How Has Social Media Disrupted Public Relations

For several years now, the mainstream news channels, including newspapers and TV broadcasts, are no longer the main industries for breaking news stories – especially if it means keeping up with any new developments to those stories in real-time.

All of this is due to the rapid development and increased popularity of social media and has led to traditional media outlets no longer having a monopoly on news and stories. This is especially important for public relations professionals, who used to rely on creating and maintaining relationships with media networks as a way to gain valuable newspaper and primetime TV space. This is no longer the case.

These days, with the power of social media platforms, the way that an audience keeps up with news stories, along with PR pros and the way that they are able to share those stories, has fundamentally changed. From Twitter and Instagram to Facebook, YouTube and even TikTok, the way that audiences keep up with the ever-changing world around them, and the pace at which stories can evolve, have greatly increased.

While PR pros used to solely focus on creating a narrative for a brand and delivering that narrative to a media outlet, now, they can simply be in charge of the brand’s social profiles and tell all of those stories there, directly to an audience. The public relations space has dramatically changed and it’s all thanks to the prevalence of social media in our daily lives.

Disruption in Relationships

Any PR professional now knows how easy it is to reach any journalist because all they need to do is reach out to them via social media. There’s no longer a need to go through previously published newspapers and look through what each journalist has talked about to see whether they would be willing to talk about a specific story.

Resources at the Touch of a Button

Aside from having an easier time connecting to the right people, it’s also much easier for PR pros to research a particular subject, or even a particular person, thanks to the internet and social media. There’s plenty of valuable insight that PR experts can get from the touch of a button. Simply plugging a keyword in any search bar is enough to see how many people are talking about a particular subject, or if a specific person falls into a target category.

Deadlines in the Blink of an Eye

Finally, another big change thanks to social media is that public relations professionals no longer need to wait until the next day for a story to go live. In fact, PR professionals need to stay on their toes to be able to keep up with the ever-changing news cycle. The narrative could change in a split second, from a single comment, and in turn, completely change the direction of a story, so a good PR expert has to be able to keep up with that pace.