PR is an Integral Part of Marketing

There have been quite a few changes in the world of PR in the recent years. It has been disrupted up to the point where in the world of shrinking newsrooms, PR is filling the vacuum, and in the boardroom, PR has become an integral part of marketing strategy.

The PR workforce landscape has also changed drastically. PR is no longer restricted to print and broadcast media only, and we have up-skilled to meet the 24/7 always-on news cycle and social media content appetite. Content creation/story-telling is now part of our job. Before the content creators worked mainly in the media companies but now they work in marketing departments / PR and specialist content agencies.

Certainly, there are a lot of new job titles and roles, community manager, head of digital, chief creative officer, citizen journalist, brand journalist, etc. PR is the new community managers on social media for clients in the mobile first world we now occupy. PR companies in Delhi and around the world play different roles of being a photographer and picture editors, with real-time sharing on social media a must to make client events trend. Dealing with bloggers and vloggers for many clients, and seeding for social media impact is a daily activity. Contracts and gives and gets need to be agreed in advance of any activity and the leading Irish lifestyle bloggers command high fees for endorsement on their sites. We are measures of coverage achieved, so social media audits and analytics are now part of what we do.

Inbound marketing is the new buzz word with blogging and ezines back in vogue and great helpers to SEO. Clients want PR firms, especially the PR consultants in Delhi to do more – SEO, blogger relations, video, online and pay per click advertising. Twitter can set the news agenda and gives individuals and celebrities the opportunity to engage directly with the public.

So what does the future hold? The number of outlets/titles and the media landscape have been impacted by the change in the advertising industry business model which has fragmented the media world. 

From maintaining the reputation of a company at every stage of the client’s journey to bringing all the elements together, it is an all round process. Thus PR practitioners need to be more proactive. PR is definitely still a story-telling function, not just any story, but your Brand Story.

Hence in future, PR firms in Delhi will need to draw on a much broader context and become the custodian of the brand story, understanding the company and the environment in which it operates on a very detailed level and developing the messages, the stories and the themes that will help our audiences make a connection with us and clearly position our value to them.