“Before the rise of social media, public relations was about trying to manage the message an entity was sharing with its different audiences. Now, PR has to be more about facilitating the ongoing conversation in an always-on world”.
So said Adam Lavelle, chief strategic officer, iCrossing US, speaking at a meeting of America’s chief PR associations, including The Public Relations Society of America, for the industry has decided to devise a fresh definition for itself.
Social media, including blogs, Facebook and Twitter have unquestionably and radically transformed the relationship between the public and the organisations communicating with them.
Traditional PR involved a one-way monologue that usually went in one direction – from the top down. Now, we are seeing a new-fashioned PR that embraces two-way conversations. The industry has been shaken up and introduced to new terms such as earned media, word of mouth marketing and buzz marketing.
A search for a new definition of public relations seems long overdue. An updated level of standardisation might help both PR practitioners and the public to get to grips with PR in the age of social media, and may have helped to prevent some of PR’s most memorable recent blunders. Anyone remember BP’s mishandling of online reputation following the Gulf of Mexico oil spill? Or ChapStick repeatedly deleting negative comments about its ads from its Facebook page, a move which backfired to the extent that complaints actually soared?
One of the most radical shifts offered by social media is that today, everybody is a content creator. Brands have to rethink their PR and online reputation strategies, bearing in mind that they cannot simply push their own content out to a passive public.
To stay up to date with the redefinition of PR in the US, keep checking in to the Public Relations Society of America website at prsa.org. A new section is set to go live on Monday at prdefinition.prsa.org – and in the true spirit of social, the new industry definition is being crowdsourced with visitors invited to submit suggestions.
