A lot of media blogs recently have been writing about how PR is evolving with the impact of social media. Some have said the death of PR, some have said the birth of the PR geek. This article though, currently top story on Techmeme, looks at PR in the digital age as being less about public relations and more about personal relations. Worth a read, if only because it quotes 4hr Work Week as an example.
What I think's interesting about the example in this blog post is that Tim Ferriss' book is all about how to outsource as much as possible from your life so that you don't have to do the work yourself. Yet his outsourced PR only managed to get him one article so he took the PR and 'personal relationships' work back on himself. Sounds like it was a bad experience on both fronts.
It takes time to cultivate and make the most of relationships to promote a business, a blog or a campaign (or a book!). Certainly more than a 4hr work week. And I would strongly agree that PR that works is PR that combines a knowledge of the public relations discipline with personal relationships with the people you want to be writing about your brand. So that the client doesn't feel they would be better off doing it all themselves.
Totally agree. Social media is just the next tool to help PR professionals build and extend relationships. Relationships will always prove to be the fundamental key to good PR and this needs to be built over time. Some of my best journalist relationships are those that have been built over many years.
Posted by: Paul Stallard | September 23, 2008 at 10:20 PM