Did you know that 350 million photos are being shared on Facebook each day? On Instagram that number is 55 million photos. That’s more than 400 million images on just two sites every single day! Welcome to the world of the visual web. It is not a fad. It is here to stay.

Just look at the rapid growth of social networks such as Pinterest, Instagram and Tumblr – people are on them and they are really active!

Visuals and photos are being facebooked, instagrammed, pinned, tweeted, tumbled and flickered every second of every day.

The rise of the visual web for business is undeniable too. The major social media players have completely redesigned their platforms to make them purposefully more visual – consider Facebook (including the new ad formats), Google+, and even Twitter.

Why did they do that? Because people love visuals.

They are easy on the eyes and the mind to comprehend, understand the information and then share this data with a simple click without having to add any further explanations.

For businesses this means that they now need to adapt their communications and leverage the power of the visual in order to reach and engage their audiences.

Not convinced?

Research, research, and research again... That's what today's blog post is about again. For some reason so many relevant and interesting studies have published their findings all at once and I just can't withhold that information from you. And so today I am going to share with you my impressions from the latest 2013/2014 State of the PR Profession Annual Benchmarking Survey by the Chartered Institute for Public Relations (CIPR).

The survey was conducted among 2,500 public relations professionals from the UK, focusing on issues and trends around current practice, standards, budgets, skills and career development.

For the first time, non-members of the CIPR also took part in the survey, broadening the scope and the representativeness of the research.

Overall, the study this year revealed that Public Relations is at a crossroads. Nevertheless, Stephen Waddington, President of the CIPR, believes that "what we see is a terrific opportunity for anybody that is willing to embrace change."

I welcome change. And I believe that there are some fundamental things in the PR business (well, frankly in any business) that should change - one is the issue of gender inequality, another is diversity, and third is qualifications.

18 February was my one-year anniversary at my current agency Brandzeichen. This was an important milestone for me to look back and think about what I've done, learned, experienced and achieved during that year at one of the fastest growing brand communications agencies in Germany. It's also a great cornerstone to relate those experiences to my passion for PR and social media and to why exactly I am pursuing a career in the industry.

As I've said before, it seems that quite a few of my readers find my blog by googling "why work in PR".

What is it really to work in PR?

I tell you, it is difficult to explain... It's challenging, it's exciting, it's fast moving, it's dynamic, it's always changing - yes, yes, I've already explained that in my previous "why do I want to work in PR" editions here and here.

The reasons I've listed in those two posts are still relevant today, but because I do not want to repeat myself and because I want to reflect this post more to what I've learned over the past year, here are the '2014' reasons why I want to work in PR and in social media in particular (my current job role is a Social Media Account Manager after all):

7 Reasons Why I Want to Work in PR: 

With the massive embracement of social and web applications, the arsenal of tools and techniques PR professionals are required to use in their work is constantly growing. However, the overall purpose of these activities remains the same: In my latest article for Behind the Spin I note that PR is about influencing audiences and adding value. Influencing audiences has a lot to do with persuasion.

Important to note here is that persuasion is very different from manipulation. Persuasion, unlike manipulation, is not spin. Many think of PR as spin, but that's just not what PR aims to achieve. Communicators' purpose it to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between clients and their publics by building and defending reputations. That includes among other things engaging with audiences, talking to and most importantly with various publics, making use of a wide range of tools to communicate a message in the most suitable way - text, audio, images, video.

PR people aim to convey a message, a message that gets heard and understood, that moves people to undertake a specific action after receiving that message. This makes everything we do about persuasion - writing is about persuasion, storytelling is about persuasion, social media sharing is about persuasion.

Persuasion is indeed an art, but it can also become a skill, an ability that is very important for PR professionals. To develop that know-how

Over the past few weeks I’ve seen quite a few reviews of 2013 and pieces making predictions and sharing tips for 2014. For once I've decided to follow the crowd and share my point of view and my 2014 advice regarding the PR profession. How is this post different from the others? Well, the list of 9 traits of the future PR pro is based on my personal observations and experiences, but was also inspired by some interesting research findings (you know me, I love research!) and by the pieces of two PR professionals I highly respect.

Getting straight to the point, according to a new research by the European Communication Professional Skills and Innovation Programme (ECOPSI) the PR profession has a long way to go until it matures.

The ECOPSI is a European funded project that maps and evaluates the current and future competences of communications practitioners across Europe. The overall finding when it comes to the skills and competences of communications professionals is that PR is indeed a maturing discipline, but there are on-going gaps and deficiencies in the professional advancement of individuals. Formal qualification and life-long learning are the key aspects here – basically the need for further knowledge acquisition and skills development.