The importance of PR continues to grow

There was a time when public relations as a practice suffered from an ‘unfortunate past’ across the world. This had been due to practitioners being perceived as ‘spin doctors’ and ‘fancy accoutrements’ for issues and events.

Expressions such as: ‘It is only a PR exercise’ were often heard and the perception that the activity of public relations is merely a technical function in organisations was rife. In recent times the strategic role of public relations has taken front stage.

Public Relations has arguably never enjoyed a position of greater prominence than it does today. Companies and organisations across every industry and geography recognise the importance of effective communications. Along with the traditional PR strongholds of analyst and media relations, disciplines such as internal communications and social media are now becoming increasingly important as a core requisite for successful business operations.

In a competitive global environment companies are looking for new and more effective ways to communicate with customers, prospects and partners and this is where PR comes in. Having said that, let us look at some points showing the importance of PR.

- PR makes a valuable contribution to reputation management, working hard to sustain and enhance a good reputation and even harder to repair a damaged one.

- PR can change the context of how people react to all of your communications, your brand and to other brand critics and evangelists

- PR is essential as a management function and a vital component of strategic planning at the highest levels of decision-making.

- PR is all about forming relationships, nourishing them and watching them grow whether it's with clients, the media or investors.

According to an in-depth feature on churnalism.com, in the U.S. and U.K. there are now more PR people than journalists. This shows that companies and organisations are starting to properly harness the value of PR. The relationship between PR and journalist has never been more symbiotic than now.

PR practitioners need journalists because the formal media is currently still the largest outlet to inform the public about their clients. With newsroom cuts and the increasing speed of technology, journalists have twice the workload and less time to research and deliver in-depth reporting. Therefore, journalists turn to PR practitioners for story pitches, press releases, and quick answers to their questions.

PR, both as a communications tool on its own – and as part of the overall communications mix – has helped build many of our clients’ brands.

Introducing Gmail Motion

PR practitioners - learn to say No!

PR practitioners - learn to say No!

Why Social Media?

The digital age has introduced far more effective means of sharing information – literally at the click of a button.

Who would have known a few years ago how popular social media websites would actually become? Platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have revolutionised how people share information with often vastly distributed audiences.

Social media has been around for a while, yet not many companies in South Africa have realised its potential. One of the secrets to social media's success is how easy it has become to participate.

SM gives companies the opportunity and platform to both promote their brand and obtain feedback from customers. It also enables them to present their corporate personality on the Internet.

However, avoiding SM means that you are missing out on many useful marketing tools and strategies. SM is not just about advertising your product and services; it is about projecting the human dimension of your business and the personality of your brand and it demands the mindset of a Public Relations professional combined with the skills of a top marketer.

SM will help PR identify which ideas match with specific audiences and can help us earn more attention and interest.

SM can be a fundamental part of your overall communications strategy as it encourages a regular stream of low-level interaction and is real time. This leads to my top four benefits of using social media.

Below are my top four benefits of social media:

The personal and professional enrichment provided through social media is worth it all. Social media can provide you with and help you maintain focus.

In my opinion, social media is the best branding tool ever. The ability to build awareness, create appeal and generate traffic is awesome.

Social media improves your communication skills. (Our company blog is helping me communicate better, even Twitter helps me to be more concise, exercise my vocabulary and improve my writing skills).

Another benefit of using social media is that you get to listen to what people or businesses are saying.

So, if your not using Social Media you should know that it is growing and growing quickly. Don’t be left out, join the gang!!

This blog post was first published on the Cerebra website.