EMBRACING NEW MEDIA

The public relations industry has evolved itself with changing times. The emergence of new media is a hot debate these days. According to a social media report by Josh Gordon, marketing consultant and president of Selling2.0 Marketing and PR are currently the leading business uses of social media. Although many public relations agencies claim to have joined the bandwagon; the question is how public relations as an industry is embracing the new media.

1.Code of conduct: Professional bodies like CIPR updated its 2007 guidelines for members and wider PR community to increase awareness as to how social media should be handled so that professionals can take informed and educated decisions about using the social media for their clients.

2.Integration: Clients are expecting PR agencies to have a good understanding of the new media. PR agencies are facing stiff competition from other digital or marketing agencies. These agencies claim that they are more proficient in handling new media. Therefore, PR agencies are launching branding and marketing arms to gain their share of the pie.

3.Emergence of specialist digital agencies: With social media trend on the rise, PR agencies are diversifying in to the new Digital domain. For example, Hotwire launched a specialist digital agency called 33Digital and Bullet PR, a PR agency specialising in the digital media was launched in Brighton in June 2009.

4.More investment in digital: PR agencies are investing heavily by training staff, hiring digital experts and bringing in external digital gurus. It is believed that the popularity of social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube could be one reason for the growing importance of digital PR. PR professionals are spending lot of time in running blogs, managing Twitter accounts, creating podcasts and vodcasts for their clients. For example, the website of Berkley PR, a technology public relations agency mentions that they are investing heavily in this growth area to ensure that they harness digital media to the best advantage of their clients.

5.Educating clients on new media: Since social media is a relatively new field, PR agencies are educating their clients about the potential benefits of using new media. This way client realise the value of new media and PR agencies are able to justify their budgets.


Can you think of any other ways through which PR agencies are embracing the new media?


Embracing Social Media

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