Are PR Professionals in Danger of Extinction?

Heidi Myers, Marketing Director, Meltwater EMEA, gives her thoughts on how today’s PR professionals cope with the growing popularity of social media and the different outlets opened up for communication…

“I do not believe that PR will become extinct but the PR professionals of today need different skill sets. He/she should be able to navigate the world of digital media, be adept with social media monitoring tools, understand the mindset of millennials who dominate social media and be able to provide new measures to justify ROI.”

With the growing popularity of social media and the various outlets it has opened up for communication, the PR profession is going through a sea-change. PR is no longer a one way communication, for news that you post, there are hundreds of comments from end users in split seconds. How will today’s PR professionals cope with all of these changes and how will they measure the impact of stories that go viral?

I do not believe that PR will become extinct but the PR professionals of today need different skill sets. He/she should be able to navigate the world of digital media, be adept with social media monitoring tools, understand the mindset of millennials who dominate social media and be able to provide new measures to justify ROI.

Here are my top three tips on staying valuable both in house and in an agency:

Offer credibility and strategic counsel

With the increasing number of posts from citizen journalists, one of the main concerns that journalists and the public have is the credibility of their source. This is where a PR professional can make a difference. Provide well-researched stories with statistics and comments from industry leaders that you have access to. Foresee a crisis before it happens and counsel clients on the proper response to contain the social media storm following a crisis. Become the trusted counsellor of your clients and the credible point of contact for media and the public.

Offer value added services

Step up your efforts to become the expert communicator. Provide value added services like training for in house communications department on how to manage social media, crisis communications and media training for top management, blog management, social media monitoring tools and analysis of big data to help companies dig out valuable data regarding consumer engagement and influencer management.

Step up on the creativity and relationships

Creative stories still see the light of day and today with the help of social media, they can go viral, creating a much stronger impact. Tell authentic stories with a human angle. People still buy people. Be sure to keep in touch with your contacts. In today’s connected world, there are so many ways to keep in touch and also to create new contacts online.

With the right approach, PR professionals can succeed in today’s digitalised world.