THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS: WATCH OUT FOR THE NEXT GENERATION OF PR LEADERS

The competition for public relations positions, both in-house and in consultancies, is becoming ever fiercer. More and more young people are enrolling on public relations and communications courses, no doubt attracted by the prospect of what they think will be an exciting and high profile career. What's more, as increasing numbers of our Baby Boomers retire over the next decade, PR youngsters may find themselves shooting up the career ladder much faster than they expected!

I think that as more Boomers leave the industry and more of young people step in to fill their shoes we will see a wonderful shake-up in the PR sphere. I am by no means disregarding the immense amount of knowledge that somebody with 25+ years of experience will have built up. Senior level PRs have a depth of knowledge that will take those of us still in our 20s many many years to achieve. However, I think that the next batch of PR consultants will bring some exciting, fresh ideas and new perspectives to the table. There will also be much more emphasis on social media and online communications, driven by practitioners that grew up with social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter.

The number of public relations blogs written by young PR professionals and students is a good indication of the passion that many members of this group have for the industry. It also demostrates the superior understanding of and respect that they have for online communications.

Here are some top blogs, written by our future PR leaders:

The PR and Comms Network blog, written by two young PR professionals, Alex Pearmain and Alain Desmier, is probably my favourite PR blog at the moment- I read every single post! Being an expat from the UK, I read it to keep up-to-date with the young PR 'scene' back in the homeland. It is entertaining, informative and very well written.

Young PR, written by Paul Young, a Senior Account Executive at Converseon.

Chris Clarke's Student PR blog

PR Student, written by Leeds University student, Chloe Chaplin.

There is also a great blog post here, written by David Meerman Scott, author of the WebInkNow blog, which talks about the 'new PR generation'.

So, how do you think the departure of the Baby Boomers and the increasing presence of the younger generation will affect the PR industry? This is something that really interests me (being a PR consultant in my mid-20s) so let me know what you think!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks Jennifer, glad you like the blog. We're always looking for guest bloggers so if you fancy penning a post about PR in NZ, do let us know.

Anonymous said...

I liked your look at pr blogs around the net. It is interesting the blogs that are going up on marketing, media and pr. I found this one in NZ, absurdlyandangerously.wordpress.com
Keep in interesting blogs comming!

Jennifer Boyes said...

Thanks-I'm always interested to know about any new blogs. I'll definitely check it out.

I know that some individuals disregard blogging and don't think it has much of an effect on people's perceptions but I truly believe that this is a narrow minded and old fashioned viewpoint. I think that online tools, such as blogging and forums, will have more and more of an impact as time goes by. Plus, I think that the up and coming generations are the ones that will really make the most out of these tools and take PR/media/advertising forwards. Exciting times!