Day: July 20, 2004

As part of the article I penned on the State of Public Relations, I conducted a brief online survey to gauge how practitioners felt about the current state of PR and where we are going.

There were 52 respondents and their views on the challenges and opportunities facing PR were very interesting.

The number one challenge facing the profession, according to the survey, is identifying, understanding and using all the new communications tools (31%) that are becoming available. The second most popular challenge is the need for better education of clients on what PR can and cannot achieve, and helping them to better understand the potential of new tools (18%).

When asked about the opportunities for PR, respondents chose the potential of the new tools such as weblogs, RSS etc. as the #1 opportunity for the profession.  Surprisingly, the second biggest opportunity (18%) was promoting more ethical, transparent practices across the profession. I’m sure that will surprise PR’s detractors….

For more on the findings, you can read the full article here.

Well, Global PR Blog Week 1.0 came to an end on Friday, and if you haven’t already, I strongly recommend you visit the site and read through the incredible PR content.

The amount of effort put in by everyone from Constantin and Trevor in pulling the event together, to Elizabeth* and Anthony Parcero (his blog is currently down) working with content as it was published, not to mention all the various contributors, was immense.

I have added the links to the last couple of days stories here, as much for my reference as anything else.

Fantastic event and a fantastic PR resource.

• Kevin Dugan has a well time piece on Martha Stewart and her ongoing crises.
• Colin McKay on the basic principles of crisis communication.
• Steve Rubel interviews Dan Gillmor.
• Jim Horton on blogging in a crisis.
• Richard Bailey on PR professionalism in the UK.
• Constantin Basturea on “The New PR”.
• Jeremy Pepper interviews a number of PR luminaries in a piece called the “Battle over PR”.
• Robb Hecht interviews Seth Godin.
• Philip Young on Ethics in PR.
• Don Crowther on the seven must have elements for a crisis communications kit and his thoughts on some trends for PR.
• Chris Bechtel on the new dynamics of PR.
• B.L Ochman on what your company could do with a blog, an interview with Steve Outing and some tips on pitching blogs.
• Matias Fernandez on how PR can facilitate learning inside an organization.
• Yours truly on the state of PR.

Footnote:

*Thanks in particular go to Elizabeth Albrycht, who managed to spot a major layout mistake in my own contribution. You can’t beat attention to detail!