This is a guest post by Dina Mostovaya.

The role of PR professionals has evolved significantly. Numerous global studies show that nowadays, a head of communications plays the part of a company’s business partner, becoming critical in the process of achieving the firm’s business goals.

Gone are the days when PR solely provided support; now, it is recognized that communication must have a strategic focus. The definition of public relations has expanded and now includes activities such as managing social networks, developing blogs, implementing email marketing campaigns, participating in events, and more. In essence, the goal is to use a wide range of channels to effectively convey the brand's key messages, mission, ideas, and values, all of which ultimately convert into tangible business metrics and leads.

In that context, Iliyana Stareva’s "Inbound PR" is an excellent guide on how to create content that helps generate inbound inquiries and provides data with which to measure the impact of strategic communications. I first read this book a few years ago, and still consider it one of the most useful.

I've been fascinated by ChatGPT pretty much since the beginning and even more so now. It's amazing for content creation but also for idea generation.

From time to time I ask ChatGPT various questions to gather new ideas and today I decided to ask ChatGPT to summarise Inbound PR. The answer was so good I decided to publish it here. 

Inbound PR: A Modern Approach to Public Relations (by ChatGPT)

Inbound PR is a contemporary approach to public relations that has gained prominence in the digital age. It marks a significant shift from the traditional, one-way communication model that characterized the field for many years. In this comprehensive exploration of Inbound PR, we will discuss its key principles, strategies, and the individuals and organizations who have played pivotal roles in its development.

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of joining John from Big Ideas Machine for their podcast called Heroes of B2B PR. 

It's been a while since I've done a podcast or a presentation on Inbound PR mainly because my career has somewhat moved into a different direction. 

We discuss that during the podcast - my focus now lies on Project and Program Management and Customer Success. 

This doesn't mean, though, that I am no longer interested in what's going on in PR. I still follow the industry and what's happening in it. We chat about this in the podcast too where I also frankly mention that even though the Inbound PR book came out over two years ago, PR professionals and PR agencies are still struggling to adapt to its principles or generally to the digital world. 

The What, How and Why of Inbound PR [Podcast]

One of the reasons why I wrote the Inbound PR book was to help PR professionals open their eyes to the need for modern measurement and tangible proof of PR results. Inbound Marketing is terrific at showing the monetary value of marketing efforts so there's a lot that PR could learn. 

Measurement has always been a problem in PR. For years, PR pros have used fluffy metrics (and some continue doing so). Those metrics are not what C-level people care about, they're not what will get you budget. 

There's also been a lot of effort put in from the PR industry itself to solve this problem. 

One such example are the Barcelona Principles. They were first introduced by AMEC in 2010 and recently got their third refresh. 

Let's take a look at them: 

Barcelona Principles 3.0 [Infographic]

Republished book review by Matt Bergman from Amazon. (Thanks, Matt!)

Iliyana Stareva has written what I’d call, with a considerable degree of confidence, the most important, actionable and forward-looking PR book of the past ten years. That’s true, I believe, for the following reasons, which I’ll circle back to and discuss in a bit more detail:

1. The author sets a detailed course for the future of PR that aligns with the thinking and capabilities of the relatively few genuinely progressive agencies, as well as with the needs of forward-looking clients.
2. The book beautifully, seamlessly and comprehensively integrates the inbound approach – which is unquestionably going to be the overarching structure that informs the future of marketing (AI and automation technology, by the way, are much more conducive to an inbound approach than to an outbound one).
3. Ms. Stareva addresses head on what has frankly been the negligence of the PR industry in exhibiting little in the way of creative or scientific thinking in terms of measuring value.