7 Problems Facing Public Relations Practice In the World

Prince Matt Owobu (2011) explains that public relations as an applied social and behavioral science assists management in defining organisation’s objectives for increasing public understanding and acceptance of the organization’s products (goods or services), plans, policies and personnel. Put differently, it is the management function which evaluates public attitudes, identifies the policies and procedures of an organization with the public interests and executes a program of action to earn public understanding and acceptance. He furthers by agreeing with Laura (2012) as regarding what public relations problems are in this contemporary world. It is also important to understand that public relations is a world-wide discipline, it is global in operation and has relevance in the image of any institution employing it.

Public relations problems are peculiar to the country or organization where it is operating. Without doubt, the discipline has its global problems. We shall enumerate these problems as it affects the world and Nigeria respectively. It is not exaggeration that public relations is faced with numerous problems or challenges, the truth is that, these problems have constituted to the major challenges the profession is facing today.

More so, the dynamism of the world has posed another challenge to the profession, since our job is communication oriented, we are faced with divers’ media to communicate our messages to identified audience. Some schools of thought have enumerated their passive opinions as regarding their thoughts on what public relations’ problems are globally. These are:

Financial Constraint

There is no doubt that organizations are cutting budgets, thereby leading to poor financing of the public relations department. Financial belt-tightening has stemmed the flow of public relations’ budgets. Companies are reluctant to spend the little revenue they have on improving their media profile. Ironically, now is the time for them to raise their profile and gain new custom.

Increase in Communication Platform

Communication platforms offer a swift, easy way of disseminating messages across to target audience; but the huddles to choose the right communication channels for clients could be painstaking. Though many social media are free to use, even if it need paying subscription for some services, it is still convenient to use. However, a lot of time-investment need to be made in order to reach out to the right audience, passing your messages across to them and getting desired results.

Client’s Expectation Management

It is a problem that clients expect you to perform magic in-order to produce their imagined expectations. They expect you to work within any giving budget. They have unrealistic expectations of media coverage and how far their budget will stretch. Saddled with these challenges, a practitioner would need to reduce the scope of his campaign to at least achieve an optimum result.

 Poor Man-Power Situation

It is a known fact that most practitioners of public relations have background disciplines in other field of studies. Some are practicing journalists, marketers, advertisers, graphic artists, psychologists and so on; the truth is, they lack comprehensive understanding of what it takes to be a full practitioners in Public relations. Those disciplines are relevant to gaining an expertise in public relations, but they need to be merged with core public relations courses to achieve the birthing of a fully fledged public relations expertise. Some quacks position themselves as practitioners, thereby putting the profession at disrepute; they make claims they cannot defend, and organize campaigns that are substandard and guarded with professional misconduct.

Poor Appreciation of the Profession Among Public and Private Organizations’ Leaders

Most organization’s leaders have no regard for the profession. They believe anyone could do the job of public relations if put through. They have myopic perception of the profession so they do not see need for engaging both an In-house public relations and consultant to manage their reputation. If they eventually do, they could just employ them as errand officers (Protocols), this is a bastardization of the profession.

Low Awareness of Public Relations and What it Stands For

Public relations is still an evolving phenomenon in most developing countries of the world. This has caused a set back to the proliferation of the discipline in the world. Public relations is just a topic in mass communication or marketing in higher institutions lieu of a discipline. Until practitioners rise to the wake-up call, the discipline may die a natural death in these countries.

Poor Usage of Social Media

Social media has formed the basis for public relations per-excellence in this digital age. Any practitioner that is deficient in the usage of this may fade-out of the profession soon. Social media such as Face book, Linked-in, Tweeter, Net log, etc. are pre-eminent in this present age of our practice. However, most users of social networks abuse them a lot; while some are not diplomatic in the way they use them to convey messages to the public. Other practitioners promote themselves and products without prior interactions with their targets. This attitude could make them (public) perceive you as self centered person who care only about oneself, thereby confirming the saying “No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you cares.”