This year has seen a growth in technology PR and a recent report from media investment group, VSS records an increased spend for the PR industry at double the rate of marketing as a whole. In his FT article last week, Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson put it down to the changing role of the PR agency, moving focus from the processes required to manage reputation to the production of multimedia content for distribution via a variety of channels, online, via social networks and traditional media. Is this also true of technology pr?

A technology PR agency will now do much more than produce text-based press releases and white papers for distribution via the technology industry press. A successful agency will produce shareable, engaging digital content to tell the full story of a brand.

The FT article,  PR and news boundaries are being redrawn, looked at recent developments at PRNewswire, considering the implications of this move to content production and the changes to the service provided to PRNewswire subscribers. Edgecliff-Johnson remarked that as well as the usual list of relevant publications, users are now advised on SEO and influencers to target on social media.

If you take a look at the PRNewswire site, you will see that it actively encourages the inclusion of multimedia, asking for dedicated websites, video and graphics to boost engagement by 77% and advising members to; ‘Engage with your audience to get more out of your communications. Give them a way to find, interact with, and share your message.’

Electronics and engineering firms should ‘provide news and other content in formats that can easily be found and shared by readers and the media alike and use content optimisation tools to identify relevant keywords and phrases or social media add-ons to encourage sharing.

A good technology PR agency understands how to exploit SEO and content creation tools and has the skills and resources to produce engaging multimedia content. For, ‘whether media outlets like it or not, every company will have to become a content company.’ Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson