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There’s always lots of talk within PR and comms about what we should call ourselves.
Is PR an outdated term? Does it really reflect what we do? Does anyone really understand it?
What about ‘communications’, is that better?
And then you have all the words around social media, is it ‘social media’, ‘digital marketing’, ‘publishing’ or just ‘marketing’?
Here’s a new term to get your head round that I think might catch on and actually help us talk about these things.
‘Content Professional’.
And I’d use this to describe people who don’t get involved in the high level strategic direction of the business, but who can move between blogging, shooting video, updating social media profiles, writing press releases and so on.
I think this is the kind of job function lots of businesses should be looking at recruiting right now.
And it’s a good phrase.
‘Content’ is platform neutral. So wherever the job goes, whatever existing or future channels, whether it’s a corporate website or Snapchat or something that doesn’t exist yet. ‘Content’ also covers organic material AND boosted posts and paid advertising. And the use of ‘professional’; this isn’t someone that knows their way around Facebook and nothing else. It’s someone who understands audiences, understands the key messages and their own responsibilities and ethics; they might have a PR or journalism qualification,they behave professionally and are held to standards of accuracy and so on.
If we use ‘Content Professional’ for those people doing that work, it allows the phrase ‘Public Relations’ to move up into a strategic management function. I’ve always believed that PR should sit beside HR – lots of people working in PR right now never do PR – they do social media, or marketing and a bit more…likewise, lots of people ‘doing’ social media actually do more than that and perform a bigger ‘PR related’ role.
So I think there’s space for a ‘Content Professional’ and it helps today’s school pupils see this as a viable job, a viable and valued career that they can start preparing for.