Sorry, but couldn’t resist a new headline take on my previous post on What Real Journalists Really Want from Public Relations, but “this just in” …
The 2009 Digital Readiness Report: Essential Online Public Relations and Marketing Skills, produced by social media newsroom-provider iPressroom, in collaboration with Trendstream, Korn/Ferry International and PRSA. (You can register and download it from the iPressroom site by clicking on the title, above, or directly from this site by clicking on the image, at left.)
The press release has been out since Aug. 10, while I just found out about it through MarketingVox, thanks to a Tweet today from @kathycabrera. The survey was conducted over a 6-week period this past Spring, through online questionnaires completed by a total of 278 public relations, marketing and HR professionals recruited by the sponsors.
Not a bad sample survey, though it’s not immediately clear if all survey respondents completed all of the questions — nor even how many questions there were — so one is not entirely certain if the percentages cited indicated percentages of the total survey population, or the respondents for each question. Not a minor consideration in gauging survey reliability.
That said, assuming the survey population is significantly representative, the results are interesting. According to a press release — not, pointedly, a “social media news release” — put out by the survey sponsors, among the key findings are:
• When searching for prospective new hires, social media communications skills are nearly as important as traditional media relations skills.
• Public relations leads marketing in the management and oversight of all social media communications channels within organizations.
• Marketing leads public relations in the management and oversight of bulk email communications and search engine optimization.
• Social networking, blogging and micro-blogging skills are the three most important social media communications skills for job candidates to have, according to public relations and marketing hiring decision makers; and,
• Most organizations are considering hiring social media specialists.
Of course, it’s in the interest of principal survey sponsor iPressroom to highlight these findings and I’d be much more comfortable with the published results if we knew actual numbers of respondents per each question asked.
Still, my “gut reaction” is that it all makes sense — PR old-timers already have the traditional media relations and account management skills; what many agencies are lacking is social media-savvy younger account execs to foster and bring up through the ranks as the media landscape continues to change.
Certainly worth a read-through and sharing!
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