I read a blog in Ragan’s PR Daily today that claims PR firms are hiring a new type of employee: the content provider. According to the blog PR firms are no longer seeking writers or video specialists or audio specialists or even photograpers. They are seeking people who are proficient at all four disciplines.
I couldn’t agree more! I am looking for people who fit that description. Fortunately the job is much easier these days. For one, the quality and complexity of the tools required to produce the content is much improved and much reduced respectively. Many of the outlets where you need to post make the process much easier. In the fast-passed content world, the technical quality of the content you require is far lower. Look at successful series like the In Plain Englishvideos. These are not quite with a Handycam standard but not quite Hollywood either.
In Plain English
The technical issues are therefore minimal. What is key however, is the communication skills that have to back these technical skills. Plain English, the Old Spice man and many others have one thing in common – a clear message. Understanding the message and translating it into the four mediums is the difficult part. I should know, I have been struggling with a simple video for over three weeks now.
The shift in skills illustrates two macro issues perfectly. The first is that easy-to- obtain skills are being outsourced. The web, China, India wherever the skills are. They are cheaper and faster than you anyway. The winning formula is to be the message originator, the content maestro, the innovator. Seth Godin alludes to this in his book Poke the Box. (read a short review on my LinkedIn profile reading list)
The other macro issue that that fields of expertise are converging. There is a (stupid) debate about the survivability of the PR industry in some quarters. What the change in required skill sets indicate is not so much that PR is dying but that it is evolving and merging with social media. PR has always been about communicating. Now it is about communicating with a far larger megaphone.
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