As we know, a large part of PR essentially is all about creating press coverage in one form or another for a client via established media relationships.

Measuring the value paid towards PR has always been a challenge with no guarantee of media coverage. And what about the effectiveness of coverage? For the most part this never happens in any accountable form.

PR does not have to be this way.

Armed with a good SEO strategy, marketers and content creators can reach the consumer directly provided value is being created. Is that not what PR is all about anyway? Today, digital media has broken down the walls protected by the major media companies allowing anyone to publish content. So why not PR?

As a PR professional you have the power to self-publish any message in ways that may ultimately prove to be way more target-able, powerful and measurable.   In an age of DVR's and VOD, no one likes to watch advertising and they don't.  The trick is in providing content that is valuable for your audience, much in the same way that good press coverage provides information that we all want to read and be informed about.  It's all about knowing your audience and being authentic.

Take online video as one example. If you are looking to seed content to mainstream digital media for use within their offerings, make sure you keep this new medium in mind. This is NOT TV. Keep content to 15 to 20 second snippets as journalists are not inclined to use video that requires extra editing for example.

If you are a non believer in the power of non traditional media, here are a few stats for you:

One in five broadband homes will have the technology to watch internet-based video on their TV sets this year, according to a new analysis from Emerging Media Dynamics. The report assesses the progress made by devices such as Apple TV, Microsoft's Xbox 360 and SlingMedia's SlingCatcher in solving the final "twenty foot" barrier. Over 72 million broadband homes – representing over two-thirds of the marketplace – are projected to have PC/TV devices by 2017.

IPTV subscription video revenue continues to grow exponentially from $779 million in 2006 (when it was first methodically measured) to $26.3 billion by 2011 not including advertising and value-added TV services, according to a new report from market intelligence firm iSuppli.

As PR professionals look to continue to build on their relationships with mainstream media, perhaps what we should be doing is offering the industry a 'first look' deal similar to those practiced in the entertainment industry. If our media relationships do not opt in to the ideas on the table, we have the ability to self publish and we should.

Clearly times they are a changin'. So don't sit back waiting for mainstream media. Take your story into your own hands and self publish.

For additional insight, I recommend you read:
Video Rocks Traditional PR
http://www.prnewsonline.com/digitalpr/casestudies/videorocks.html

While I have focused primarily on innovation in online video and IPTV within this post, there are of course many new formats to be mastered and monitored in PR such as in the social media space.