Corinne’s Weblog

After reading several blogs from professional and non-professionals alike, I realized there are some mixed emotions on the future of public relations. And I feel the exact same way.

Seth Godin’s look into better technology making PR practitioners more lazy is something I definitely agree with.  Spamming multiple people with information they are probably not interested in doesn’t make the cause more credible or interesting it just makes public relations work seem pitiful.  Like PR people are begging for support from people who don’t care about them.  Keep the message focused at a target audience and the message will automatically become more credible and noticed.

This video was also extremely interesting and followed through with a lot of important aspects of public relations.  One major idea I notice was “everyone and everything connected.”  Since PR people should want to get as much information out to audiences, shouldn’t they want to get just as much information back?  This would definitely help in the evaluation and research phases of any campaign; as a continual and ever changing source of information.  The rest of the video is great too with tons of information on the future possibilities, and how social media releases should break through! 

 All About Public Relations with Steven R. Van Hook was also another helpful site that focused on the job force for public relations students.  Although the future looks bright ahead with the growth of PR jobs rapidly increasing, there are TONS of students graduating with public relations degrees.  The dopplegangers are attacking and fast, but with a good education and experience it looks like students will have no problem breaking into the field of PR with fresh, innovative ideas. 

Also during my research I found a really good list by a flustered blogger and PR practitioner, Brendan Hodgson, who was told to know where PR would be by 2030.  Really all of his thoughts seemed complete and coherent with my favorite being:

“7. “Change Communications” will simply become “Communications” because change, to abuse an over-used euphemism, will be the only constant (yeah, kick me).”

He is completely right though.  Communication is ever changing and so will public relations the consumers and clients will become more involved.  He also goes on to say evaluations will become more complete as well as the definition of “value,” not simply monetary, but function, reputation and credibility.

Brendan has great ideas and I completely agree.  Bravo! 

Many other sites I came across said the new tactics would blend with old.  However, with a more intelligent and stronger background in the future of PR, I think the old tactics with morph into new ones with the new technology available as long as it is used accurately and credibly.

Public Relations Practitioner To Be,

Cori Urrutia