Last night in a bar I just happened to meet the head of marketing for a well-known international company. Of course the question “what do you do?” was asked. He was intrigued to find out that I own a marketing communications agency because he’s tired of his company’s PR firm and ready to fire them.

Earlier in the day I met with the head of marketing for a new client who said they are able to generate more press coverage for their clients than their clients can do manage on their own, to the point where their clients are saying “why are we paying for PR firms for this when you can do it so much better?” And no, they’re not a PR firm.

Both of these conversations happening in one day got me thinking about press releases, public relations and how people get information these days. Neither of these men said they were doing away with PR or press releases. But both talked about dissatisfaction with PR firms.

So I’m wondering if PR can be more self serve these days than in the past just by using the humble press release? Press releases are not just for sending en masse to a bunch of journalists who probably aren’t interested. With blogging, email, social networking, word of mouth, search engine optimization, online press rooms, and sites like PRWeb, press releases can be an integral part of your overall messaging strategy. Because you want to communicate with all your audiences--customers, prospects, vendors, partners, investors and the media—and you don’t know where or how they’ll find information about you.

Come up with something interesting to say, write press releases with keywords for SEO, post your press releases to your Web site and news distributions sites with a keyword rich title, and communicate the same messages via your blogs and email marketing.

And maybe you’ll be firing your PR firm too?