CLIENT: Vocus
PROJECT: White Paper
FORMAT: 8.5 X 11 inches, 10 pages
AUDIENCE: Public relations firms and professionals

(Excerpt)

Beyond Media Lists

Executive Summary

The leap from traditional public relations to orchestrated and integrated communications programs has yet to be bridged. Much of the difficulty in crossing this chasm stems from the limitations of the tools and technologies currently employed in PR departments. This paper examines the limitations of those tools and investigates how some of the most successful communications teams are enhancing their results while improving the art of effective communications.

Beyond Media Lists

If contact and list management software still defines the technological limits of your public relations department, it may be time to leave the Stone Age of communications behind. Informatiopn management is, after all, the core of public relations: it is also what digital technology does supremely well. From word processing to optical text recognition to the Internet, major advances in digital communications have dramatically enhanced our ability to communicate, accumulate, and disseminate information, whether within an organization or around the world. Combine this with more than 400,000 journalists reporting for nearly 80,000 media outlets in the United States alone, and the scope of the challenge facing today's public relations professionals quickly becomes mind-boggling. Media mergers, staff turnover, globalization, and other evolutionary factors can magnify this complexity at seemingly geometric rates. It is in this chaotic, high-speed environment that a contemporary organization must endeavor to build, shape, and protect one of its most valuable assets — its image.

While communications technology has continued to advance rapidly, its adaptation to public relations management has moved much more slowly. Indeed, most practitioners still rely on combinations of applications, list management software, and electronic clipping services developed and supported by diverse vendors. And surprisingly, many public relations tasks are still executed manually, from producing clip books to distributing press releases. Meanwhile, budget constraints increasingly limit the ability of public relations workers to cope effectively with their growing challenge. More importantly, manually handling routine, time-intensive tasks limits the time available to address higher level needs, such as covrage analyses, strategic planning, response management, and insightful reporting.

The growth of global brands and remote PR teams has significantly increased the need for succinct, carefully coordinated communications. An organization's entire PR staff, regardless of location, must sing from the same sheet music to assure message consistency. The inevitability of staff turnover only adds to the challenge.

It is little wonder, then, that managing information content and flow within this communications tornado by using a few unlinked software programs is becoming an extraordinarily difficult task. Happily, some software developers, including Vocus, have recognized the public relations field's growing need for comprehensive, integrated solutions that enable professionals to be effective and productive.