Almost half of you think that your job is getting harder. New technologies such as social media to master, a whole new realm of influencers in the blogosphere to navigate, condensed time-to-market for company products and services, and the increasing internationalization of news and marketing are all contributing factors, I’d suggest. Plus I think the sophistication of the PR process is greater now, and therefore more demanding.

The other half of you believe that the role is as hard as it has always been – just different. Whereas you maybe used to spend your time wrestling with faxes and phones, now it’s email and IM. Whereas before you focused purely on the media, you now split your time with bloggers too. The tools and the priorities may be different but the essential art and science of PR is still fundamentally the same.

Interestingly, only one person felt that all the new technologies which are supposed to save us time, and all the new direct, interactive channels that are open to us, have actually made the process of PR communication easier.

I asked this question since I wanted to see where we’re going. Will tomorrow be harder than today? What does this mean for those joining our industry? Or do we simply look back through rose-tinted glasses and forget just how hard it was say five, ten years ago? I seem to remember it being pretty demanding then too – and I wouldn’t have it any other way.