So you want to break into public relations?

This is a difficult and confusing time to break into the public relations business.  As  traditional media continues to disappear at unprecedented speed, and the acceptance and use of social media increases exponentially, the PR landscape becomes radically altered.  How do you promote a service, product or person in 2009 when the rules of engagement have shifted so far that nobody can say for certain what they are? How do you judge success when you have no verifiable way to measure it? Why on earth would anybody want to break into this business now when there are no jobs and nobody can agree what public relations is anymore?

I faced a room full of mass communications students last weekend at VCU and tried to answer these questions. The short answer is:  Uncertainty brings opportunity and this is a thrilling time to be in the communications field.  It begins at the top, as Barack Obama re-defines how government communicates with and interacts with its constituents.  And it comes down to us - never before have the methods of communication - the ability to package and distribute news and information on a mass scale - been in the hands of ‘the people.’

All the news and info distribution sources we now have at our disposal - including web sites, blogs, Twitter, Flickr (or any web photo platform), YouTube (or any web video platform), RSS, widgets - are absolutely free. All it takes is imagination and time and you can shout to the world. 

The PR business still treats social media as a curiosity, an add-on. They generally still don’t get that  PR needs to lead the communications mix (PR/marketing/advertising) and PR needs to follow media into an Internet-based, digital distribution system. Instead of pitching the media we become the media.

Writing has always been an important, and sorely under served, element of public relations. Now that we can’t complain about lack of avenues for publishing, writing is even more important.  Check out Emily Valentine’s blog Cultural Anthropologist. Emily was one of the 50 or students from the 10 colleges and universities at the VCU PRSSA event last weekend.  There are also links to writing samples on Emily’s blog, including Microfinance: social networking meets social enterprise on the Young Professionals in Foreign Policy web site. Coming into the ‘new PR’ landscape, Emily is honing her writing and social media skills, and engaging in socially optimized PR. It make take some time for PR employers to understand the value of writing, blogging, and social media literacy - but the smart ones will soon enough.

See The Future of PR (SlideShow) | Mark Rose LinkedIn

PR/Media Week in Review 04-19-2009

Quick takes on a beautiful NYC Sunday. The magnolia blooms are peaking.  

The Domino’s fiasco dominated PR news last week as a couple of dweebs in a local pizza pit dramatized every body’s worst nightmare about fast food kitchens. Letterman or Jon Stewart couldn’t do a better parody of how to bomb a company with a YouTube video. The PR lessons from this will be amusing and possibly instructive, and you have to wonder how Domino’s can right its public image without addressing its core business. How much can PR gloss over cold greasy pizza?

In a hotel room in Richmond, VA, last Friday I caught the sorry spectacle of Ashton Kutcher spinning his 1M Twitter milestoneon Larry King like an entrepreneur with a new ice cream cone. Then P. Diddy joined him waxing about his deepness, his soul, his “Twitter DNA,” that gets zapped out to 800,000 or so followers in 140 characters or less. Finally, communication that doesn’t involve actual writing, where you can infiltrate 1 M Twitter minds with barely 15 seconds of sweat. If you don’t have to write, then you don’t have to think, and thinking is, you know, tiring and, you know, frustrating.  That’s why bloggers are abandoning their blogs in droves for the more efficient, less taxing Twitter, thus validating our worst impression of most bloggers.  See CNN Buys Twitter Account. Touring the historic areas of Richmond, VA, where Abraham Lincoln walked in to the capitol of the Confederacy, April 5, 1865, I wondered: isn’t the Gettysburg Address, with its taut, precise prose, its brevity - isn’t it perfect Twitter material? Would Lincoln Twitter if Lincoln could Twitter? Or, would he reject the Twitter Twaddle and the obvious manipulations of the Celeb Twitterati? 

Holy Tweeters: Church promotes social media during sermon. Leaders of a Charlotte North Carolina-area church told members to bring their phones and data devices to Church and Twitter during services. “We want to leverage everything that happens technologically in our culture to bring people closer to God and to each other,” said the Pastor, who also pointed out that “we have a real desire we have in our culture and in our city for a human connection.” Twitter brings you closer to God?

Barack Obama’s first 100 days are coming up April 29 and the stories are already cranking. See Reuters timeline and supporting text and photos. Obama is a news magnet, charismatic, quotable, and his communication agenda is unprecedented and revolutionary.  How do you support our continuing experiment in democracy with digital PR skills? See Communication, Transparency, Participation.

A big thank you to everybody at VCU Mass Communications and the students who came from several surrounding areas to PROmoting Success, Saturday, April 18, organized by the VCU PRSSA.  More on this in the next couple of days.

 Web Video of the week