How Do Corporations Use Internet for Public Relations?

In today's dynamic environment characterised by higher advertising costs and lower efficiency of advertising, corporations are relying more and more on public relations (PR). We present new Internet technologies that can greatly improve corporations' relations such as RSS feeds, blogs and podcasts. We have also conducted a thorough analysis of 50 largest world corporations' web sites. We present some of the findings from this research and conclude with suggestions on how PR departments could improve their efforts. 1. Increased Importance of Public Relations In these years public relations are becoming one of the most important communications tools that can successfully perform numerous functions of conventional marketing (Kleiner, 1989). Advertising costs are rising, the reach is getting narrower, users are overloaded with ads; and all that leads to lower efficiency of advertising. Therefore, marketing is increasingly using various PR techniques. It can be expected, that the efficiency of PR will exceed the efficiency of classical advertising. The role of PR is changing from reactive to a more active one. Whereas the main function of marketing is to influence behaviour, the task of PR is to form, maintain, or change public attitudes toward the organization or its products (Kotler, 1997). PR is the marketing communications function that carries out programs designed to earn public understanding and acceptance (Hollensen, 2004). An organization builds relations with different publics, such as media, investors, the government, customers, suppliers, employees, job seekers and others. Needs and requirements of these publics can be very diverse.