During the past 12 years that i have been working in Public Relations there has been a constant change and development, mainly due to the digital transformation and the arrival of the internet. Before this, everything was done on paper. I even had to send faxes on a regular basis!At that time everything was more complicated due to the lack of media. Information was focused on one or two important news agencies and there were no more ways to spread our ideas.
Additionally, internet was also key to expand the media base: today 80% of the work we do is published in online media, which has caused a big expansion of our work in public relations.
Regarding this issue, it is important to point out add that today we are not only dealing with media, but also with bloggers, vloggers, instagramers and influencers, who, although they are not journalists, they're considered opinion leaders, whose main channel is Internet; however, this strategy does not necessarily work for all companies.
MAIN CHALLENGES
The immediacy and its dangers
It seems that all of the above has eased our work, but the reality is that in today’s worlds, public relations professionals have important challenges. The main one has to do with immediacy: a client who is not prepared to deal with a crisis can let a seemingly small detail grow to unimaginable proportions in just a few minutes (viralization).
Remember that one of the most important facts that companies must take into account (and all of us as well) is that someone always has a camera in their pocket and may record any given situation and upload it to the internet, where millions of eyes will be watching up close and on repeat. Before, only immediate bystanders would have witnessed the events taking place. But now, we must be better prepared and create effective crisis management strategies that include digital behaviour. Remember, people are connected and watching 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Short attention threshold
Another challenge is that the audience's attention level today is very short: 15 years ago or more, when internet was just starting out, people said that the competition was "seven seconds away", because you could only keep someone’s attention for seven seconds before they moved to something else. Today, the attention span is even shorter. This represents another evolution of messages, since they have to be shorter, direct and conclusive.
Focus on the consumer instead of the brand
A more related challenge is how to speak to millennials. Before, most of the companies' communication consisted on talking about the brand, its virtues, its products, etc. Nowadays communication is focused on the consumer: it is about what the consumer is interested in, and that empathy is what usually draws millennials attention.