2.0 puts the public back in public relations

Dierdre states that "as a result of PR 2.0, brands are able to have conversations directly with their customers in niche web communities." She continues to state "they are invited to participated in dialogue in places where they have never been invited to participate before." PR 2.0 puts the "public" back in public relations with the ability to speak to more people. The concept is driven by technology (the web 2.0 platform and social media applications) and 21st century consumer behavior.

Take a look at Dierdre's video that explains the importance of a video for corporate use.


Brian Solis, a globally recognized and prominent thought leaders and published authors in new media believes that PR 2.0 forces traditional media to evolve. I agree with him that it creates an entirely new set of influencers with a completely different mechanism for collecting and sharing information while also reforming the daily routines of how people searched for news. I believe that it is changing the landscapes for how companies interact with consumers, and how the voice of consumers is being heard much more clearly through their honest voices.

This is also changing the role of public relation practitioners. Before PR 2.0, public relation professionals would be the middle men between companies and customers, consumers, however now, they are directing companies to how best hear the voices of customers and consumers through either podcasts, blogs, tweets, or other online mechanisms for their voices to be heard. I believe that in order to thrive in the area of public relations, one must evolve with this new form of interaction. It is not a trend and is here to evolve and stay. Further more, it decreases the cost that company's have to spend on interacting with people, because this form of social media is free.

Web 2.0 Web 2.0 applications such as wikis, blogs and forums, have made it possible to support business-internal collaboration and knowledge management. This complements PR 2.0. Instead of 'losing' or 'hiding' public, customer or employee knowledge inside of people's heads, web 2.0 functionality in the form of wikis and blogs can provide an easy to use outlet for experience and expertise. This new way of working and sharing knowledge mirrors the Facebook approach to communicating.

Public Relations is migrating from a broadcast mechanism to a hybrid assembly of traditional PR combined with web-savy, social-awareness, intelligence and a real understanding of markets.

PR 2.0 is the understanding and practice that communications is a two way process and incorporates the tools, principles, strategies, and philosophies for reaching, engaging, guiding, influencing and helping people directly in addiction to the traditional cycle of PR influence.

PR 2.0 is a philosophy and practice to improve the quality of work, change the game, and participate with people in a more informed and intelligent way. It's not about the new web tools at all. They are merely tools used to facilitate conversations. However, everything, especially intent, knowledge and enthusiasm, are unique to you. With the democratization of media, people are becoming the new influencers, complementing the existence of experts and traditional journalists, but still regard as a score and resource for customers equally.

In a globe and mail article, article, Greg Elmer, a media expert and professor at Ryerson University says that "It's only in the past four or five months that the corporate and private sectors, including public-relations firms, have come to recognize platforms like Twitter as the place where the public's first impressions are born." He continues to state, "a PR firm, particularly one that's engaging in crisis communications and offers services for crisis situations like Bryant's, the number one thing you do in crisis communications is to get out front of the message and Twitter is the absolute front line of people's reactions." This is a direct example of how PR 2.0 has forces traditional media to evolve.

Social media is better seen as a two-way conversation, where as traditional media is about "broadcast" (content transmitted or distributed to an audience) social media is better seen as a two-way conversation. In a social media study conducted by Italian blogger, Vincenzo Consenza published a visual map that portrays the most popular social networks around the world based on the most recent traffic data (December 2009), stated that 94% of countries reported that micro-blogging (think twitter) were among the least pervasive within the exception of Japan, where it ranked fourth- just below social network profiles and above video.

Brian Solis states that, "PR 2.0 was born through the analysis of how the web and multimedia was redefining PR and marketing communications, while also building the toolkit to reinvent how companies communicate with influencers and directly with people." This is a corporations chance to communicate directly with the public through online forums, blogs, twitter, groups, communities, and facebook.
In summary, PR 2.0 is the realization that the web changed everything, inserting people equally into the process of traditional influence. Suddenly society was presented with the opportunity to not only reach our audiences through gatekeepers, but also use the online channels where they publish and share information to communicate directly and genuinely.

Take a look at my video illuminating the importance of PR 2.0 in the 21st century