Since the Inbound PR book came out, there have been a number of agencies adopting the practice and creating new Inbound PR services to deliver better value to clients. 

I'm always eager to learn how PR agencies have transformed their businesses with Inbound PR and I know a lot of you're are interested in it too so I'm starting an interview series with agencies owners and CEOs who've made the jump to Inbound PR. 

First up is my now dear friend Maria Gergova-Bengtsson from United Partners - one of the first and most successful PR agencies in Bulgaria. 

Let's see what Maria has to say about how they've transformed their PR agency with Inbound PR and the results they've achieved so far.  

#1 When you first heard of Inbound PR, what did you think?

This is a guest post by Mike Sergeant from Sergeant Leaders.

When I crossed over to PR after 18 years in broadcasting, I assumed that I would have to spend a lot of time ‘selling in’ stories to journalists. I absolutely dreaded it, and I was pretty rubbish at it.

The truth is that, when you’ve spent almost two decades slamming the phone down on PR people, the last thing you want to do is become one of those annoying flacks.

Having been on the receiving end of PR spam and cold calling, making a career out of persuading reluctant journalists to grant you a couple of column inches seems demeaning and depressing.

Plus, as a seasoned media professional, you only have a certain amount of capital (credibility), which can easily be wasted if you try to flog your best newsroom contacts underwhelming stories.

So, like many ex-journalists, I did everything I could to avoid writing press releases and calling flustered correspondents and editors. And a good thing too.

In truth, most career PRs have better contact books anyway. I knew a few people at the BBC; not that many newspaper journos.

But then I discovered I had something far more valuable than a media approach list (which anyone can pay for these days).

AI or Artificial Intelligence has definitely become one of the most popular buzzwords in marketing and PR over the last few years. 

Most marketing and PR pros haven't yet figured out the implications of AI in their jobs and there seems to be this misunderstanding that AI will replace the human. 

In fact, according to a recent report automation threatens a quarter of marketing and PR jobs.  

I don't believe this to be true. AI to me is an enabler, just as technology is. You still need a human's brain to discover and analyse problems, identify solutions and connect the dots between the human and the AI work through the best choice of tools. 

AI might diminish the need for certain tasks to be performed by a human but then this frees the human to work on the more important and strategic stuff and should be seen as an opportunity, as a challenge to develop new and better skills. 

These are exciting times for marketing and PR pros and agencies.

I've been reading a lot about AI recently and I want to share with you a compilation of blog posts and videos that apply to marketing and PR agencies. 

This is a guest post by Simon Cliffe from Branch Road.

Recently my wife tasked me with booking the family summer holiday. I have a 40-minute train journey into work, so a perfect window for doing research.

Typing ‘family summer holiday’ into Google, I was bombarded by zillions of search results recommending holidays from Costa Brava, to Malta, Crete, Mexico and so many more.

After five minutes of flicking through the various web pages, I felt overwhelmed and confused. Then for the rest of the day, I was followed around by an online advert trying to convince me to book a cruise.  

Sound familiar? 

For consumers, the colossal amount of content, PR and marketing messages out there can be quite a turn off. We’re busy people and we don’t have time to sift through it all. For brands, cutting through the data deluge and attracting our attention in a meaningful way, has become a real challenge. So, how do you do it?

The power of video storytelling

75% of journalists say less than 25% of the pitches they get are relevant. 

To me, this is one of the key stats from Cision's 10th annual State of the Media Report that was just published. 

They surveyed ca. 2,000 journalists from around the world to discover trends around the industry. 

With the massive spread of fake news and the decreasing trust in the media where half of the population doesn't trust the media, journalism in 2019 seems to be facing quite a few challenges. 

For the industry, building trust is becoming its business model where for 51% of publications ensuring accuracy has become more important than revenue (34%).

This is important for PR pros as well because it means that stories and pitches will be heavily vetted. 

The research identified 5 key trends for journalism in 2019 that a PR pro must be aware of and many of them align with and speak of the need for the Inbound PR approach. 

5 Key Trends for Journalism in 2019