Over the past few decades our world has faced some remarkable changes due to the rapid development of new technology and the Internet. However, a few years back, a new era began, an era where ordinary people have a 'say' on every possible matter, anytime, anywhere - the emergence of social media has altered our lives enormously by giving everyone the opportunity to be a publisher and a communicator. This, in turn, has had a huge impact on the Public Relations practice, which has always been concerned with communicating and building relationships with various publics.

How and why social media affected the PR industry is the topic of my second book “Social Media and the Rebirth of PR: The Emergence of Social Media as a Change Driver for PR”, published by Anchor Academic Publishing.

The book covers the fundamentals and the development of PR and social media over the years, thereby emphasising the differences between PR now and PR before the emergence of social media. It not only describes how exactly social media altered the PR industry as a whole, but also how communications professionals are practicing PR using social media in their work and private lives as well.

Over the last few years two relatively new business philosophies have become the trendy buzzwords in the corporate space – social media and sustainability. The rise of social media has provoked a complex cultural and communications shift in the way people share information and participate in conversations, resulting in the empowerment of the individual to demand change as well as to expect responsibility and social consciousness from brands to strike the triple bottom line balance.

This new social economy is based on engagement, relationships and mutual trust where relevance to the individual is the main currency for meaningful communications. Thus, innovation has become crucial for companies to reach, educate and inspire this new consumer about sustainability.

However, educating and inspiring this connected generation to embrace sustainability has proven to be a major challenge for brands. To a large extent this challenge is due to the fact that companies have difficulty making use of the right avenues to communicate their efforts and why they are of such importance for each stakeholder.

To truly reach people in the social economy brands are now required to heavily rely on those new tools and channels that the community has embraced so quickly – social media.