I read an interesting article in Advertising Age, titled How Social Media Is Helping Public-Relations Sector Not Just Survive, but Thrive. Due to the power of content creation and social media, the PR industry has never been in a more powerful and secure position. We all know that the PR sector had a rocky ride in 2009, but fortunately has bounced back quickly, thanks to social media, many believe.

The advantage here is that PR pros know how to tell a story. We’ve done it the traditional way for many years. As social media was introduced, so were a handful of mediums to continue telling our stories, but with a louder voice, and a much larger audience. Because of the PR person’s storytelling ability, this transition from traditional to social media has been a smooth one.

According to Veronis Suhler Stevenson, a private-equity firm that publishes annual reports on the stat of the PR industry, spending on PR will hit $3.4 billion in 2010, which is an increase of 3% over 2009. The firm expects that number to hit $4.4 billion by 2014. Not bad!

Speaking of the power of social media, we’re very excited to announce that PAN will be hosting a Marketing Roundtable on Tuesday, August 31. Our moderator and panelists will be discussing the content revolution, as well as the benefits of social media today. We have gathered a panel of influential leaders from different companies and anticipate a very successful event. Eric Hellweg, online editor of Harvard Business Review will be the moderator and panelists include John Dragoon (senior vice president, chief marketing officer and channel chief at Novell), Lynne Bohan (vice president of Public Relations and Government Affairs at HP Hood), Evan Falchuk (president and chief operating officer at Best Doctors) and Andre Pino (principal analyst, Technology Marketing Group at Forrester Research).