There are mobile business apps designed to make users more productive, more organized and more collaborative, but now there is an app to help guide public relations professionals in making ethical decisions. Ethical decision-making has never been easier thanks to PRSA taking the Code of Ethics (Code) mobile.

PRSA, in partnership with MSLGROUP, has brought the Code to the palm of your hand. The PRSA Ethics app is available for free in Google’s Android Market and Apple’s App Store and can be accessed from iPhone, iPad and Android devices.

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As we wrap up this year’s #PRin2013 series, here is a recap of what our 12 contributors predicted for the public relations industry in 2013.

Kirk Hazlett, APR, Fellow PRSA, kicked off this year’s #PRin2013 series with a prediction that 2013 would be about accountability. The public relations professional must go beyond merely reaching stakeholder audiences. They must ensure that the message is genuine and any promises made to the public are genuine.

Elise Mitchell, APR, Fellow PRSA, offered up six trends she sees on the horizon this year.

Continue reading " #PRin2013: A Look Back at the Predictions "

2013 is the first year since 1987 with four unique digits, but will it be as unique as its numerical configuration? With that question in mind, we once again bring you our annual PR industry prognostications.

This year we feature contributions from 12 creative thinkers who represent various facets of the PR industry. We asked for their insights into the trends they believe will fundamentally change the PR industry in 2013.

Below is a compilation of the thoughts of our first five contributors. Their full blog posts, and those of the remaining eight contributors, will appear throughout the month of January.

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Sixty percent of Wikipedia articles for companies and clients of respondents who were familiar with them had factual errors. That surprising number, and more, can be found in the infographic below, which is based on a research study of the relationship between public relations professionals and Wikipedia. The study is published in the Public Relations Society of America’s (PRSA) scholarly publication, Public Relations Journal.

The research was conducted by Marcia W. DiStaso, Ph.D., co-chair of PRSA’s National Research Committee and an assistant professor of public relations at Penn State University in State College, Pa. DiStaso surveyed 1,284 public relations professionals from PRSA, the International Association of Business Communicators, the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, the Institute for Public Relations and the National Investor Relations Institute to assess their working relationship with Wikipedia. The Arthur W. Page Center at Penn State’s College of Communications funded the research.

Read the press release.

An article explaining the implications of that study is available through the Institute for Public Relations.

Wikipedia’s “Bright Line” Rule For PR Pros

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Continue reading " Infographic: Measuring PR Pros’ Engagement with Wikipedia "

Editor’s note: The following is a guest post by Burghardt Tenderich, Ph.D., associate professor and associate director of the Strategic Communication and Public Relations Center at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Burghardt manages the development of the biennial Generally Accepted Best Practices for Public Relations study, which assesses the scope of the public relations industry.

Corporate public relations budgets are mostly up, and the scope of the profession is experiencing growth in areas such as internal communication, customer relations and social media. These are some of the findings of a new study published by the USC Annenberg Strategic Communication and Public Relations Center.

GAP VII, the seventh biennial Generally Accepted Best Practices for Public Relations, shows some of the most significant findings in the area of measurement and evaluation: On average, corporations now spend 9 percent of their total PR budget on research-related activities, a sharp incline from 4 percent in the previous GAP study. This pronounced rise speaks to widespread adoption of social media monitoring tools and increasing use of primary research in program planning and evaluation.

The GAP VII research team, led by Jerry Swerling, Kjerstin Thorson and me, surveyed 620 senior public relations practitioners. This makes GAP VII the largest and most comprehensive study ever of the most senior communicators in public and private corporations, government agencies and non-profits in the United States. USC Annenberg conducted the study in cooperation with PRSA and other professional associations: Arthur W. Page Society, Institute for Public Relations and International Association of Business Communicators.

GAP VII aims to provide PR practitioners with actionable information they can use to better manage the communication functions in their organizations; identifies best practices against which they can benchmark their own organizations; and pinpoints trends to be aware of as they plan for tomorrow.

Continue reading " What the USC Annenberg GAP Study Tells Us About Public Relations’ Success "