I often get asked two questions: 

• How did you manage to build your own brand? 
• What makes companies stand out in a blue ocean? 

To both of these questions, the answer in its simplest form is value. 

I began blogging in 2012 while I was still a student with a couple of important goals in mind: learn how to write better as I wanted to pursue a career in PR but was studying International Business, and share all the knowledge I was gathering with the world so that I can help others and by doing so, build an audience. 

Over time, I developed a pretty good readership, expanded my social networks, made tremendous connections and eventually became recognised as the person who invented Inbound PR that led to a book and a ton of speaking engagements. 

I did this by recognising the unique value I could provide to the market that was somehow not there - contributing my inbound marketing knowledge to the public relations practice. 

As for companies, I spent years in consulting

Successful PR is no longer about writing press releases and pitching them to a bunch of journalists and counting coverage as the measure of success. 

Successful PR in the 21st century is about using the entire PESO (Paid, Earned, Owned & Shared media) model with an inbound approach that is strategically planned with the numbers in mind, allowing you to use analytics and real data to measure success. 

Why the need for change? Because the world has gone digital. 

We are addicted to our phones where we can get information 24/7 at our own pace depending on our own needs.

We don't need anyone else to inform us or educate us.

I don't read the news. The news finds me on my Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn feeds. 

As a consumer and as a professional, I find the content that I want or need to consume completely on my own without the need for someone to give it to me.

Almost every day at work, I find myself in a situation where I need to persuade someone to do something and most of the times, this someone wouldn't even report to me. 

As you can imagine, this is extremely difficult to do because others have their own jobs and priorities and trying to impose yours on them isn't as simple. 

I've found that to make someone to agree to a proposal (a pitch for an executive yes or a request to someone to do pieces of work) you need to rely on one particular weapon - influence. 

Becoming influential, though, is a lengthy process that in my opinion revolves around building relationships with people and growing your own reputation. 

But sometimes, even if you are the most influential person in the company, you'll inevitably get pushback. 

Ideally, you should be prepared for such an outcome in advance. A helpful strategy I've used in such tricky situations is analysing and planning with Cialdini's six principles of persuasion. 

76% of communications professionals agree that ‘digital communications is the future of communications.'

How many of them actually live by this now is not a lot as you'll see below. 

I recently came across a research report on communicating in an integrated world and want to show you some of the most interesting findings from my point of view. 

Before I get into some of the stats, I want to make a quick comment. Digital and social media as well as proving their ROI continue to remain this widely challenging area for communications professionals which is beyond me. It's been over a decade since this movement started and you'd think that 10+ years should be enough to change mindsets and work procedures. 

Change management is not easy, I know. But not adapting quickly puts your company at too big of a risk. Sticking with the status quo might allow you to continue growing at the same rate but I'd urge you to think about your cost of inaction and see how that growth rate would be affected if you didn't change quickly enough. 

Let's look into the data now.