76% of communications professionals agree that ‘digital communications is the future of communications.'

How many of them actually live by this now is not a lot as you'll see below. 

I recently came across a research report on communicating in an integrated world and want to show you some of the most interesting findings from my point of view. 

Before I get into some of the stats, I want to make a quick comment. Digital and social media as well as proving their ROI continue to remain this widely challenging area for communications professionals which is beyond me. It's been over a decade since this movement started and you'd think that 10+ years should be enough to change mindsets and work procedures. 

Change management is not easy, I know. But not adapting quickly puts your company at too big of a risk. Sticking with the status quo might allow you to continue growing at the same rate but I'd urge you to think about your cost of inaction and see how that growth rate would be affected if you didn't change quickly enough. 

Let's look into the data now. 

As professionals from any discipline, we have a tendency to jump into action too quickly.

We spend little time defining goals and then doing research to identify the right tactics that will enable us to hit those goals.

I think this is particularly relevant in PR and on the PR Resolution podcast with Stella Bayles, we discuss exactly that.

Stella and I had a long conversation around inbound and PR, goals and measurement, content creation and planning. 

I want to share with you the beginning of our discussion points and give you the opportunity to listen to the whole podcast below. 

Let's start with a definition of inbound as some of our listeners are completely new to this. Could you give us a summary of what inbound really means? 

Clap if you agree: PR's biggest challenge throughout its entire existence has been measurement. 

I wish I could hear you. 

But I'm sure that pretty much everyone who works in the PR industry would agree. 

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of participating in Paul Sutton's podcast where we spoke about Inbound PR and how it presents "a methodology for public relations that moves the conversation firmly away from being one about reputation management to being one about the bottom line."

What prompted this post was Paul's latest episode with Kate Hartley where they summarised the entire season of the podcast show. A lovely conversation about humanity and vulnerability, about our core as people and what drives us that you should listen to as well. 

Inbound PR popped up as part of the discussion too around minute 17:30

It's time for another "Why Work in PR?" interview and I'm delighted to introduce you today to Rafal Salak who will share with us his exciting PR career story in software and offer key advice for students and young professionals who want to learn more about the industry and how to get into it, especially if wanting to work in tech. 

I'm a big fan of Prowly where Rafal works. We've never met but we've been in touch through email or Twitter many times for various projects, initiatives or simply to share ideas.

Before you move onto the interview, don't forget to follow Rafal on Twitter. 

(If you've missed any of the previous interviews, you can take a look as well: Richard Bailey, Pippa Hanson, Jessica Hodkinson, Chryssa Skodra, Farzana Baduel, Scott Guthrie, Sarah Hall, Angharad Welsh, Alex May and Maria Gergova-Bengtsson.) 

Why Work in Public Relations: Interview with Rafal Salak

We live in an inbound world where outbound no longer works. The traditional methods we’ve been so used to when doing PR are outdated simply because they are outbound.

There are two ingredients that you need if you want to make Inbound PR work: a different mindset (a methodology) and a tool stack (technology).

Let’s start with methodology.

When I began working on the Inbound PR concept, I felt that it would be helpful to have a visual that could easily explain some of the thought processes underlying the entire notion and the tactics that would make it work.

So I took the inbound marketing methodology and flipped it into its PR version, focusing on the media as the key persona. Let me throw a quick disclaimer here: Inbound PR can work for any stakeholder group: customers, media, employees, etc.

The Inbound PR Methodology