I’m at risk of showing my age here, but how PR has changed and how technology has completely transformed the way we work. My first foray into PR was in 1701…, seriously it was a long time ago, when mobile phones were for a chosen few and we worked on IBM DOS-based word processors, floppy disks and dot-matrix printers.
I remember joining a PR agency where only one computer had access to the Internet and we weren’t to be trusted having email available to every desk. If we wanted to find out about a company, there was no Internet, instead, we called in their corporate brochure and had to wait for it to arrive. Without email, we relied on snail mail or courier and all our projects were filed in job bags and popped in the filing cabinet.
Today, IT, the internet and mobile phones drive everything we do. Several years ago, many clients felt that online publishing would never catch on. PR was only credible if it appeared in print. Today, online publishing has a far greater influence and reach. Many publications have transitioned successfully to an online media business.
Social media has gone the same way. Our younger generation have been brought up in the social age, they see few boundaries to the media and spot opportunities easily. The rise of influencers is testament to how our younger generation have embraced social media and leveraged it to their advantage. It’s our older generation that sometimes needs convincing and in many cases, they control the budgets. Unfortunately, this also means that they think a young person, is best placed to manage their social media, and that isn't necessarily the case. Social media can be used strategically, a showcase for a business, it is about developing a sense of community and interaction with customers. This often needs careful management, a sense of brand, awareness of what's appropriate, and managing difficult feedback.
All the work put in by savvy companies in the early days is now paying off. They spend less on buying in customer databases, networking, marketing , travel and events, because these things are being replaced by social media enterprise.
So where are you in this social media and influencer revolution? Are you watching it happen, or making it happen? Many casualties on the high street have died because they failed to truly grasp the power of internet shopping, until it was too late. Don’t let the same happen to you because you failed to see the long-term benefits that a good social media strategy will bring.