In a world that is changing so rapidly…

Every time I hear that phrase, I think of the movie Comedian.

But I digress. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about PR, social media, and the changing face of the industry.

Alejandro from SuccessFool and I were talking one evening about his series on entrepreneurs and their stories. He asked me about my own entrepreneurial journey and what, if anything I would do differently the second time around.

I have a rather unique entrepreneurial path… I was working for a CFO at a college and just didn’t like it. He would hand me the school’s 3M budget, ask me to balance it and then take credit for my findings at the board meeting. Not cool.

I met a woman through my volunteer work who did PR and it was like the heavens opened up, there was a chorus and I saw the light. I immediately did some research, found a course that would get me the most hands on experience in the shortest period of time possible, quit my job and went to school.

Within the first two weeks of my course, I had my first in-house internship at a local hotel. I stayed with them for eight months, and still have a good relationship with my boss of the time. After that, I moved to the local branch of a large international agency and stayed with them for about 18 months.

It was a four semester (two year) course, and by the middle of the third semester, I had clients, I was getting paid more than my peers were in entry level positions, and I’d started my business. I took a half day off the day we graduated and then went out full time on my own the next day.

But things were different five years ago. PR was easier and it was more about the pitch and getting a client coverage. I was good at getting coverage, and I’ve had several reporters tell me I’m a favourite to work with.

Now, with the rise of social networks and social media strategies, it’s not as easy to reach out to reporters as it used to be. Media convergence and online news sites are killing the traditional publishing business. There are a billion traditional PR people out there who are now claiming to be social media experts because they have a Facebook account and they Twitter sporadically. These alone do not make you a social media expert.

What brought all this up, and why I felt like I needed to tell you all of the above in the first place was Doug Haslam’s (@dough) post about why a start up needs PR. I disagree. In fact, I agree 100% with Loic (the founder of Seesmic) who says that the success of your start up depends not on the backs of your PR people and your marketing messages, but instead on the entrepreneur him or herself. [post]

The PR world has changed. It’s not the same as it used to be, and it’ll never go back to being the way it was. To quote the clip above “in a [media] world…” this complex, I don’t want to play too deeply in the PR field anymore.

One of the first things Doug points to is Twitter and the fact that they don’t employ a PR firm [post]. I still say that what Twitter needs is not a PR firm but a Community Manager/Evangelist.

It might be that, for me, the “oooh, shiny!” is gone from PR. There are still thousands of folks out there completely enamoured with the industry, and I applaud them. But it’s going to take a lot to convince the now jaded, cynical PR person in me that start ups need PR, that companies like Twitter or Seesmic should spend their money on PR instead of evangelists, and that PR is still as powerful as it was, even five years ago.