As this semester comes to a close, I can’t help but reflect on how much I’ve already learned about journalism, advertising, public relations, and marketing, and I’m extremely eager to dive in even deeper into my concentration of public relations. There are so many new and emerging trends in public relations that I thought I would share a couple of my findings.
Although PR is a field that relies heavily on human connections, there is going to be a huge shift towards digital based practices. AI will become more mainstream and will be used to collect and interpret data, allowing PR professionals to focus more of their time and attention to personal tasks. Media fragmentation will continue to grow as new social media outlets will emerge, allowing users to access information from a number of sources. This will have an affect on ways in which PR professionals communicate with the masses. Communication will become more innovative, allowing PR professionals to communicate with a brand’s target audience like never before, and put together more futuristic-looking press releases. Gone will be the days of the simple information read on paper press releases as the field steps in the direction of producing press releases with visuals, video content, music, graphics, and even animation. Press releases won’t be the only things becoming more innovative. Campaigns, events, invitations, media kits, websites, meetings and so much more will rely heavily on these creative fields too, and clients/consumers will probably also see a huge shift towards PR firms using things like virtual reality specifically to plan and execute projects.
The daily tasks of PR professionals is always shifting to keep up with demands. PR professionals now have to be somewhat of a “jack of all trades” and know a bit about everything related to advertising, crisis management, campaigning, corporate communication, politics/law, event planning, business development, marketing, thought leadership and content creation among so many other things. Some of these qualities such as thought leadership, was once thought to be a skill only C-level officials had to have, but PR is becoming more and more of another specialized leadership position in itself. These positions are becoming harder to get and just like almost all other career paths out there, learning and improving at your skills never stops in this field, and I think the more that you can do, the better you will function and contribute in a PR job.
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