What Every PR Person Should Know

As a public relations consultant who does a lot of PR programming, I was intrigued by a recent piece in Fast Company , based on data from the Global Information Industry Center , that described Americans’ “greed” for information. A few interesting factoids:

• Americans consume some 3.6 zettabytes (a billion trillion bytes of information) — the equivalent of 5.1 trillion hard drives — every day.

• Of the almost 19 hours daily we spend ingesting data, the biggest chunk of time — seven hours — is spent on a computer, console or handheld device.

• Just over one hour is spent reading and only slightly more (1.13 hours), on the phone.

• More time is spent on radio (5 hours) than on TV (4.5 hours).

Knowing and prioritizing our stakeholders and learning where they get their information are critical components of every effective public relations plan. Increasingly important for PR professionals will be the ability to craft strategies that cut through “info inundation.”