10 ways PR has changed in the last five years

1) PR used to be a face-to-face business. You took clients on tour, set up meetings at trade shows and competed in softball against various publications. Today, none of those face-to-face relationship building exercises are as big as they used to be. Budgets have restricted travel plans and most magazines don't have enough staff to field a softball team.

2) With a few exceptions, no individual media player has as much power as they did five years ago. As a result, today PR people have to cast a wider net to reach more media people to achieve the same market penetration they hit five years ago.

3) Bloggers don't take press releases. They want the inside scoop on the story. Most stories don't have enough angles to satisfy more than the most important bloggers.

4) Print is dead. Young people proudly boast that they don't read hard copy magazines. Worse, most PR people don't read hard copy magazines or newspapers, thereby burning down the house they live in.

5) Digital = viral. And that's not always good. Ask Domino's.

6) Blogs and Twitter mean every company has a lot more spokespeople and unhappy customers have a bigger microphone.

7) In the words of the Bill Clinton campaign, "It's the economy stupid." Social media is cheaper.

8) Embargoes are dead, which makes it harder to judge how much coverage will hit, and for that we can thank the bloggers.

9) Because social media is measurable, metrics really matter and we are only just beginning to learn how to count. Then again, not every PR practitioner is happy that her clients know exactly who is reading what.

10) We are only on the front edge of change. Just as email killed the fax business, social media is gutting traditional media and the collateral damage is killing traditional PR.

If you have more thoughts, I would be happy to hear them.