Why all PRs should learn to code

It’s a New Year and, to celebrate, I’ve got a new blog template! In fact it’s a template that I’ve spent a few weeks over Christmas putting together. It is the first time I’ve created a WordPress template from scratch and it was actually pretty straightforward.

I’ve played around with website coding since I was pretty young and even built a (albeit primitive) website when still in my early teens.

Learn to code in 2012

So I was interested today to see numerous tweets doing the rounds encouraging followers to learn how to code in 2012. The initiative is being launched by Codecademy – a code-teaching website – and encourages anyone to sign-up to a yearly course that will deliver a weekly email with a different module. The idea is that, in time, you’ll be building your own apps and websites.

It’s a good PR campaign for the website and, if the tweets in my feed were anything to go by today, is getting some good viral traction. A counter on the website shows that 98,014 have signed up so far – good data capture return if nothing else!

Coding PRs?

I sent this round the office today with a note saying that I think PRs of the future (and arguably today) would benefit from knowing how to code. I’m not saying they’ll need to be able to build a website or application, but having an even basic knowledge of the main web languages certainly helps me on a daily basis and I’m sure would help others too.

In addition I think that, generally in the future, those with a wide range of skills will be far more employable, especially in the PR industry (a post for another day). And this is also pertinent at a time when jobs in the PR industry are more sought after than ever. Digital skills are becoming commonplace amongst graduates (something that was really brought home to me recently) and, increasingly, expected by employers.

So what are you waiting for….

Danny Whatmough