Listening and engaging are areas where, in ‘traditional’ communications terms, PR agencies have proven skills. When it comes to enhancing, search marketing agencies should be able to offer more advanced search engine optimisation (SEO) services. However, PR specialists ought to be able to write better copy than SEO professionals. Content creation is the traditional preserve of advertising and design agencies. However, while these agencies tend to want to work with large budgets, PR agencies tend to be able to create lower cost content that directly relates to the news agenda, which dominates the web.

All of this means that traditional PR skills – writing a press release or case study, briefing photographers and analysing press clippings – are being matched by such new skills as producing a social media release, or a video case study; briefing a game developer, and monitoring online buzz. Blogger relations, social bookmarking, web analytics and moderating blog comments are now key PR skills to rank alongside writing and distributing press releases, dealing with media enquiries and analysing coverage.

Public relations is effective in helping: * Corporations convey information about their products or services to potential customers * Corporations reach local government and legislators * Politicians attract votes and raise money, and craft their public image and legacy * Non-profit organizations, including schools, hospitals, social service agencies etc. boost support of their programs such as awareness programs, fund-raising programs, and to increase patronage of their services

Public relations in present times employs diverse techniques such as opinion polling and focus groups to evaluate public opinion, combined with a variety of high-tech techniques for distributing information on behalf of their clients, including the internet, satellite feeds, broadcast faxes, and database-driven phone banks. Experienced public relations agencies have formulation press releases into which they can plug the company news, as well as a targeted list of publications for their industry. Truly good public relations agencies generally have a good working relationship with key reporters, boosting their chances of getting coverage. Some public relations agencies deal only with large, established clients, while smaller boutique public relations agencies specialize in certain areas.

At present public relations as a career option exists in private companies or government institutions that actively market their product, service and facilities. Public relations training courses are widespread in educational institutions. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 122,000 public relations specialists in the United States in 1998 and approximately 485,000 advertising, marketing, and public relations managers working in all industries.

Most public relations practitioners are recruited from the ranks of journalism. Public relations officers are highly trained professionals with expertise and knowledge in many areas, for example shareholder management during a crisis, the evolving role of the in-house public relations professional, account management skills for public relations, an introduction to financial public relations, an introduction to consumer public relations, an introduction to public relations software etc.