Traditional PR and online PR disconnect
Having spent some time cruising the blogosphere for other online PR sites, it's clear there is a disconnect between traditional PR people and online PR people.
The disconnect seems to be:
- No real understanding of the multiple routes to end users
- Failure to understand the utility of the internet i.e. users want immediacy
- No sense of 'internet is a conversation'
- Hanging on to the idea that broadcast messaging is somehow going to work in the internet.
- And (for me) most importantly Online PR as a way to get ranked on search engines.
(I will cover the search engine / Online PR connection in another blog post)
It's not looking good for your 'ordinary offline PR' person. Paper based news is diminishing in importance, TV is becoming very disseminated, Radio... I'm sure its ok but I don't hear of PR people talk of Radio PR that much.
When an advertiser or client puts out a message, it often focuses on an action or 'warming to' of a company or other entity. Increasingly, when a person is in a decision making mode, it's not when they are relaxing reading a paper or watching TV.
So logically, if you have a PR message which requires action, then you need to reach people when they are in an action mode... the internet and especially search engines.
So old PR is getting very 'old' and online PR is incomprehensable to most of the old school.
The upshot: new generation of pracitioners, lots of upheaval, lots of opportunity for the online savvy.
It's not looking good for your 'ordinary offline PR' person. Paper based news is diminishing in importance, TV is becoming very disseminated, Radio... I'm sure its ok but I don't hear of PR people talk of Radio PR that much.
When an advertiser or client puts out a message, it often focuses on an action or 'warming to' of a company or other entity. Increasingly, when a person is in a decision making mode, it's not when they are relaxing reading a paper or watching TV.
So logically, if you have a PR message which requires action, then you need to reach people when they are in an action mode... the internet and especially search engines.
So old PR is getting very 'old' and online PR is incomprehensable to most of the old school.
The upshot: new generation of pracitioners, lots of upheaval, lots of opportunity for the online savvy.
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