On Tuesday the CIPR (The Chartered Institute of Public Relations – the professional body for PR practitioners in the UK) released the findings of the annual ‘State of the Profession’ benchmarking survey, which examines issues around the public relations practice, budgets, skills and opinion on the future of the industry in the UK. Having gathered insights from over 1,200 CIPR members between November 2012 and January 2013, the overall results show that despite the challenging economic climate public relations practitioners have been putting successful efforts into adapting and innovating to prove the profession’s worth at the highest level.

PR practitioners have been developing new skills and undertaking responsibilities and roles, which have not been previously considered part of the public relations remit. The reason behind this lies in the efforts of PR practitioners to influence both communications and business strategy in the boardroom as the need for PR activities rises with the growing need for reputation management and effective engagement in the world of social media. This means that PRs are increasingly being involved in company strategy and planning, which is a very good sign for the future of the profession.

Some highlights:

• Moving away from the primary media relations focus and embracing new media to drive two-way conversations.
• Massive gap between salaries for men and women and gender imbalance in roles.
• Greater cooperation between departments (Marketing, HR, IT etc).
• Struggles to affect higher level business decisions (it the boardroom).
• Social media is the biggest challenge for PR practitioners, followed by crisis management, research, planning and measurement.

With the growth of digital media and the online space becoming a primary source of information there has been a serious shift towards digital communications, which have provided the PR practice with a number of opportunities. Today PR professionals have a new set of available tools to use not only to deliver messages, but also to properly engage with audiences.

Utilising social media for PR purposes has now become one of the major new tools to directly connect the business to the consumer. By making use of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter PR pros can engage and build relationships with publics. What’s more, the power of social media lies in two-way communications, which means that people are able to publish their own stories and to talk back to brands, allowing PRs to engage in a conversation. Such a dialog can be extremely beneficial, as it helps to find out what customers and other stakeholders think, believe, want and need, i.e. to perform ‘free’ research. Getting such feedback offers enormous opportunities to gather ideas and develop new products, services or stories.

With people now spending the majority of their time online on social media PROs can effectively reach target audiences at the times they are most active on the relevant platforms.

By engaging in two-way conversations and fostering relationships on social media on behalf of a client digital PR activities can help build or improve a brand’s reputation as well as identify brand ambassadors, but also promote products and services and thereby increase brand awareness. Direct, real-time conversations furthermore allow PR professionals to shape public opinion instead of just reacting when negative situations arise.

At the end of January music retailer HMV saw itself at the outburst of a serious social media crisis. Company employees were live tweeting their own mass redundancy from the brand’s official Twitter account @HMVtweets, using the #hmvXFactorFiring hashtag (which is still quite popular). The tweets went viral in a number of seconds and got thousands of retweets and mentions.

For about 30 minutes before it was stopped, the tweeting was telling the world what was happening behind closed doors – more than 60 employees were pulled into HR and got fired just like that.

Funnily enough, the tweeting also announced in public the apparent lack of understanding for social media by HMV’s Marketing Director who asked “How do I shut down Twitter?” (Just another example how traditional marketers still don’t take social media seriously…)

You already know about my love for great campaigns, and from the 2012 Google Analytics stats I can see that you love great campaigns too! So, here’s another really cool stunt, I’m sure you’ll be impressed with.

This time, it’s Sony who came up with a brilliant idea.

The action took place during the premier of the latest James Bond movie in Sweden. Sony decided to give people free sodas at the theatre entrance and then right before the movie began, actual drinks started ringing in the hands of the winners who discovered a brand new Sony waterproof Xperia acro S phone in their soda! What a creative giveaway! It sure managed to engage with the entire audience in the theatre and communicate the desired brand message, namely the launch of the new phone and its clear waterproof advantage over other mobile devices.

This campaign only shows that to be successful nowadays a campaign doesn’t necessarily have to focus on social media and new communications platforms, but can be just as effective offline if you find the right communication channel and timing, which in this example was the premier of such a popular movie at a cinema.

After publishing two of the interviews for my dissertation that I conducted with Heather Yaxley and Shelley Fletcher-Bryant, now it’s time for the next one.

Below you’ll see the responses of Annie Bowden. Annie is a PR & Communications Officer at the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts and is also a freelance PR Consultant. She has worked with a wide range of people from professional sports men and women to students, company directors to community projects. You can find her on LinkedIn.

Q: How do you think the emergence of social media changed PR? Is it a positive or a negative impact and why?

I think social media has forced PRs to sit up and take notice of the digital world and the impact of its activities within it. The PR industry now has to be even more reactive than ever before – before services like a bad news story for your company/client would hit the next day, giving you time to think about managing the situation and what you were going to do to combat it. Now, a story can be both live and viral within minutes, cutting down the time in which you are able to manage the crisis. This can, of course, be a good thing too and something that PRs can use to their advantage if they are savvy in their use of social media tools, particularly Twitter.