Last Friday I gave a talk to a large UK PR agency about social media. I told them they (PR) were (or should be) much better placed to engage people through social media than traditional advertising agencies.

The Wikipedia definition of PR is -

“Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing the flow of information between an organization and its publics. Public relations – often referred to as PR – gains an organization or individual exposure to their audiences using topics of public interest and news items that do not require direct payment. Because public relations places exposure in credible third-party outlets, it offers a third-party legitimacy that advertising does not have. Common activities include speaking at conferences, working with the press, and employee communication.”

Social media is all about communication. The so-called conversation. Tools like blogs, micro-blogging (like Twitter) LinkedIn, YouTube and social networks are a heaven sent for communicators.

PR people should have an instinctive feel for this brave new world.

Press releases have always attempted to be more ‘content like’. They had to be newsworthy and authentic to make it into the media. To achieve word of mouth the message had to truly interesting. Good communication with a businesses’ “publics” have always been more like talking – a conversation – than shouting (advertising).

Sponsorship – also a PR preserve – can be seen a form of ‘content funding’.

One has to look no further than Barack Obama’s recent election campaign to see how social media can be used for things that look a lot like PR. The NY times enthused:

“But by using interactive Web 2.0 tools, Mr. Obama’s campaign changed the way politicians organize supporters, advertise to voters, defend against attacks and communicate with constituents.”

Mind you PR have not done too badly of late. Some of the decline in media spend, away from TV, radio and print has in fact shifted to PR. And PR is often rightly seen as a cheaper way of getting your message out.

Why? As less and less advertising occupies column space in the press, hard pressed editors with less and less staff are looking for easy copy to fill their pages. PR releases have found some fertile soil.

Can PR rest on its laurels? This PR renaissance could be short lived. Without advertising, many magazine titles, papers and even TV channels will cease to exist (at least in their current form) and the available column inches with them.

There are skeptics. During my talk I was either told that the blogs and the like are not as popular in the UK as the US. And the Brits have an enduring love affair with newspapers was another retort.

But just today the Media Guardian reported:

Two of the biggest regional newspaper publishers, Trinity Mirror and Johnston Press, issued interim reports last week detailing how their advertising revenue was crumbling faster than they had expected. They each recorded falls in property advertising of almost 50%, against a general ad slump of over 20% and 15% respectively since the end of June. Trinity Mirror has closed 44 local titles because of the advertising downturn and the switch to the web, where profits are harder to come by.

Dear (of the NUJ) thinks further cuts will damage the industry, and expects more titles to close in the months ahead. “It’s a false economy to make such deep cuts. I think the cuts are already deep but I can see more on the horizon. The warning signs coming out of a number of companies about their ad revenue makes it clear to me that there will be further cuts. The problem a lot of companies are creating for themselves is that, post-recession, many of them will not be in a position to take advantage of the opportunities because they will have lost so many readers and advertisers because of cuts [to staff].”

Dear’s assessment tallies with that of Richards, who thinks the worst could be yet to come for consumer titles in general.”

The closing of local newspapers and many consumer titles will hit PR hard.

In the same Guardian Rupert Murdoch was quoted as saying that journalism will not die. But he added:

“Our real business isn’t printing on dead trees. It’s giving our readers great journalism and great judgment.”

“At a time when new printing technology was making other papers around the world more efficient, newspapers in Britain were forced to rely on a technology that had not changed much since Gutenberg’s Bible. The costs were destroying hundreds of jobs and crippling what is now the world’s most vibrant newspaper market…”

Echoing the impact of social technologies that Li & Bernoff describe so eloquently in their Groundswell book he says:

“Today editors are losing this power. The internet, for example, provides access to thousands of new sources that cover things an editor might ignore. And if you aren’t satisfied with that, you can start up your own blog and cover and comment on the news yourself.”

ZuluZulu thinks blogging is the PR tool par excellence.

It is an easy to use, powerful and flexible platform for companies with a complexity problem to conduct their brand PR (PR that shifts products) efforts. It allows a company to speak to customers in the middle of the funnel.

But so to does almost all corporate public relations (PR that builds reputations) benefit from using a blog. (Corporate public relations are almost always complex in nature.)

You can see the whole presentation I gave here:

russell brand!!!

Originally uploaded by rinoa_88

What to do if your in a crisis and your irate customers have been enabled by social technologies? What to do when a groundswell of negative public opinion gathers ominously on forums blogs and the like?

Blog your way out of it!

In this Monday’s Media Guardian Digital veteran Steve Bowbrick argues the BBC could and should have reacted through a “response blog” to the forore thats broken out around a Russel Brand & Jonathan Ross broadcast.

Bowbrick says the blog should have come from the managers who authorised the broadcast.

Consultant Martin Belam also took issue with the BBC on his blog:

One of the joys of having the web as a corporate communication channel is that it is very flexible and can be very, very dynamic. Not all businesses take full advantage of that, though. The BBC has not been very nimble in its response to the Brand / Ross / Sachs sex scandal, and this has been especially true on the web.

At lunchtime today, even as the Corporation announced the suspension of Ross and Brand, if you visited /programmes on bbc.co.uk it was the smirking face of Ross that greeted you.

Bellan points out that as bad is the fact that Russel Brand has a BBC blog. But it was not used to talk to the audience. An opportunity missed. If there’s anything worse than not having a blog to engage your customers, it’s having one and not using it.

“Brand’s BBC blog hadn’t been updated since October 15th, before the offensive episode of the programme was even transmitted.”

“I’m sure the BBC’s press officers have been frantically working with the national newspapers all day trying to influence what will be in tomorrow’s headlines. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Licence Fee payers will have visited all of these places on bbc.co.uk, and got the firm impression that the BBC wasn’t reacting to the crisis at all. In service design terms, the Radio 2 homepage, Russell Brand blog & show pages, and the search engine results are all ‘touch points’ that failed today to deliver the right user experience.”

The BBC still has some way to go before its geared up to be as interactively engaged with its audience as technology now allows it to be. Said Danny Rodgers in a separate article:

As arguably the second-highest-profile institution in this country after the government, the BBC faces a uniquely complex PR challenge. Given this, even some senior executives at the corporation admit privately that the PR operation is not fit for purpose.

ZuluZulu’s bet is that the BBC PR team did not even think about using blogs as part of their job. The new role of online PR still has not dawned on the erstwhile spin-meisters.

In an earlier post I wrote about how Public Relations (PR) is finally waking up to the power of blogging. The Media Guardian just this week claimed that PR is finding the ‘blogosphere’ the ‘perfect environment’.

In the Guardian one reason advanced – by Katy Howell (partner at Immediate Future) – as to why PR should get into blogging is that “only PR understand a crisis”.

According to Howell PR needs to both proactive – building a conversation with bloggers and other “taste makers”, as well as be flexible enough to be able to react to crisis.

She points to Pizzahut’s name change to Pastahut and that the blogosphere was not impressed by this – they saw it as a publicity stunt. They could have engaged bloggers by sending them menus, and including them in the conversation before they announced it Howell says.

A great idea.

Dell did much the same when they endured the Dell Hell media fire storm.

If you don’t yet know about it here is the story. A couple of years ago, media professor and commentator Jeff Jarvis blogged about his frustration with Dell’s customer support. He wrote Michael Dell, Dell’s founder an open letter on his blog.

The bottom line is that a low-price coupon may have gotten me to buy a Dell, but your product was a lemon and your customer service was appalling.

I shipped back my computer today and only — only — because I wrote an email to you, Mr. George, did I manage to get a refund. I’m typing this on an Apple Powerbook. I also have bought two more Apples for our home.

But you didn’t just lose three PC sales and me as a customer.

Today, when you lose a customer, you don’t lose just that customer, you risk losing that customer’s friends. And thanks to the internet and blogs and consumer rate-and-review services, your customers have lots and lots of friends all around the world.

I blog. And I shared the story of my Dell travails here. The topic resonated with hundreds more people. Go read the many comments here and here. Too busy? Then have an intern or an MBA do it for you.

And then have them read all the many posts of other bloggers who pointed to my posts and shared their dissatisfaction with your products, service, and brand and, in many cases, announced that they were no longer going to buy your name…

Ouch!

But Dell responded brilliantly. By sending technicians to reach out to complaining bloggers and solve their problems, they earned a positive buzz from the blogs in return.

Bloggers do post about brands spontaneously. And the correct engagement can prod them into action. (Unlike paying for posts which is in my opinion not real word of mouth.)

Technorati’s recent survey shows that bloggers do post about brands a lot.

But besides a crisis and being proactive there are much more PR agencies can do with blogs.

Lexis PR’s head of digital Chris Cook says in the same Guardian article:

“We believe PR is the natural home for the production of branded content. PR is about generating compelling stories that secure endorsement from third parties and drive conversation and engagement with brands. Good branded content should follow the same rules.”

Mmmm… Chris appears to be saying that just like advertising is becoming more content like, so is PR. Perhaps ad agencies and PR agencies are converging on the same territory? Content.

According to the Guardian this approach is demonstrated by the work of another PR firm, Onlinefire. Onlinefire is engaging football fans with an widget (a little application) – with links to personalised Football stories – for BBC Radio 5 live.

The widget has by all accounts been a success. It has been distributed to football sites and blogs such as clubfanzine.com, which has driven twice as many referrals to 5 Live as from bbc.co.uk itself.

The take home here is that PR companies can create awareness via content as well as any ad agency.

But have another look at Chris Cook’s definition of PR:

“PR is about generating compelling stories that secure endorsement from third parties and drive conversation and engagement with brands.”

This generation of compelling stories may have been correct in the past, but seems slightly at odds with current thinking on how companies can best communicate and have a conversation with their customers today.

To appreciate how best to engage customers its important not only to use blogs. It’s important for PR officers or those responsible for public relations in business to start blogging themselves.

That was the other thing that Dell did to escape from Dell Hell. Jeff Jarvis later wrote about Dell’s conversion to the conversation for BusinessWeek:

“Dell started its Direct2Dell blog, where it quickly had to deal with a burning-battery issue and where chief blogger Lionel Menchaca gave the company a frank and credible human voice. Last February, Michael Dell launched IdeaStorm.com, asking customers to tell the company what to do.
…
Dell blogger Menchaca has led the charge in convincing bloggers that “real people are here to listen,” and so he diligently responds and links to critics, and holds up his end of the conversation. “You can’t fake it,” he says. Dell’s team is stanching the flow of bad buzz.”

But as I posted previously, engaging customers directly through business blogs is very different from doing a press release.You can’t fake it. And neither can you be economical with the truth. That is something old PR will have to get used to. “Generating compelling stories” – especially ones that are not authentic – is old hat.

“That change in perception just doesn’t happen with a press release,” Menchaca says.

PS:

Apparently the Guardian got bits of their story wrong. According to Onlinefire’s blog:

The widget was developed by award winning design agency clock. We were brought in to take their awesome widget out to the masses, which we have done with aplomb, if we do say so ourselves – generating more than 1.5 million downloads since launch.

“Public relations firms are beginning to get in on the digital marketing act, seeing the business of inspiring bloggers to write about their brands as natural, if somewhat different, extension of traditional PR skills.”

The Media Guardian published another special insert on Internet Advertising yesterday and the above quote comes from an article (not yet online) about how PR is finding the ‘blogosphere’ the ‘perfect environment’.

Technorati recently published figures in their annual state of blogosphere survey claiming that this inspiring of bloggers is not too subtle -

“…one in three bloggers has been approached to be a brand advocate. Of those, more than six in ten were offered payments of some kind.”

These propositions are likely to be attractive to bloggers. Anybody that has done the maths would know its very difficult (it requires hundreds of thousands of pageviews) to make money from blogging via advertising with effective cost per thousands (eCPMs) of $2 to $10.

And there are companies now offering brands paid for ‘word of mouth’ opportunities with services like PayPerPost.

And this is not only about word of mouth. PayPerPost essentially pay bloggers to write about and importantly link to websites or products. The amount they also pay depends on a blog’s Google PageRank and traffic. In case you don’t know, blogs tend to have great PageRank.

Now, as any good journalist will instinctively know, any blogger that writes about a product for dosh and who does not declare this – if caught out – would ruin their blogs reputation as a credible source of information and probably damage the brand of the product they are reviewing at the same time.

PayPerPost publishes a code of bloggers ethics that includes a commitment to disclosure. But they do demand to read and approve a post before they pay.

Since paid for blog posts are not that different from advertorials (and is therefore not real word of mouth) the real value of using this method of promotion must lie in the transfer of PageRank from the blog to the product page more than anything else.

I was recently asked to do a presentation on the impact of social media on marketing, advertising and public relations (PR).

The take way? Brand advertising is under severe pressure, and what was referred to as advertising in the past is becoming more and more content like.

Social media will become home to many erstwhile advertisers. It is the dawn of a new and different way of engaging your customers.

The slide show (below) is UK centric and still has room for improvement. Any feedback or criticism is welcome.