Should You Have to Pick Between Traditional and Digital PR?

Nearly everything has gone digital – from television  to our personal interactions.  It seems that you can find and do just about anything with a click of a mouse.  PR is certainly no exception.

In years past, traditional PR consisted of extensive, vertically focused Rolodexes, carefully constructed press kits and press releases sent by mail to media sources.  Now we see a blurring of the lines between PR and Media Relations departments and communications in the social channel by Marketing and  other representatives of organizations (for example, Customer Relations).  What once was a carefully controlled set of outreaches to the media has now become a more serendipitous process through which the media can find your brand and contact you.

Through this blurring of the lines between traditional PR and digital marketing, it has become increasingly apparent that using both in a synergistic manner ultimately yields the best results.

While digital marketing allows a brand to reach audiences directly without the use of an intermediaries (traditional PR agency reaching out to reporters who then get the message to the buyers), it does not guarantee the credible, third-party, authoritative voice that objective journalists bring to the process.  Using a traditional PR in tandem with digital marketing will assure that your brand obtains direct and indirect attention from earned media while still maximizing the use of your owned media.  Traditional PR will allow for direct outreach to the authoritative sources that will talk about your brand, while digital marketing will allow for you to reach your consumers more immediately—and to make it easy for the media to find you when they want to talk, too.

So should you have to pick between traditional PR and digital marketing?  Why not use both?