In the short time I’ve been writing here at the BH, I’ve occasionally used my bi-weekly column to gripe about PR and the new age of the web we’re calling Web 2.0. In our haste to try to reinvent the press release, convince our clients to podcast their AGM or industry conference, and culling lists of “influential” bloggers in order to hawk the latest goods and services for our clients, we might be forgetting what public relations is truly all about: the client.
If it seems obvious, it bears repeating: our jobs as PR professionals is to satisfy the client. By this I certainly don’t mean that when the client wants a news release we say “What kind of distribution would you like on that?”, as often the wrong tools are employed in certain situations because PR professionals are unwilling to speak up against such practices. If one of our responsibilities is to make sure the client is getting value for our work, then it’s certainly worth talking to them about using the right tools for the job. But, I digress… [Read more…]