Online PR or PR 2.0 – The new way towards perfect relations with your consumers

Should we call it WEB 2.0, or should it be called PR 2.0 or is it DM 2.0?

First let’s look at the basics…

Web 2.0 of course as we have discussed earlier as well, is a collection of online tools which enable two way interactions with online users/audiences. It ensures there is interactivity and engagement with the online users.PR as we know has been a traditional tool which has been used from time immemorial to circulate any kind of information. Its one way communication reaching to masses!

PR 2.0 is a new buzz word we have now – in simple terms its PR activity using web 2.0 tools, however beyond this simple explanation lies a big game changer! This is no longer one sided communication, the moment we say 2.0 technology, we throwing open our gates for a 2 way communication. It not only ensures information dissemination, it also allows and encourage engagement. This has never been done in past by traditional marketers! Its no longer about general audiences, its about ‘people’ and ‘people relations’ – web 1.0 was all about content, and web 2.0 is all about conversations/interactions.

So we all now understand how marriage between Web 2.0 and PR 2.0 happens. However, PR 2.0 will not be able to sustain itself in its current avatar for long considering the fact we are in a world of ‘less control’ and ‘more interaction/engagement/listening’. PR firms will need to keep on evolving newer ways to keep this audience engaged and read the message they want to communicate. So, in short, we have tools available, now we need ways and means for engagement and richer content to keep our audiences interest intact. Also, the interactivity and engagement needs to be powerful enough to have ‘viralability’ in it to spread in the online world on its own! That would be the real PR 2.0 world! Remember P in PR stands for public and this would be a great paradigm shift when we will truly be not just reaching out to public but also be interacting with them through our brand/servicesome say that PR 2.0 is just an extension of adding few more online properties to the traditional PR model that was existent. To counter this argument, let me say conversation is now interactive and more transparent – there’s nowhere to hide and everyone is able to comment on it and secondly the dynamism of the medium ensures we have to move at the speed of blogs and that means crystallizing and executing a strategy with oftentimes only a few hours notice! This all calls in for something of a social democratization –A PR effort which spreads virally is good PR!!!

Now let’s address the basic question –is the good old press release dead or dying? Well, PR in fact is a press release born again in a new avatar. It is adapting itself to

new technology and tools. However, the question is it dying in its original form, and then answer is YES. Soon, with the penetration and shelf life of a press release decreasing so much, with our attention span getting shorter, it would not make any sense to have a traditional press release to be circulated which looks like a big legal document

And the good news is we bring in measurability to the PR exercise by calculating the impact of a social PR activity. The Holy Grail for marketers is to seamlessly own a conversation and attach your product or brand to it and measure the conversation to the end of it with some of the tools available in market or creating your own tool for the purpose. It is going to be interesting journey watching this space grow and standardize itself

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