Thanks to new digital inventions, the public relations industry have changed quite a bit. The days of mailing out a press release using the U.S. Postal Service have gone by the wayside. Now, PR companies, like Franchise PR Agency, need to know how to plan an event, work the media, and write press releases, as well as sending out tweets, analyzing data, monitoring feedback, and connecting with influencers. There’s a lot more involved with the new digital economy.
Public Relations Is A More Important Field
In the past, anyone with a communications degree received some PR training. It was a necessary part of any journalism program. Now, there are entire Master’s degree programs dedicated to the art of sending out press releases and working with digital media influencers. There are a lot more jobs as well, and they pay quite well. Companies now understand that they need a good PR team in order to get attention to their products.
Things Are Now More Global Than Local
Public relations strategies used to depend on where the product’s target market was based. Some were just local, while others were national. Now, there’s a global scale to contend with. Companies need to reach consumers all over the globe. These new PR strategies are quite detailed and focus on bringing in customers from everywhere, thanks to the help of influencers. While this is good for small, local companies, as it allows them to get larger in a faster manner, they need PR people who are trained for this very thing.
Social Media Matters
Press releases still go out, but the real bread and butter of PR are now social media. Companies need to reach their followers on platforms like Snapchat, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. This is what really matters since they can reach more influencers and gain more attention for their products. However, this comes at a price, since those followers and influencers are demanding responses on social media as well. Some companies might have a dedicated social media manager in their stable of employees. Those managers only focus on these platforms, where they respond to inquiries, put out virtual fires, and come up with valid solutions.
Journalists No Longer Really Matter
When PR was just starting out, they reached out to journalists. These journalists wrote for magazines and newspapers – print publications – and decided which products or events to cover. Now, those journalists have fallen out of favor. In order to truly get noticed, companies need to reach out to social media influencers who can tout the products to their thousands of followers.
The Public Has A Shorter Attention Span
It goes without saying that the public now has a shorter attention span. This means that those public relations campaigns need to go out more frequently, lest the public forgets about them in favor of the next new thing. This means that PR employees need to find new angles to get attention constantly. It’s a tricky balance that needs to be maintained by the PR Agency.