The Future of PR

Tom Murphy has a thoughtful piece today on the future of PR. There’s always a good amount of talk in the blogosphere about traditional PR dying a slow death, blogging becoming the future of communication or 2005 being the year of RSS, but what does this all really mean for PR practitioners, particularly those not using these new tools? I think Murphy provides a good synthesis of where PR is (eventually) heading.

The definition of Public Relations is expanding

PR is about the ability to effectively communicate with an audience. This is a broad remit, though often in the past it has been defined in a narrow context. Too often PR becomes synonymous with media relations. That will become less prevalent as we move forward. PR in the future will need a whole host of new skills to go with what we already have. These include our ability to communicate on a one-to-one basis but more importantly it means understanding how people find information online, how people like to receive information. As search engines have become the single most popular way to find information across the Internet, new skills such as Search Engine Optimization will become increasingly important for PR people.