defined by media relations. And while media relations remains important, the industry is increasingly seeing our function becoming something much bigger. PR’s success focuses on building companies’ brands and growing their businesses – using storytelling and compelling messages to communicate to the people your company wants to influence, and ultimately influencing their behavior.
Digital and social are certainly major components of this discussion. A front page feature in the Wall Street Journal is valuable but if a blog post from the leading cloud computing expert generates more hits to your website and coverts to more sales, which has more value? The way people are consuming media and are influenced has evolved, and communications is no longer solely defined by the ability to generate media attention for a brand. Rather, we can take these conversations direct to influencers and to customers via social channels, knowing the benefit of them then sharing the content with their network(s).
We’ll continue this discussion around the evolving function of PR, influencers and content creation in this session at Social Media Week San Francisco, taking place on Monday, February 13 at 10am at Trulia SF. I encourage you to register, join the discussion and hear from a former reporter turned corporate blogger; the corporate communications director at Cisco who operates “The Network: Cisco’s Technology News Site”; ad:tech’s content director; and, myself (communications and digital at Text 100).
And, please let me know what topics you’d like to hear discussed in the panel in the comments section or on Twitter (@chanslor).
Melissa Chanslor
Picture credit: The phone is ringing by Kerolic on Flickr (cc)
