Jammu: Jammu Chapter of the Public Relations Society of India (PRSI) organized a maiden webinar on ‘Emerging Trends in Public Relations as a Profession in Digital Era’, wherein Prof K.G Suresh, Vice Chancellor, Makhan Lal Chaturvedi University, Bhopal was the keynote speaker.
The event was organized under the supervision of Dr Ajit Pathak, National President PRSI, Prof Anil Saumitra, Chairperson, PRSI Jammu, Neha Jalali, Vice Chairperson, PRSI Jammu, and Dr Archana Kumari, Secretary PRSI Jammu.
Speaking on the occasion, Prof K.G Suresh said that in the digital era when information is spreading fast and indiscriminately, the concept of Public Relations becomes more imperative because besides helping companies to gain positive publicity, it allows space for disinformation and propaganda also.
“In common parlance, Public Relations is Reputation Management, so PR professional has to be very vigilant with regard to any discussion about the organization, especially on social networking sites like Twitter,” Prof Suresh said, adding “The job of the PR professional is to constantly check the social media handles of the organization especially Twitter to remain updated and nip the crisis in bud by being vigilant.”
Prof K.G Suresh maintained that in the recent past, especially during post-Covid period, it has been seen that many organizations have resorted to retrenchment of staff, thus causing work overload on the regular staff.
“In such a situation it becomes challenging for the PR Professional to reach out to people with original content. To catch hold of experts, influencers, bloggers, Youtubers, etc in a specialized field in a particular region with dedicated content besides giving catchy headlines and customized content as per the requirement of the organization is perhaps the need of the hour,” the Keynote speaker asserted, and said that the Public Relation professionals have also invoked the concept of face-to-face interviews and storytelling; as they believed that text has little impact.
“Power of visual media has a lot of consumers. Diversified outreach has increased the dependency of journalists on content. Reporters are asking for specific stories, and content, and international organizations like Muckrack, help a reporter, Haro, etc are a pioneer in this. India still needs to catch up with this trend of outsourcing content which is immersive in nature,” he added.
He further suggested connecting through podcasts in order to outreach for subjects related to the industry. “We are not dependent on earned media; we are now harnessing self-reliant social media handles. Now the focus has shifted from owned media to earned media,” he said and added that the focus has shifted from brand-led promotion to customer or community-led promotions.
“Not just press conferences, the need for online events is an in thing now. Reaching out to authors, content creators, etc. by meetings through zoom. Inspiration must be taken from human stories like that of Zomato at the time of Covid to pitch and build the brand,” Prof Suresh said and added that in the era of misinformation, info-demic, and disinformation, people are looking out for authentic content.
