Month

February 2010

I’m Flexible!

Two articles caught my eye in the January/February issue of IABC’s Communication WorldAbove The Fold and Make Your Own News both resonated with me and the transition my business has underwent in the past three years. It’s been a natural transition – thankfully – and one in which I’ve been excited about. Let me tell you why.

Above The Fold tells the story of the sad decline of print media. This is particiularly troubling to me because I majored in print journalism and truly enjoy reading a printed newspaper daily at my kitchen table. I started reading it each morning with my breakfast in high school and it’s been a daily ritual since. Of course, it also impacts my PR business leaving fewer reporters and publications to pitch stories.

Make Your Own News is how companies – many just like my clients’ businesses – are responding to this decline. And this is the exciting part. I’m busier than ever writing for blogs, shooting photos and video to post online and keeping up with clients’ Facebook pages and Twitter accounts.

I’m stealing a line from the article, but it’s a good one and it’s what I’m telling my clients about the transition: “used in the online environment, storytelling can reflect passion, uniqueness and immediacy.”

It’s this “storytelling” – or otherwise known as news or public relations – that can create a personality for the company. It offers an opportunity for us PR people to put some creativity into our writing, use imagery and demonstrate an identity for a brand that the old-style of PR and press releases simply didn’t allow for.

Again, I still can not accept that I won’t be reading a newspaper at the kitchen table. (My laptop doesn’t fit as comfortably on top of my cereal bowl.) But, with this transition, I’m thrilled to be writing stories that connect us with the past/present and help define what is authentic about someone… even if it is just for a computer screen.