I have been meaning to write this post for a while now. But as all landmarks it needed undivided attention.
A week as passed since I had the great pleasure of speaking at the Annual Conference of the Croatian Public Relations Association.
During my stay, I had the opportunity to share a few key notions on the Values Systems School of Thought. The first of which was the idea that technology evolved in such a way that it is easier to use and easier to adapt to our needs and whose spread is unstoppable.
On a different idea, it is important to understand that the Web does present Public Relations with a new set of challenges, most of which refer to the need for a precise monitoring and evaluation.
Monitoring per se can be seen in two lights. First, it is important to have tools and methods in place that allow for a Bird’s Eye View of what is being said online about:
- Our Organization
- Our sector
- One or more sensitive issues
But campaigns and other projects require a new level of detail. Real time monitoring is a possibility, and we can apply it by summing up the whole online discourse into its most relevant Values, measure sentiment and identify which instruments of communication are being used for that dialogue.
This should of course be coordinate with traditional web metrics, such as pageviews, Click Through Rates, Referral links and concrete actions being performed by Online Publics.
These are exciting times for Public Relations, and I am very thankful for having the opportunity to share these ideas in Zagreb.
