Content area
The PR (public relations) domain requires complex skills nowadays. This professional environment has deeply changed after digital media were added to traditional media. Multimedia have imposed a different approach to PR and generated new jobs on the labor market. Today, a PR graduate should be familiar with the online environment, should be skilled at managing social media accounts, at web design, since multimedia production has become a hiring condition in this field. A PR specialist should develop linguistic, discursive and digital skills. Besides these, a professional must also acquire specific knowledge from the field so as to be able to produce effective messages. However, the training of PR specialists is usually centered around the development of discursive skills. In the present article, nonetheless, we advocate for the importance of developing digital competencies in PR and we argue that this training segment can be made more efficient by using e-learning methods. Yet, the article draws attention to the fact that there are PR training segments that cannot be carried out through e-learning. PR specialists must be able to offer a memorable user experience to their target audience. In order to fulfill this purpose, it is necessary to develop multiple skills needed to create both the content and the form of the conveyed messages. Accessibility, content strategy, design thinking, information architecture, interaction design, multidevice design should be major concerns in the training of competitive PR specialists. Online platforms devoted to PR training are part of blended learning strategies and offer users the possibility to interact with current information through nonlinear learning methods, and enhance the development of creativity through interactive applications.
Abstract: The PR (public relations) domain requires complex skills nowadays. This professional environment has deeply changed after digital media were added to traditional media. Multimedia have imposed a different approach to PR and generated new jobs on the labor market. Today, a PR graduate should be familiar with the online environment, should be skilled at managing social media accounts, at web design, since multimedia production has become a hiring condition in this field. A PR specialist should develop linguistic, discursive and digital skills. Besides these, a professional must also acquire specific knowledge from the field so as to be able to produce effective messages. However, the training of PR specialists is usually centered around the development of discursive skills. In the present article, nonetheless, we advocate for the importance of developing digital competencies in PR and we argue that this training segment can be made more efficient by using e-learning methods. Yet, the article draws attention to the fact that there are PR training segments that cannot be carried out through e-learning. PR specialists must be able to offer a memorable user experience to their target audience. In order to fulfill this purpose, it is necessary to develop multiple skills needed to create both the content and the form of the conveyed messages. Accessibility, content strategy, design thinking, information architecture, interaction design, multidevice design should be major concerns in the training of competitive PR specialists. Online platforms devoted to PR training are part of blended learning strategies and offer users the possibility to interact with current information through nonlinear learning methods, and enhance the development of creativity through interactive applications.
Keywords: PR Training; Accessibility: content strategy; design thinking.
INTRODUCTION
The association between a profession that is basically centered around human relations and a learning method that is based on technology may seem bizarre at first sight, raising questions such as: Can communicators be successfully trained through e-learning? Can communication skills be developed through online applications?
I.THE EDUCATIONAL OFFER
PR activity can be briefly defined as a set of techniques for influencing public opinion and behavior, with the goal of creating a positive public image of a company. Besides a pleasant physical appearance or good speaking skills, the training of a communication specialist requires a multitude of competencies nowadays. Multimedia competencies have become very important for a PR specialist as many activities in the field unfold in the virtual environment.
It is often claimed that success in PR depends on the communication means, on presenting ideas and thoughts, on the ability to make others listen and act. The promotion of institutional offers for training future PR specialists is often ambiguous regarding the competencies required for this profession. The ambiguity stems from the presentation of the educational offer on the Romanian market, where emphasis is mainly laid on theory. There is not a big difference between university courses and other training programs offered by specialized institutes which are trying to attract the public by boasting about international recognition, thus accounting for their high tuition fees.
Frequently, the objectives are mostly cognitive and presented as techniques, e.g. writing techniques, promotion techniques, public event organizing techniques, mass-media collaboration techniques, information management and monitoring techniques, etc. It is natural that emphasis should be laid primarily on the development of discursive and communicative skills, but the promise of becoming a good communicator is not backed enough by training in public speaking, rhetoric and argumentation. Diction or personal image lessons are the exception and not the rule in educational offers, aspects which could actually provide valuable practical tips in PR. Additionally, there is little concern for other plain, but significant issues such as: message design and distribution in the current media environment, especially in the online environment; activity planning and evaluation meant to connect the PR approaches with the organizational management and with the IT domain.
II.JOB DESCRIPTION FOR A PR SPECIALIST
The discrepancy between the educational offer and the skills a PR specialist needs to develop can be easily seen in job advertisements. We have thus analyzed the PR job offers which were posted on the e-jobs Romanian website and we have inventoried the employer requirements. Quite frequently, editorial skills are required, such as the elaboration of informative and advertising texts for print and online media, followed by conceptual competencies in designing communication plans and campaigns. Organizational skills in the planning and carrying out of (media) events are not required as often, and rarely do job advertisements conditions explicitly include the attractive personal appearance of the candidates. Another area of the PR profession is the administrative spectrum which involves keeping in touch with the partners of an organization and the media. Professional requirements for a PR specialist often include knowledge of the organization's field of activity, besides knowledge in the field of communication. The current job offer for PR graduates is extensive for online work and even on Romanian websites, jobs have English names that only sound familiar to digital natives: content writer, web editor, market content administrator, front-end/ back-end developer, account manager, media analyst, PPC Facebook Ads & Social Media Specialist, etc. In what follows, we shall briefly outline the tasks assigned to these jobs.
A CONTENT WRITER provides promotional texts for online campaigns and articles for their own blogs or clients. Additionally, they may monitor visitors' interactions with social media sites and accounts. A WEB EDITOR constantly updates the company's offer on websites and accounts, writes titles, descriptions, meta-descriptions, texts, informative and promotional articles. In both cases, previous experience in operating e-commerce platforms and SEO - Search engine optimization - is an advantage. A WEB DEVELOPER PHP should develop web sites and applications (PHP / MySQL) and should be knowledgeable about JS, JQuery, Bootstrap, HTML5, CSS3. (PHP is a server-side back-end programming language that helps you send and receive requests and data from and to databases like MySQL. If you are using PDO, you can communicate to different databases such as SQLite, Oracle, MS Access, MS Server, and more. PHP can communicate with client-side languages such as JavaScript and HTML.)
The ACCOUNT MANAGER is responsible for managing promotional efforts for one brand and for daily basis operations of its affiliate program, including relations with affiliates, networks and partners. A MEDIA ANALYST monitors editorial appearances in mass-media and social media, finding the articles that are relevant for their customers, writing brief summaries and reports on selected materials that concern their customers. A PPC Facebook Ads & Social Media specialist is tasked with managing PPC (Pay per click) campaigns based on established marketing strategy and monitors the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) set for each campaign. These jobs involve creating advertising materials by collaborating with graphic artists/copywriters and using other social media channels: Pinterest, Instagram, Google+, Twiter, YouTube. The tasks of a professional communicator are numerous and require many skills, both creative and analytical. A PR specialist can work in any area of social life, in public or private organizations, for central or local authorities, for political parties, or in the non-profit sector. A PR graduate can specialize in various areas: political communication, social communication, crisis communication, corporate identity management. Statistics show that the most desired positions are those with high visibility, but in fact most communication graduates do not become spokespersons, but content providers, those invisible content authors who create the public image of institutions online.
III.PR LITERACY
A PR specialist should develop three important types of skills: linguistic, discursive and digital. Linguistic skills refer primarily to mother tongue knowledge, spelling and grammar, neat written language and face-to-face communication. Speaking world languages, especially English, is an advantage. Discursive skills refer to coherence, to the use of appropriate style and argumentation for each audience category. General knowledge and intercultural awareness are further advantages. Digital skills mainly refer to operating editorial software and client databases, but more emphasis is currently laid on operating audio-video and multimedia software. The PR professional field has dramatically changed since traditional media (newspapers, magazines, radio, TV) have been augmented with digital media. Multimedia have imposed a new approach to PR and have generated new jobs on the labor market. Communication in PR is currently unfolding online. The public and journalists search for information on the Internet, and those who are not familiar with online practices cannot meet the expectations and satisfy the needs of the public. For PR activities, a professional approach to social web is required, which means knowing the style preferred by different audiences, understanding their media habits, being aware of their different ways of communicating on various channels (a piece of information must be conveyed differently on the website, Facebook or tweet). Many employers prefer the applicants who can prove their interest in online communication through their presence on social networks, websites, blogs, etc. Employers are further interested in individuals who have a consistent profile in the online environment, who have a proactive attitude on social networks, who take attitude to various social problems, produce and distribute relevant content, and generally have a realistic perception of public sphere, offline and online. Familiarity with the online environment, with managing social network accounts, with web design and multimedia production have now become employment requirements for a PR graduate.
IV.E-LEARNING IN PR
The purpose of any educational program is to provide graduates with qualifications and competencies that meet the labor market demands, so as to increase one's chances of being hired. But given the wide spectrum of competencies required from a PR graduate, we discover that there is hardly enough time to develop such complex skills during a face-to-face educational program, to include all the information and applications that create skills for real labor market competition. Some educational institutions offer only online training programs for future PR specialists, which is, in our opinion, equally debatable and possibly ineffective as teaching too much theory in face-to-face programs that do not provide enough practice in the field.
Distance learning courses may be useful to those who already have previous experience in PR and want to catch up on the theoretical issues, but unfortunately, such programs often give the impression of mere "diploma mills." Therefore, we could reach a compromise solution by combining face-to-face and computer-assisted learning, providing more thorough training for future professional communicators. It is obvious that the people skills needed in the direct interaction between a communicator and his audience are better developed in the presence of a teacher, then from watching tutorials, and the activities involving persuasion and spontaneity should be carried out in conditions similar to real life. However, there still remain enough areas in the training of professional communicators that can be covered faster and more thoroughly through e-learning methods. In simple terms, e-learning means "training provided via a computer or other digital device, allowing technology to facilitate learning anytime, anywhere. Using e-leaming modules offers a series of advantages. First of all, it saves time that can be invested in acquiring basic knowledge and training communication skills. Moreover, it is obvious that a course can only provide a general overview of the multiple specializations available in PR, whereas online research allows any student to inform on the various aspects of his/her future profession so as to choose a career depending on his / her interests and skills.
E-learning methods can also be extremely effective in terms of interoperability. A PR specialist cooperates with the management team to understand the functioning of the organization, its philosophy and policies so as to effectively contribute to achieving the global objectives. Simultaneously (s)he cooperates with professionals from the IT, technical and artistic fields to implement the communication strategy. Besides events, a communication campaign involves the production of advertising materials and their off-line/online distribution. In this respect, the cooperation with graphic designers and programmers is crucial. The boundaries between content designer and web designer overlap to a great extent, and many jobs involving site design and management are now occupied by communication graduates. Therefore, multidisciplinary training can increase the chances of professional integration.
V.PR PLATFORMS
The development of digital skills such as using applications for online content management, can be done more effectively through e-learning. Platforms allow each user to access only the needed content, without a pre-established order, which is especially useful when learner groups are heterogeneous in terms of previous training and professional interests. Online learning also allows content to be structured in accordance with learners' own pace.
For instance, the DLS Lynda Platform offers 10 courses in PR, including content marketing, press materials, market analysis, public image management. A DLS (Distance Learning System) platform provides interactive learning and online evaluation. Courses can be accessed randomly and contain numerous multimedia materials and interactive applications. The platform can run other educational and communication applications, as well. The offer is aimed at communication students, web-designers, site programmers, front-end or back-end developers and e-commerce specialists. In the business oriented social network, LinkedIn, the LYNDA brand is a conspicuous presence, with courses for PR students who want to specialize in creative areas. Besides graphics, video, music, architecture, 3D design courses, we also find the USER EXPERIENCE section, which offers courses in the following: accessibility, content strategy, design thinking, information architecture, interaction design, multidevice design.
USER EXPERIENCE designates all customer-oriented practices and it is a term mainly used in marketing, e-commerce and advertising. CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE can be synthesized in five phases or stages, which are an extension of the classic AIDA model (attention, interest, decision, acquisition): 1. Awareness (which seeks to arouse interest for the product and refers to inspiration); 2. Favorability (which means that interest in the product is increased by favoring); 3. Consideration (which aims to generate the desire of a customer to buy the product); 4. Intent to Purchase (which refers to the impulse to buy a product, and the consumer's intention turning into fact) and 5. Conversion (which means that the consumer undergoes a transformation and becomes a customer when (s)he purchases the product or service in the offer.) User experience includes all the steps meant to develop skills in user experience research and design, including usability testing, accessibility, prototyping, personas, and responsive design.
ACCESSIBILITY refers to all the steps that make pages more user-friendly in both content and layout. It also includes the modules aimed at content comprehension and easy, intuitive navigation. Writing accessible content is as important as making navigation easy. Creating accessible pages can be done by intelligently organizing content and layout, by logically assembling titles and content, pages and sub-pages, navigation menus, links, buttons, and interactive areas. Accessibility can be tested only through practice, by piloting and testing the site, the individual pages and articles in terms of form and content. Accessibility does not only involve text, but also pictures: photos, movies, multimedia products, accompanied by the functional integration of plugins. (Plugins are those programs that allow, for instance, the opening of various types of text, graphics, audio-video files. We realize we need them when we cannot open a pdf file, a video or a game play because we do not have a pdf -reader, a codec, or a flash player).
CONTENT STRATEGY refers to the steps taken to organize information so that it reaches the public in a logical order. The great challenge of this conceptual stage is to maintain a balance between the two complementary perspectives, of the author and of the content consumer, who value and prioritize information differently. The content strategy involves permanent information updating and remedial action when needed, i.e. keeping sites, platforms, blogs and accounts up to date. CONTENT STRATEGY also includes customizing content for different target audiences and establishing PERSONAS, which are distinct profiles for different types of users. The content strategy addresses additional aspects such as search engine optimization (SEO), monitoring site interactions and counting user responses (auditing content for measuring success). Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality of website traffic through search engines. SEO also involves promoting a site on other websites and blogs. Optimizing a website involves primarily editing the content and source code of the pages to increase their relevance by getting a certain frequency of keywords. From an ethical perspective, SEO techniques fall into two broad categories: White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO or spamdexing. White Hat SEO generally refers to creating content for users rather than for search engines.
DESIGN THINKING refers to content designing meant to attract users through aesthetics and interactivity so as to ensure client loyalty and leed acquisition. Design thinking involves both the primary concept and the refreshing activities: regular refreshment of information, improved presentation and display to offer a pleasant customer experience. This requires creativity in finding innovative solutions tailored to customers' needs.
An ingenious approach to design thinking is creating the journey map, which could increase the chances of turning simple visitors into customers. In this area, the difficult part is to collect, analyze and visualize information to help solve customer's challenges. In a competitive organization, the defining of a customer scenario is carried out in the economic branch, under the provisions of a so-called style guide, which reflects the company's communication policy. A style guide is the document that sets the tone for how an organization communicates and how it designs its products. It incorporates branding, company philosophy and an understanding of customers and the market. It may describe the visual, written and sometimes even spoken styles to use.
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE refers to text and web page format; it is based on the skillful coordination between text and image, and on the aesthetic structuring of information. Architecture includes text placement and formatting, the use of colors, animation, content highlighting in paragraphs and visual focus indicators, creating product listings and stores for digital goods, for service-based products and for physical, digital, and service products. Information architecture aims to improve the way information is conveyed and organized on the website, being one of the most cost-effective ways of increasing user satisfaction and engagement. In order to present the content in a logical and appealing way, one should do research to get information about user interactions. (S)he should analyze the results and create a validated information architecture plan and afterwards translate the plan into refined menus, content classification, and page layouts. The success of the new structure is measured by monitoring feedback from server logs, site searches, and help desk calls. Information architecture includes: working with content in grids, working with light boxes and layers, using tooltips to deliver contextual content, structuring page regions, defining default styles and media queries, structuring and styling menus, using grids, guides, and guide layouts, dynamically replacing menus, adding placeholders and text, using ligature fonts for icons, building desktop, tablet and mobile layouts, etc.
One of the most effective techniques is creating mockups. Wireframes are the skeleton, mockups are the skin. Mockups reflect the design choices for color schemes, layouts, typography, iconography, the visuals of navigation and the overall atmosphere of the product. Mockups have several benefits: they are intuitive to stakeholders and it is easier to make revisions in a mockup than in the later coding stages (as long as the mockup itself is not coded).
This domain refers primarily to communicator - programmer cooperation and helps PR specialists become more familiar with the activities and the terminology used by programmers. Working with developers becomes easier and even a humanist can understand what "using sketches and prototypes" means. In the end, (s)he could even be able to export sketches in a format that developers can use and (s)he could understand how to use art boards, guides, creative Cloud libraries, make layouts and generate exports that convey fluid app experiences.
INTERACTION DESIGN refers to user-content interaction and focuses on the intuitiveness of interactions (i.e. accessing the desired content by few clicks) and on playfulness (i.e. inventing games that make navigation more interesting). Generally, INTERACTION DESIGN targets persuasive UX (user experience) and aims to influence behavior patterns. One important element of persuasive design is providing the right stimulus at the right time, so that users can respond in the desired way, whether it is navigating on the website, providing an email address, or purchasing a product. INTERACTION DESIGN is interested in how people interact with digital devices and interfaces, aiming to enhance navigation through techniques that make sites more engaging and effective, e.g.: add features such as infinite scrolling, collapsible modules and dynamic content, using widgets. (Widget is a graphical interface element such as a button or a scroll bar.) Widgets allow you to get interface features for an application or for an operating system. Buttons, icons, scroll bars and menus are some examples of typical widgets. INTERACTION DESIGN does not involve only managing content layers, editing users profiles or configuring settings, and gathering feedback after interactions, but also security measures to protect users' personal data.
MULTIDEVICE DESIGN refers, on the one hand, to the coherence of communication - the motifs, language and tone should be the same in all the materials and activities of a project, and on the other hand, it involves the visualization of content on various terminals: computer, tablet, smart phone. A major challenge for designers is how to build in consistency, creativity, and flexibility to offer amazing user experiences that reflect a coherent and recognizable company voice. As a rule, videos set the motifs, details and characters that build the originality of a campaign, thus the elements presented in audiovisual commercials are further found on posters, leaflets, flyers and gadgets.
Frequently, street banners contain freeze-frames from videos. For economic reasons, the general tendency is to create a design system of reusable interface components, to ensure the company's design language is consistent from product to product, because it is profitable to efficiently manage resources and optimize the performance of a website. Multidevice design includes front-end and back-end development that allows for proper visualization on screens of various formats and sizes, sensibly redistributing content items and displaying a variable number of columns compatible with a certain device. Front-end development is the programming activity for that part of a website that only visitors can see. Back-end development is the programming activity for the part of a website that allows content management. In technical terms, this customized display technology is known as responsive design. Modern users will want to access a website or app on a variety of different platforms. The goal is that any app should perform elegantly and consistently from device to device, from phones and tablets, to wearable tech. Understanding how to design for multiple devices is now a required skill for UX (user experience) designers. They should know how to plan a design and take advantage of CSS media queries to create multiple layouts. Moreover, communication specialists need to understand how screen readers and voice recognition programs work, and what are the implications of fluidly displaying media, like images and video for UX (user experience) so they can design and customize themes and menus.
VI.CONCLUSION
All things considered, what falls into the USER EXPERIENCE category, i.e. accessibility, content strategy, design thinking, information architecture, interaction design, multidevice design - can be studied by future PR specialists through e-learning, benefiting from nonlinear and customizable courses, tailored to particular needs and interests. However, mention must be made that the areas we have analyzed above are not major in the training of a PR specialist. They are not essential tasks of a professional communicator, but can give him/her an overview of promoting activities, facilitating cooperation with specialists involved in creating the image of an institution. Finally, we restate that not all the skills needed by a PR specialist can be developed through e-learning, mainly because this profession involves social interaction and most activities require full and synchronized communication.
However, we should not ignore the fact that the PR field is very dynamic and must keep pace with technology. Therefore, any PR specialist who wants to be competitive should constantly update his/her knowledge, and a handy method of maintaining a high professional standard is self-training through e-learning methods, as they allow effective learning on the go. (This article is polemical on purpose, to show what PR are currently about, to highlight the discrepancy between the often anachronistic academic approaches and the common practices in the field)
Reference Text and Citations
[1.] https://learning.linkedin.com/content-library/online-creative-courses
[2.] https://tipps.jobs.de/fur-jeden-die-passende-botschaft-das-sind-die-wichtigsten-voraussetzungen-fur-eine-pr-karriere/
[3.] https://www.absolventa.de/jobs/channel/public-relations/thema/beruf
[4.] https://www. allencomm. com/resource/what-is-elearning/
[5.] https://www.ausbildung-weiterbildung.ch/pr-fachmann-selbsttest.html
[6.] https://www. ausbildung-weiterbildung. ch/pr-fachmann- selbsttest. html
[7.] https://www.business-academy.ro/public-relations?gclid=EAIalQobChM[-fbT5Pv[3gIV2KiaCh3FgDBEAMYASAAEgKJj_D_BwE
[8.] https://www.ejobs.ro/user/locuri-de-munca/content-writer-limba-romana/1114330
[9.] https://www.lynda.com/Public-Relations-training-tutorials/2393-0.html
Copyright "Carol I" National Defence University 2019