By: Drew Forrest
Times have changed in the PR industry over the years. There is a divide in the industry’s communication strategy between new technology and the older original tactics. While I’ll go over these differences, it’s important we know where the industry is going and how we can master our craft with both.
Ways of Communicating
When the traditional PR expert needed to contact the masses they would go through the usual. This consisted of TV, radio, and newspapers. The PR agents of today emphasize a lot more two-way communication through social media. They still deliver their message through traditional mediums, but they also utilize social media to create conversation and communication.
Messages
The messages of traditional PR where completely introspective. Today’s digital PR messages provide much more meaningful content. When groups on social media show dissatisfaction or have questions about said organization, our PR expert can provide much more tailored individual messages about the company that special publics care much more about.
Message Attractiveness
In traditional PR a press release, is a press release, is a press release. Today, not only are there millions of organizations fighting for the media’s attention, but also, there are many underutilized ways to do it. With all of today’s digital technology, we can craft messages to be eye catching. This is extremely important in a world of constant competition for attention.
Tools of the Trade
In the field of communication, contacts are everything. In the days of traditional PR, managing those contacts could be a mess. Because of this, things would become detrimentally slow, and in the field of PR, slow communication is bad communication. In the digital age, a PR agent has a plethora of tools for just such a thing. These tools, also known as CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools, keep communication quick and organized with things such as automatic reporting and managing influencer databases.
Tone
In traditional PR the lines between communication and promotional material were skewed. Every message was centered on how their company, or organization, was the best of the best. Today’s messages are much more personal. PR professionals focus on taking the successes of their company and talking about how they’ve grown, where they’re headed, and asking how their customers feel.
The field of PR is an ever changing landscape, constantly growing and evolving. The PR expert must be constantly adapting. Whether a college graduate or a seasoned expert, the job of learning what is trending on the forefront of the public is never over.