Filed under: PR
Over half of UK PR professionals believe that their colleagues are incapable of running effective online PR campaigns. That’s the alarming finding of a study conducted by Webitpr the results of which have been released today. The reasons for this vital skills gap are cited as a lack of understanding of online techniques followed by people being too busy with day to day PR work. Both these explanations are arguably related to the issue of staff training or rather the lack thereof. Now other blogs have started a debate on the lack of investment by some agencies in even basic PR training. Ensuring consultants have the skills needed to implement the New PR should surely be the top staff development priority for every decent agency in the tech space today?
The old model of having a ‘Blogging Unit’ or ‘Social Media Team’ that can be wheeled in and out of pitches was fine a few years back when this area was niche, but today this ‘low cost’ approach is outdated. Expertise shouldn’t exist in silos and all consultants and teams need to be equipped with the skills to allow them to implement and offer counsel to clients on effective online PR. What is needed is a longer term view of the bottom line and a belief by agency owners that freeing up staff time for training and collaboration on social media will actually be in the long term financial interests of the agency. Hopefully this message will get through and when Webitpr repeat this research in a years time the results won’t be such an embarrassment.
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Hi Daljit.
Thanks for the link. Your observation that lack of training could be a key barrier preventing PR professionals carrying out effective online campaigns may well be the case. As an online press release distribution company that is trying to embrace the online world as a whole we are often surprised by the limited knowledge that many PR professionals have of the benefits and tools of online PR. This applies particularly in the 2.0 world, but can still often apply in 1.0 environments as well. What was pleasing to see in the survey though was an appreciation of benefits such as SEO. Assuming the apparent increase in importance of online coverage is being driven by clients, and the commercial necessity this will create, then hopefully we will see the investment you talk about being made across organisations, not just in individuals.
This first study was meant to be relatively broad in nature and to a great extent the results speak for themselves. We will be doing some more research in the future and perhaps we will be able to probe some of these points more deeply.
Thanks again.
Adam
Comment by Adam Parker, Chief Executive - webitpr August 21, 2007 @ 7:24 pmThanks for the comment Adam. I agree it was encouraging to see that PR people are recognising the growing importance of SEO from both a news and reputation management perspective. An interesting question to ask in your next survey would be the typical ratio between online and offline coverage being demanded by clients and whether clients rate coverage on a well read blog as highly as an online news site?
Comment by Daljit B August 21, 2007 @ 7:57 pm[...] Richard Bailey, Heather Yaxley, Andrew B. Smith, the guys from Spannerworks, Sherrilynne Starkey, Daljit Bhurji, Katy Howell and even webitpr’s very own Giles Shorthouse covered it. And, as mentioned, [...]
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