Change now or forever hold your peace: PR in the crosshairs

A recent article by PR Daily highlighted the need for well-produced content that is of value for readers and listeners:

"What could kill public relations is not the content marketing itself, but increasing pressure from brands to pitch mediocre or bad content. Reporters, influencers, bloggers, and media channels are already swamped with a rising tide of bad content. Add aggressive pitching from PR professionals, and this will only make the situation worse while accelerating the degradation of the relationships between brands and their media sources."

PR vs content marketing
A decade ago companies could get away with overtly punting their marketing messages in editorial content. This has however changed rapidly to having to link content to relevant current affairs, and over the last year to having to produce the type of content that PR traditionalists weren't geared for.

Content marketing isn't just a fad that suddenly sprang to life one day. It is rather a response to consumer behaviour and purchasing influences that have changes significantly and organically over the past few years. The Content Marketing Institute and Huffington Post have done a great job of explaining what exactly content marketing is ... and isn't.

A South African perspective
Over the past five months we've approached a number of highly respected and seasoned media professionals across print, broadcast and online platforms. Except for a few key differences in their preferred formats of receiving content, they all said the number one rule of getting your story published is to NOT sell your product, service, company or CEO. Never. Ever. Not even a little bit.
(Thanks  @DMJoubert, @peterndoro, and @riaanw for your time and insights.)

Gone are the days of sending marketing message heavy press releases via email, phoning a few of the special numbers from the proverbial little black book, and generating masses of publicity measured by old fashioned AVE standards.

The PR industry must now create great content that can be used across a multitude of platforms and that adds value from a recipient point of view, not from a company/client point of view.