Employers of marketing and PR pros are undervaluing a key skill

Online newsroom specialists iPressroom recently surveyed businesses to see what sorts of skills they are looking for in their marketing and PR pros. The survey had a small sample size, as many of these do, and this report’s many charts read far more into the results than can be reliably concluded. But I credit its authors for noting something that jumped out at me as well:

Rather than focus on attracting or pulling visitors to their website by publishing high quality content and researching popular language, organizations appear to be more interested with pushing out messages to “friends” through social media, even though, in many cases, those messages include hyperlinks back to their own websites. Until these organizations learn to develop a more sophisticated approach to building and managing landing pages and web content management on their websites, they will have difficulty evaluating their return on investment for these emerging channels.

(Emphasis mine.)

I found this report by reading a trendy headline somewhere. It proclaimed that marketing and especially PR executives are expected to possess skills that most are still scrambling to master. Here is a sample chart showing the data behind this assertion:

The digital skills expected of marketing and PR executives

The employers surveyed should be commended for understanding the pressing demands of social media. However, they’re overlooking an equally important skill in their communications hiring checklist. They must hire people who understand the importance of good site content and how to measure its value. This is essential to making long-term gains from social media and search engine efforts.

It’s not enough to know how to attract eyeballs. The owners of those eyeballs had better find something on a site that’s worth experiencing and sharing.

2 Replies to “Employers of marketing and PR pros are undervaluing a key skill”

  1. Great post, Jeff. I agree. Having someone with solid marketing acumen + killer instinct and insight for content will make or break critical success factors like 1)ROI and 2) sustainability. Once we get that skillset in place for brands, we need to work on how the communication flow charts and budgeting. Just think what could be done for brands if we didn’t have such long planning cycles and production budgets built to shotgun out the creative at the begining of campaigns and walk away. I think we’ve exchanged these words, before – Keep fighting the good fight!

  2. I agree as well. As they say, “Content is King.” If the content you place on your site is not consistently relevant or engaging to the audiences you draw, those “eyeballs” won’t be looking very long, or even coming back for that matter.

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