Online media still a mystery?
If you’re a PR reading this, and have managed to navigate to this website all by yourself, congratulations: because PR bible*, PR Week today reports that ‘PR agencies are still struggling to get to grips with online media’. It seems that only 40% of the top 100 PR agencies surveyed by Bigmouthmedia offer a variety of digital services:
http://www.prweek.com/uk/news/919932/Bigmouthmedia-finds-PR-agencies-continue-struggle-digital-offering/
There are some pretty interesting statistics in here, one being that while ‘the number of agencies publishing blogs has doubled... 78 per cent of those agencies do not produce their own’. (We can assure you that this blog is brought to you direct from the Beam team here in Exmouth market. Typos and all).
Now, we’re not professing to know it all when it comes to online media (and anyone who does is telling porkies – let’s face it, the landscape develops so quickly that there’s something new to learn every single day). But we have for a long time been working hard to understand the differences between online and offline PR.
It must be because we work in the tech sphere that we almost take for granted the fact that this is the direction the industry has taken; but it’s surprising to think that there are agencies out there who haven’t yet felt the need to embrace the digital world. Yes, it can be tough (and a bit scary) trying to navigate this new territory... but can any of us really afford not to? Frankly, the consequences could be scarier.
Whether you work in the tech sphere or not, the digital world is becoming a bigger part of our everyday lives than ever, and your clients need to be properly represented there. The journalists who speak to you on the phone are the same people who are reading your blogs, following your Twitter and checking out your YouTube channel – surely they need to receive the same service, whether their next article will appear online or in print?
*hmmm