Strategic Technology Predictions for the 2025 Digital Age

Are you ready for the technological revolution reshaping public relations in 2025? The landscape is transforming at breakneck speed, and those who adapt will thrive while others struggle to remain relevant.

Sally Falkow, a social media strategist with over 30 years of experience, talks with host Peter Woolfolk as she pulls back the curtain on five critical trends every PR professional must master. With her deep expertise in digital PR and technology, Sally provides actionable insights that cut through the noise and highlight what truly matters.

Gone are the days of broad-stroke messaging. Today's successful PR demands precision audience research using sophisticated tools that identify micro-segments within your target demographics. Sally reveals how platforms like SparkToro enable unprecedented depth of audience understanding, allowing for hyper-targeted communication strategies that genuinely resonate.

The conversation explores how authentic storytelling continues to be the backbone of effective PR, but with crucial modern twists. "If a brand tells me they're the best thing since sliced bread, well of course they would," Sally notes, explaining why personal narratives and multimedia approaches have become essential for building trust in an increasingly skeptical world.

Perhaps most provocatively, Sally challenges common fears about AI replacing PR jobs with a powerful insight: "AI won't take your job - but the PR person who really knows how to use AI will." She breaks down practical applications for artificial intelligence in PR work, from content creation to sentiment analysis, while emphasizing the continued importance of human expertise.

The discussion also tackles the evolution of online visibility strategies as Google transforms from a search engine to an "answer engine," and why measurement analytics can no longer be optional for PR professionals seeking C-suite respect.

Whether you're a seasoned PR veteran or just starting your career, this episode provides the strategic framework needed to navigate the rapidly changing technological landscape of public relations. Listen now to ensure your PR approach remains cutting-edge in 2025 and beyond.

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Chapters

• 1:40 Introduction to PR Review Podcast
• 3:54 Precision Audience Research and Tools
• 8:54 Authentic Storytelling in Modern PR
• 15:51 Strategic AI Integration for PR
• 24:26 Dynamic Online Visibility and SEO
• 30:53 Measurement and Analytics-Driven PR
• 37:31 Closing Thoughts on PR Education

Transcript

Announcer: 1:10

Welcome. This is the Public Relations Review Podcast, a program to discuss the many facets of public relations with seasoned professionals, educators, authors and others. Now here is your host, peter Woolfolk.

Peter Woolfolk: 1:30

Welcome to the Public Relations Review Podcast and to our listeners all across America and around the world. Now, apple has ranked this podcast among the top 1% of podcasts worldwide and recently, feedspot listed this podcast as number 13 on its top 70 best public relations podcasts in the United States. So thank you to all of our guests and listeners for your continued support and, if you enjoy the podcast, please leave a review Now. Question to the audience. With 2025 now underway and quickly transforming due to technological advancements, what are some of the more important predictions public relations practitioners must pay attention to? Well, my guest today has that information for you.

Peter Woolfolk: 2:16

She has been in public relations for more than 30 years and holds her APR from the accreditation from the Public Relations Society of America. Now, over the last 15 years, she has specialized in new technology and digital public relations. Most of her work today is as a social media strategist. In addition, she has trained and coached public relations and marketing teams at companies both large and small, including Fortune 100 executives, public relations agencies and new public relations graduates. Along the way, she has won numerous awards. So my guest today is Sally Falco. She's a social media strategist with Veritiv Media and she joins me today from warm and toasty Clearwater Florida. Sally, welcome to the podcast.

Sally Falkow: 3:05

Thank you. Thank you so much for inviting me.

Peter Woolfolk: 3:09

Well, you've made some very, very poignant predictions for technology and public relations for 2025. Let's go over those and then, so our public can understand exactly what there are and the implications therein, so to speak. And the first one you say is precision audience research. You say that gone are the days of broad-struck messaging. Talk a bit more in detail about what we need to learn from and what we need to do in this particular arena.

Sally Falkow: 3:38

Well, peter, you know audience research has always been a core factor of public relations. If you read any of the varying definitions of what is PR, most of them mention that it's to do with communication with the different publics of the company. So those are your audiences. If you're not really figuring out who your audience is, life is going to get very difficult for you. And it was hard, like 30 years ago, to do this. It was all done by hand and it was all done by research and surveys and observations. But now we have technology that can help us to do this and can really drill down and get into who are these people. Where do they hang out, what do they listen to, what are they looking for, what do they like, what do they not like. It makes life a lot, lot easier.

Sally Falkow: 4:45

You're looking for developing really hyper-targeted communication strategies. If you have, let's say, you're in the wellness space and you want to communicate to chiropractors Well, not all chiropractors are the same. Some chiropractors don't use this particular technique and some focus on that problem with their patients you can really really drill right down and find out what are the exact audience personas. You can get unprecedented depth and understanding of these, what we call micro segments. So within a bigger audience, maybe you have women over 50 who need to lose weight.

Sally Falkow: 5:32

Well, there's a lot of little micro-segments in there. How many of them have already tried something? Have some of them been on the keto diet? That didn't work? How many of them want to lose weight quickly? There's so many little segments that you can drill down into if you have the right tools, and then you can predict your audience behavior and you can figure out their communication preferences and then you can actually create and craft a really meaningful and personalized communication that will resonate with that audience personalized communication that will resonate with that audience and, needless to say, that you also have to identify those particular programs that can do this for you.

Peter Woolfolk: 6:19

You said you know hyper-targeting certain areas or listeners, and so I'm sure that there are platforms that can dig down, as you said, be they surgeons or whoever, whatever group it happens to be that can penetrate and do that.

Sally Falkow: 6:36

There definitely are. There are a lot of really good tools around. Am I allowed to mention any?

Peter Woolfolk: 6:43

Oh, absolutely.

Sally Falkow: 6:44

Okay, my favorite one is SparkToro S-P-A-R-K-T-O-R-O. It's run by a fellow called Rand Fishkin. I think Rand is an absolutely brilliant fellow. He does a five-minute whiteboard every Friday on the SparkToro blog. Five-minute whiteboard every Friday on the SparkToro blog. And if you just watch that and you read their newsletter, your mind might completely be bent the first time you do it. But if you just keep digging in and listening to how they work and what kind of things they can do and looking at their case studies, I'm telling you your mind will go into overdrive. You'll go oh my goodness, how did I not know this existed? Mm-hmm.

Peter Woolfolk: 7:39

Well, you know, I mean, that certainly sounds like an excellent idea because, as you said, if you really want to know who your audience is, you need the tools to help you get to that point. Because, as we've discussed probably many times on here, that giving the right information to the right audience is a very, very strategic and important way of being successful in what you do in public relations.

Sally Falkow: 8:02

Exactly so.

Peter Woolfolk: 8:03

Okay.

Sally Falkow: 8:03

That's exactly what we're trying to do, and if you have a tool that can help you and improve what you're doing, wow.

Peter Woolfolk: 8:11

Why not use it Absolutely Well? Next, you talk about authentic storytelling, and we certainly all know exactly how important that is, but go into a bit more detail about that.

Sally Falkow: 8:23

Well, if you've been following the Global Trust barometer at all Every year, you'll see things change and who they trust and who they don't trust, and why and why not. And so with our messaging, we have to make sure that we are being authentic and that people will look at it and think this is real. I can communicate with this company. I trust them. It sounds like they have transparency and I'm making an emotional connection with them. If you have successful PR narratives now going into the future, you have to reveal what your genuine brand value is. What kind of human experience is this person going to have with you as a brand? We now have multimedia possibilities for storytelling.

Sally Falkow: 9:16

There are techniques for writing really good stories, but once you start showing them at the same time, it really expands and extends that story. I'm sure that makes sense to you. If I write about a fire that happened, I can even if I'm a really fantastic writer, I can probably give you a really good idea. But when you see the pictures, for many years in PR we didn't worry that much about the images. If we needed images, it was fine. Give that to those people over there. They're the graphic artists. It's not my job.

Sally Falkow: 10:00

Well, I hate to tell you, but it actually is your job now and you have to start thinking about how can I really extend their experience with this story.

Sally Falkow: 10:11

Another way you can do it is to give them personal narratives, give them examples of people who've done what you're talking about, or people that your brand has actually helped, so that they can see. One of the things that came up in this global trust barometer was we trust people just like ourselves much more than we trust the brand. And that makes total sense to me, because if a brand tells me they're the best thing since last bread, well of course they would. Why would they not? What are they going to say? We're not that bad, we're actually sort of okay. No company's going to do that, but you expect that, so you know that when it's coming from the brand, they have an agenda. But if I see that, you say this is what we do, and then you show me four or five people just like me who have the same problems that I have and they've used your service or products or whatever, and they've really had a very good result of it.

Sally Falkow: 11:17

that's great storytelling now if you can do that with multimedia across diverse platforms, you're going to get a much better connection mm-hmm.

Peter Woolfolk: 11:29

Let me say this Several months ago, I did an episode strictly on storytelling and that was. They said the very, very same things how authentic you have to be if people really want to relate to you. You know, whatever your particular group is, so you need to have the right person delivering that message. So that is, it is effective. So, I mean, storytelling is huge and I think this that you continue to validate that that is a major, major issue for all PR people to take into account.

Sally Falkow: 12:01

You know what's interesting to me, peter, is very often, even in bigger companies, but certainly in smaller companies. They tell me, even in bigger companies, but certainly in smaller companies. They tell me oh, we don't have any stories, we're just whatever. I just do this. No story here and I helped a company in Silicon Valley a little while ago. They actually are a concrete cutting company and when I spoke to him about finding stories about the company.

Sally Falkow: 12:33

He was a very down-to-earth guy. There are no stories here. I cut holes in concrete. What kind of a story is that? Well, when I started digging a little bit further, what was the most interesting thing you've ever done, or what was an unusual thing you've ever done? I come across the fact that they were chosen to do the seismic retrofitting for the quad at Stanford University. Now, this is a very historic building. He had to actually invent a new drill to do this. They had to make a way to sort of unpack some of the material off the columns, drill a hole down, put all the rebar and the concrete and the seismic retrofitting in and then put all the stuff back and walk away as though nothing had ever touched that quad. If you walk in there now, you would not know that anything had ever been done other than the original building. I said to him how can you tell me? That's not a story, that's astonishing.

Peter Woolfolk: 13:37

Well, you know, some people don't think that way and you know, along those same lines, when I started my PR firm I didn't really want to start one. I was encouraged by it when I moved down here as a former vice mayor because of my background. So I said, okay, I'll do that. But then I realized that way of just having business cards and meeting people and shaking hands really wasn't getting what I needed to get. So I decided that I need to. Uh, what would be great for me is to come up with a major client that when people saw that name that they would say, oh my goodness, if he has them as a client, then he must know what he's doing right so, to make a long story short, I have called people that I knew that sat on certain boards and, um, uh, call them see if they could connect me with the uh, the executive director, whoever.

Peter Woolfolk: 14:25

To make a long story short, I had a meeting with this guy. He said, well, all the money is gone, it's already tied up up, but we do need some help with some community outreach. I said, well, I can help you with that. He said, well, fine, so I had that agreement. So what I did was I wrote a press release Peter Wolf Company secures the Nashville Ballet, so wow, and it hit the front page of the business journal here and made no mention of the fact that there was no money involved. Because there wasn't, because it was more important for me to get that visibility and validation by having that and, as a result, that wound up generating some calls for me and one of the people that called me I wound up doing work for them for seven years. So telling stories is hugely important and I had a number of them to tell.

Sally Falkow: 15:18

Exactly.

Peter Woolfolk: 15:20

So you also mentioned. Another thing that's hugely important now is obviously artificial intelligence and the strategic integration of that into our daily work.

Sally Falkow: 15:30

Right? Well, you know, we've heard it said so many times that this is the big boogeyman that's coming and AI is going to take our jobs. Well, no, it's not actually, but I'll tell you who will take your job the PR person who really knows how to use AI.

Sally Falkow: 15:52

That's what's going to happen, Because AI is like any other thing to do with computers. I'm sure you've heard the garbage in, garbage out statement. It's exactly the same. If you just use one of these tools and you ask them to write something for you and you say, write me an article about blah, you probably are going to get garbage. There's a whole technology on how to write these prompts and how to get these insights out of these tools. They will give you everything and the kitchen sink, but you have to know how to ask for it. So you've got to be able to understand how to use AI and then figure out how to use it strategically. What do you need it for? Figure out how to use it strategically. What do you need it for? Some other companies might be using AI for something completely different, but as a PR person, it can help you to discover insights about your audience, which we talked about their preferences and media consumption. It can conduct really rapid audience sentiment analysis. I was doing sentiment analysis and business analysis using social media 10 years ago.

Peter Woolfolk: 17:12

Oh, my goodness.

Sally Falkow: 17:14

Yeah, once you know that, you can then generate really good content drafts. But you have to know what to tell it. You must write like this. You must write at this reading level. You must do it. You must write like this you must write at this reading level. You must do this. You must not do that. Don't use these phrases, whatever. My prompts are long because I have a long thing to. I'm teaching this AI. It's called an LLM, a large language model, but they learn. They actually learn as you go along. If you keep giving them good data and good input, they go oh, this is what she wants. Okay, fine.

Peter Woolfolk: 17:56

Yeah, well, you know we just did a complete segment on LLMs, probably about three weeks ago and you know it really got a lot of attention Right and it really got a lot of attention Right.

Sally Falkow: 18:07

Also. The other thing is that often we tend to get lazy and we make one message and we put it out everywhere. It's on our blog, it's on our website, it's in our newsletters, it's on social media platforms. All the same, every social media platform has a completely different personality. The same person who's on Facebook and LinkedIn is there for different reasons.

Sally Falkow: 18:31

It's not the mummy that's on Facebook who's looking for friends and pictures of cats. It's not the same businesswoman who's on LinkedIn. If you put the same message everywhere, you're going to miss half the people, and AI can help you with all of this, instead of like slogging it out by yourself. Ask, chat GPT, they will tell you. And the biggest thing is to master that prompt engineering and don't ever publish a draft. Well, you know, the biggest thing is to master that prompt engineering and don't ever publish a draft that comes straight out of an AI.

Peter Woolfolk: 19:14

Mm, hmm, Well, you know, I certainly agree with you, because I use AI when I produce this in various points of my producing this, this podcast. One of the first things it does for me that's actually easy is that it does the transcripts. I mean, that part is fine. But when I want to have a description of it, it does that too. But then I read that description and see how accurate is it and make changes as I see fit, you know, so that it sounds more like me. But for me it's a time saver, absolutely, and the blurbs that come out come out. You know, I look at those and I can put in Facebook and blue sky and other places. I'll read everything before I let it go, but very seldom do I let it go as it comes out, simply because I just said, it doesn't sound like me or it might be a little bit often what it's giving me because it's not completely accurate.

Sally Falkow: 20:10

Well, the other side of this is there's a thing that Google has that they use in terms of ranking content and it's expertise. I have to think about this now E-E-A-T Authority and trust Experience, Experience, expertise, authority and trust, expertise, authority and trust that's what they're looking for. So what you're getting back out of AI probably doesn't have much of that, so you have to put your personalized stuff into it. This is where you come back to your storytelling. The expertise and the experience is going to come out in the stories that you tell, which you need to put into this. Ai is not going to know who your clients are. They can't say, oh yeah, let's use this thing. That happened with Joe and his company.

Sally Falkow: 20:56

They don't know that and you have to constantly put those factors back in to show that you're sharing the brand authority and transparency and that you really have all the good data that you use.

Peter Woolfolk: 21:15

Well, let me say I certainly agree with you on that. We all agree that AI is hugely important, and I think the other thing that we mostly agree on is the fact that you know use it as how it best fits you, or adapt it to the way that it best fits you and what it is you need it for.

Sally Falkow: 21:34

Yeah, definitely. So I was lucky that I was introduced to the idea of digital communication and multimedia very, very early on, and I've taken that opportunity and just made sure that the interesting thing with online, of course, is that the technology changes every five minutes.

Peter Woolfolk: 21:57

You were just about right about that.

Sally Falkow: 22:01

So you can't say, well, oh good, I learned about Facebook, isn't that nice? And now all the young people have gone from Facebook and they're over here. Oh, they're not there anymore, they're over there. You know, 30 years ago we used to talk about constantly having your finger on the pulse of what was happening around your clients or your company and that, just as you felt you had your total headed nail down here in this one area. You looked away to the left and you looked back to the right. Oh my God, they moved. Now, with technology, it's like 10,000 times faster than that, but you still have to. You've got to keep constantly updating yourself and staying on top of what the technology is. If you don't really know how to do that, then you need to find somebody who is doing it and is writing about it all the time or making videos about it, who can help you and maybe cut your learning time in half.

Peter Woolfolk: 23:12

Well, you know, I agree with you on that, because when I did the, as a matter of fact, I was reading something about LLMs and I think I just mentioned to you I called a fellow up and asked him to be on the podcast to talk more about it, and I think you know, when he brought that up, the fact that Google, for the first time, had actually lost some audiences because of it.

Sally Falkow: 23:35

Absolutely. That is really fascinating to me Because, as you've been watching it over the years, it's like oh yeah, google's number one, whatever. What's next? Suddenly, it's not that much. You go oh, google's number one, whatever, what's next?

Speaker 4: 23:47

Suddenly, it's not that much you go, oh, Google's losing traffic.

Peter Woolfolk: 23:50

Well, one of the other things you mentioned here and is hugely important is the dynamic online visibility. So talk a bit about that as well.

Sally Falkow: 24:00

Well, you know, if you ask anybody and it really is now 100% do you ever use Google? Yes, they do, Of course they do. Where do you go to find something? I go online, so people are searching all the time.

Sally Falkow: 24:19

But this landscape is also undergoing a radical transformation because it's funny that Google many years ago, said they don't regard themselves as a search transformation, because it's funny that Google, many years ago, said they don't regard themselves as a search engine. They regard themselves as an answer engine. So you put the question in and they're giving you back what used to be 10 blue links of what they considered to be the best possibility to get the answer to your question. They really have to be an answer engine now because AI is doing that. Many people instead. If I want to find out how to bake a cake, people are just going to AI. How to bake a cake, people are just going to AI. How do I bake a? Whatever I'm?

Peter Woolfolk: 25:12

not a baker, but how do I make?

Sally Falkow: 25:14

cream scones. They don't want to look at tendings and click somewhere else.

Sally Falkow: 25:21

They just want you to tell them how to do the damn thing. So this is what's happening and so there's a big disruption happening in the traditional seo. So I know that many pr professionals still don't think of themselves as that they have to think about seo, but in the same way about you didn't think you had to think about images. You actually do have to think about seo. And here's one of the things I always think kind of this is what, if you tell PR people this, the light goes on when you search and you get that little link on Google. It's like a little blur. It tells you the headline and then there's a description. If you leave that to the programmers, who knows what you're going to get? I've seen ones where it comes up home this page is not available, or something like that.

Sally Falkow: 26:22

That's very damaging to your brand. That's very damaging to your brand. Those three or four lines is the first thing sometimes that anyone sees about your brand. It's vitally important. That piece of content needs to be written by PR people and that means you have to understand what is SEO. What is a tag? What is a title tag? What is a description tag? How do they work, how long do they have to be, and so on, because you want them when they read it you want them to click.

Sally Falkow: 27:00

It's a vitally important piece of this space of communication. But now we also have the introduction of AI, and that's been shown at the top of all the searches Before you even get to the blue links. Now here's your answer, provided to you by AI. Well, why aren't you in it? Many years ago, I had a client who said to me you know, I've been in business for 20 years and all my competitors show up in Google for this particular keyword, but I don't. So I went and had a look at his website and I said well, I'll tell you why that particular keyword's not anywhere on your website.

Sally Falkow: 27:38

What do you think Google must have? Exprasensory perception? And the same is going to happen now with AI. Why should AI mention you when there's a question about how do I wash socks? Well, if you're the best sock company, why are you not mentioned in there? So you have to start to learn and understand how AI finds their content. What are they using to form those answers? You have to really start to understand their search algorithms and what are they looking for, and you have to develop your own content strategy across all platforms so that you can get this really. I'll give you that again shareable digital narratives, but they have to be. It has to fit in with what AI is looking for. Right.

Sally Falkow: 28:38

That's the first thing. You can't just decide over here all by yourself. Well, this is what it should be. Well, no, because AI actually has a format and you need to understand that and then say, oh, they want this and they want that. Well, let me go and do some content about that, yeah.

Peter Woolfolk: 28:59

Well, you know, even when I do each one of these episodes and, you know, do a small write-up that goes with it I will produce that, I'll look at it and read it, but then I also have to post it on my website as well, because the website says hey, google is looking for A, b, c and D. You know those sort of things. I need to make sure that you know, as people are searching, that what I put down will perhaps be caught up in their search or be provided to them in their searches, rather than just being a podcaster, because I use data. I might not get as much detail as I want, but I do know my age group primarily, 70% of my audience are women and that's the Gen Zers I believe it is. I think we'll go back and say they even double-check on people to find out that you know, you say who you are and doing what you say you do in terms of the authenticity of it all. So these things are hugely important.

Sally Falkow: 30:02

Absolutely sir. Yeah, things are hugely important. Absolutely, sir.

Peter Woolfolk: 30:06

Yeah, well, one of the other things that you mentioned a little bit that we can sort of you know as we get to the tail end of this, is you talk about measurement and analytics-driven public relations. Now I know that's huge because I just mentioned I'm certainly involved in that as well.

Sally Falkow: 30:23

I really believe that this is vitally important for PR people, and I have come across a resistance in PR professionals. It's another one of those. Oh no, that's not my job, I don't do that. Statistics and analytics but yes, 30 years ago there wasn't really very many ways to track everything, and so I think we got into this. We're a soft technique. You can't really measure PR. I've heard that so many times. Well, those days are gone. You can measure everything, and because you can, you should, and one of the things we've complained about over the years is that the C-suite doesn't often take us seriously, but if you started giving them data, they would Just as they demanded from other parts of the organization, if you can show them definitively. I did this and then that happened, and then so many people came to the website and so many people clicked on the link and so many people downloaded your e-book or whatever I did a.

Sally Falkow: 31:46

Actually it's April again, isn't it? Yes, april is Financial Literacy Month, and some years ago I did a program for a client who is a financial services company in the New York area and we did a guide to financial literacy for women. So I I created that content and then we did a social media advertising campaign. We actually did some audience research and figured out that in the areas where they operate there were x many women who would be of the income bracket that would be the correct audience for them and that, funnily enough, in that audience financial literacy was actually quite low. So we handled all of that in the content and we advertised it through social media to that audience, advertised it through social media to that audience. And they had set parameters saying we would like to get this many people to come to look at the guide, this many people to download it and this many people to reach out and actually become a viable lead.

Speaker 4: 33:03

And it actually really overproduced by about 30% more than they expected.

Sally Falkow: 33:05

It was very successful. I used that as a case study at a big PR convention in Washington and I really thought that, well, this is so step-by-step you do this, you do that, then you do this, then you check that, then you do this and then you get that result. Then you can see whether this was what I had said my goal was and that was my result and you can track it all the way across. And at the end of it all, I kind of looked at the audience and I said do you have any questions?

Sally Falkow: 33:36

There was nothing, absolutely nothing just silence in the room and I was like this is weird. And a couple of the people that I spoke to afterwards it was just like my eyes glaze over a moment. They just didn't get it Because they just don't see measurement and analytics as part of their job. But it is such a vital part and it can make such a huge difference when you can show the C-suite real-time performance metrics, demonstrate your precise ROI, you can track engagement across multiple channels. Where did these people come from? What did they do? And also, if things are not working, you can see along the line well, look, it worked there and it worked there and then it got here and then everybody fell off the bandwagon. Well, that's where we need to fix the problem. So for me it's just an absolute no-brainer.

Peter Woolfolk: 34:49

Well, let me say this I certainly agree with you because, having obviously being in this business, people want to see results for the money they pay you, and being able to provide that data is hugely important because it's validation, as we did what we were going to say to do, and here's the data to support it. I think the other thing, too, is that people in the C-suite need to be better educated as to how important it is and why it's important, and so forth and so on. You know, sometimes maybe they just look at maybe how many people attended or how many new clients who have that sort of thing, but you can dig deeper. As you said, people are categorized in numerous different ways and you have sentiments that you can get about, that can be detected about your company or your program or those other kinds of things. So, depending on who you're working with and working for and the information you need, you cannot afford not to have this data.

Sally Falkow: 35:52

Absolutely, sir, you're correct.

Peter Woolfolk: 35:56

Well, sally, look, this has been very, very engaging, and I am certainly glad that you took the time to come on to talk to us about this, because this kind of information and detail is important to practically all public relations practitioners. So let me say thank you so very, very much for joining us today.

Sally Falkow: 36:14

It's my great pleasure. Thank you for inviting me. I'm glad that you found my article and that you thought it was interesting enough to spread the news.

Peter Woolfolk: 36:25

Well, you know, my job here really is to provide my listeners with information that they can use in their daily activities and, believe me, this hits the nail right on the head. So I'm sure I'm going to have a lot of because, also, I promote these individual episodes. You'll get something from me that shows you. I do put up flyers, blue Sky, the LinkedIn sites and several other places where you have PR people so that they know that it's coming, and I include the QR code in that so that they can get to it right fast.

Sally Falkow: 37:01

Right. The other audience that I think it's important for is PR students, because I genuinely believe that the universities and the schools are way behind on teaching digital PR.

Peter Woolfolk: 37:16

Well, you know, and you might be accurate about that I do know that I do have because I've spoken to college PR SSA students, because I know that. I do know that I do have because I've spoken to college PRSSA students, because I know that I do have college listeners, both students and instructors, that listen to me, because some of them have called me up and asked me to talk to their students about public relations. So perhaps there's a way I should go directly to PRSSA and do something with them as well.

Sally Falkow: 37:45

Yeah for sure. Some years ago I spoke at a college in California and at the end of the hour they all looked very engaged and interested. At the end of the hour I said do you have any questions? And the one guy said why haven't we heard anything about this? He was in his fourth year, about to graduate, and I'm like, oh my goodness, and when you get out into the real world they're going to ask you you've got A, b and C and they're going to ask you for D.

Peter Woolfolk: 38:19

Well, and you know there's obviously a difference in caliber at some of these classes, so it depends upon who is doing the teaching and who do they bring in to speak to students. So students really need to have real world experience. You know, because you interviewed some students on the class or you appeared on a college radio station. It really doesn't amount to a hill of beans. It really doesn't amount to a hill of beans. You know, I got most of my experience back when I was coming up. You know, I actually worked in a radio station and had, you know, not only on the announcing side but also on the production side. I also had another job where I had to learn how to download satellite connections. You know the uplink and downlink satellites, but you know we're in the Zoom era now, but I learned those things. So I tell everybody, the more you learn and actually know, the better off you are wherever you go.

Peter Woolfolk: 39:16

Once again, let me say my guest today has been Sally Falco. She is a social media strategist with Meredith Media and I want to thank her so very, very much for joining us today. And, by the way, sally's newsletter, proactive, is available on LinkedIn and we will have a link available to that episode in our show notes. And I want to say to my audience if you've enjoyed the podcast, we certainly would like to get a review from you and also share this information with your colleagues and join us for the next edition of the Public Relations.

Announcer: 39:49

Review Podcast. This podcast is produced by Communication Strategies, an award-winning public relations and public affairs firm headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee. Thank you for joining us.