PR Skillsets of the Future

Digital PR is still considered by many in the industry to be a novelty and by some, even a fad but most smart people realise that what’s peripheral for the majority of clients/organisations and specialised today will become mainstream and core in the relatively near future.

My agency has digital champions within a Practice but one of the primary objectives for the digital team is to upskill and help educate every single consultant within the organisation.

To that end, I wonder what skills PRs should acquire to get ahead. Having an understanding of the implications and impact of digital and social media is the first step but what technical skills will the PR of the Future require?

There are a couple of reasons why agencies will want to have these skills available in-house:

1. Revenue and Relationships: Retain as much of the budget and contact as possible rather than involve third party Web developers and designers.

2. Advertising agencies: The fact that advertising agencies have the creative and delivery skills in house is, for me, their strongest argument when it comes to the issue of PR versus Ad Agency for digital communications strategy/execution.

3. Ability to execute = credibility. Related to the point above, I guess. A search optimised press release doesn’t require technical know-how but simple projects like a Facebook Page or Social Media Release do.

We are likely to see a rash of PR agencies acquiring or teaming up with firms that can provide the creative and technical execution.

I feel that there is a big opportunity for forward looking PRs here but where should they invest their time? HTML would be essential as a base, I guess, along with Flash. CSS and SQL would also figure. What do you think? What would you advise?

This post by Stephen Ward for Read Write Web provides an overview of the ten most marketable Web development skills.

I am in the process of teaching myself Photoshop – using a combination of a Dummies Guide book and a lot of trial and error. It’s going well and I am quite pleased with the creation below, which is an interpretation of an original water colour that caught my eye in Melbourne last week.

What skills will the PR of the Future require?