As a discipline PR dates back to the beginning of the 20th century and is strongly linked to the growth of print, TV, radio, online. With the media always evolving PR has had to change and adapt to the power of each channel, old and new. The biggest change for PR however was the emergence of social media, which has affected the entire media landscape by putting the power of influence in the hands of normal people and has been the main reason why PR is now hardly recognisable to what it was a decade ago.

The growing importance of social media provoked a new era where ordinary people have a ‘say’ on every possible matter, anytime, anywhere. Social media has altered our lives enormously by giving everyone the opportunity to be a publisher and a communicator.

This means, the age of ‘we talk, you listen’, top-down style of company communication is now gone as social media has been the reason for the democratisation of information helping to change the way consumers form opinions and make decisions as well as enabling various stakeholders to easily and quickly engage in a two-way communication process with companies.

For businesses on the other hand this represents a huge challenge of how to effectively handle the new forms of engagement. Companies now therefore place an increasing importance on PR as an organisational function, which has always been concerned with communicating and building relationships with various publics.

Establishing and maintaining a sound two-way communication and fostering good relationships is indeed the essence of social media too, because it facilitates a quick, instantaneous, real-time dialogue, in which everyone can participate by sharing ideas, opinions, beliefs, dissatisfaction, making it possible for companies to directly interact with potential customers. PRs are the people who have been educated and trained to do just that.

Having offered a bigger arsenal of communications channels as well as new tools and new techniques to meet client’s needs and requirements, social media has allowed the practice to better reach its publics and develop a genuine dialogue with them, evolving towards Grunig’s two-way symmetric communications model.

Indeed, there are a lot more opportunities now, but they present a number of challenges too. Because social media is always changing, it is difficult to keep up with all new social platforms, tools or requirements. What’s more, no one can control what is being said on social media; PR pros can only influence and direct conversations. Effective engagement through social media therefore requires the right skills and knowledge, which take time to be developed. With the fast-paced work life of PR pros, it is often difficult to find time for further knowledge acquisition.

The biggest challenge for the modern PR professional however lies in the fact that traditional media has not gone away, it is still here and it is still relevant. On top of that, PR practitioners have to adapt to social media and its complexity and variety, making it even more difficult not only to perform PR activities, but especially to measure and monitor outcomes.

Nevertheless, social media has helped drastically increase the need for PR services. For years, PR was considered just a support for marketing through media coverage and seen as ‘free advertising’ to encourage sales. However, the current shift from one-way towards two-way conversations and the increasing customer demands for constant interactions and 24-hour content has given PR a considerable advantage.

In the world of social media, where everyone is free to share his or her opinion and where everything spreads like a virus in a number of seconds, protecting organisational reputation is one of the biggest concerns for companies, because they have lost control over the image creation of their brand. As Brian Solis puts it:

“Businesses are no longer the sole creator of a brand; it is co-created by consumers through shared experience and defined by the results of online searches and conversations.”

Honesty and transparency are therefore key values in social media, which PR also preaches. In this regard, PR is not only about pitching and establishing relationships with stakeholders, but also plays a huge strategic role in reputation management.

As the need for constant interactions and the demand of the 24-hour media for content continue to grow, so will the importance of PR as a strategic management function. This shift towards storytelling and engagement caused by social media has been the rebirth of the PR practice.