PRoclaim
Diving into the depths of the communications world…discussing current events and trends affecting the ever evolving PR profession.
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- Public Relations and New Media
The face of communications, relationship building, listening and mutually beneficial dialogue has been fundamentally changed by the rise and rapid advancement of the digital world. Like never before, the internet, social networking, mobile devices and a myriad of communications technology are bringing people and organisations together.
New Media, Web 2.0, Rich media, Converged, Digital…. whichever phrase one chooses to utilize, this topic is of great significance to the practice of public relations, whether they are in-house or consultancies.
I find the dynamic and ever changing nature of the digital realm continually fascinating and have developed a particular interest in Public Relations and New Media. Everyday I am learning more about this PR practice of leveraging online media and using search and the social web as channels of communication, engagement and influence.
In my view, the digital platform has several advantages in that it is multi-channel, conversational, transparent, integrated, fast-moving and international. All these elements compliment the existing strengths of the PR industry placing it in a prominent position in the communications field.
In the bid to create and sustain relationships of mutual understanding between an organisation and its relevant publics, within an increasingly ‘transparent’ world, the digital landscape gives us valuable tools to create these conversations. Through the digital world, we have the ability to reach all our target audiences simultaneously. It also offers an affordable, quick and simple way to evaluate the impact of our communications, finally demonstrating that PR can support sales and business development.
For forwarding thinking PR practitioners, understanding the relationship between, and the subtle distinctions of new media, will considerably increase their opportunity to generate positive coverage and great results.
February 16th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
The digital reality presents us with new challenges, a new world order where the ‘old rules’ of PR or Marketing don’t make any sense. In this new ‘webscape’ we need to learn how to listen first and then talk, how to talk ‘with’ instead of ‘to’. It’s not about direct sales it’s about community building! great post!
February 23rd, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Very good reflection. You mentioned the transparency as an advantage of the digital platform. It certainly is an advantage on the one hand. But on the other hand I think the digital platforms can be blurred, too: I recently read an interesting post about that issue at Friederike’s blog (http://friederikegraesser.prblogs.org/) . She reflects about audience and authors who become nearly indistinguishable in the web. Additionally, it can be often really hard to say who is the sender of a message in the online environment. In this context I just pointed out a corporate video I watched on YouTube because I asked myself if it has really been released by the presented company or by someone else? To my mind, these blurred sender-identities are a challenge and have to be taken seriously!