In part two of my interview with Alan Ryan, we discuss how the business and practice of public relations has changed and what fundamentals remain crucial to a PR program's efficacy and success. We also speak about the challenges facing technology companies today, and the role PR plays in surmounting those challenges.

Alan Ryan: You've been a business for a long time and really the whole business of PR has changed dramatically from the time that you started the company till now. If you think about it, back then PR was really heavily relying upon phones and postal service and fax machines. Now, we really focus on content ideation, content creation, social media. There's a shrinking landscape of publications and reporters that we deal with, but some of the elements of PR really never changed. So why don't you give us your thoughts on what those things might be and why those elements remain really important for great public relations?

Steve Schuster: What we've really changed, and you pointed out, is the mediums through which we communicate. You're right, back in the '90s, we would have envelope stuffing parties whenever we were sending out a press release and clients would be disappointed if the press release only showed up online. They wanted it in print, in EE Times or EDN. They felt that that was the higher value, and this is back in the days when they were still paying for print advertising.

That's all transformed. Clearly we have not only new mediums, but mediums that drive search. I used to say, you can't Google a piece of paper. The value of print really went down with the advent of searchable content. What hasn't changed though is the need to tell stories in a way that connects with people and connect with their emotions and connect with their desires and drive their belief systems to cause them to behave in certain ways that are beneficial to our clients.

So the storytelling aspect, absolutely, it's more important than ever, and I think it's what drives the most successful marketing programs.

Alan: What do you see as some of the challenges ahead for businesses in this new age, and what's the role of public relations in shaping what's next?

Steve: People think of public relations as being very tactical, press releases and writing and posting on LinkedIn and things like that. And it's true, you have to be good at that. You have to know how to optimize all the content and get in the right places and get it in front of the right influencers. The challenges ahead require PR agencies to be really strategic counselors to clients and to play an objective role in leading them to the right messages, to the right development of personas that they want to target and really crafting, as I keep referring to the story, that's what we're good at. As a PR agency, as with any PR agency needs to be good at, is taking what the client has developed and connecting the dots.

So you need to be able to see the technology for what it is and understand why it's important, and you need to understand the care abouts of the technology adopters so that you can use PR to draw a line between those two points. And that's a challenge for a lot of marketers and we feel it's the most important thing for us to bring to the table.

Watch Part 1 of Steve and Alan’s interview here: https://www.rainierco.com/pr-blog/how-i-built-a-technology-pr-agency-from-scratch