Four new roles for PR pros

To kick off her remarks to an audience of PR and communications pros at Ragan Communications’ PR and Social Media Summit in Chicago, Arment Dietrich CEO Gini Dietrich had a question:

“When your parents ask you what you do for a living, what do you say?”

She got a ton of answers back, including getting into the newspaper, building relationships, creating content, reputation management, crisis communications, and even travel.

That alone proved her point that PR pros wear a lot more hats now than they did just a few years ago, when their job was to work with journalists who often stayed at the same media outlets for years.

What PR professionals are not, Dietrich said, is what so many people like to call them: “spin doctors.” That’s why she dropped the abbreviation “PR” out of her company description and “the conversation completely changed.”

“Technology has completely changed the way we do our jobs,” she said. “We have to learn new skills.”

Dietrich expounded on four of those skills:

1. Hyper-targeted media and blogger relations

“Bloggers and PR professionals do not get along,” Dietrich said.

And why not? Blame it on mass emails. Those are simply spam, she said.