Public relations and managing reputation

Setting public relations objectives that are directly related to an organisation’s mission and operating or business plan is, so it seems, one of PR’s great challenges. It simply does not occur with any consistently applied methodology. But there are ways to create objectives – or KPIs – that are inherently and profoundly relevant to what an organisation is actually trying to achieve – let’s learn some ’secrets’…

Angela Sinickas is an internationally renowned public relations exponent and a passionate advocate for the setting of objectives – that have utility and are consistent in their application. Angela has been awarded 17 International Association of Business Communicators Gold Quills, teaches a graduate class on communication measurement and is widely published.

Prior to her presenting a half-day workshop on Measuring ROI on communications (see below for free ticket if you are quick and have an insight) on 3 August for IABC NSW (sponsored by Ogilvy Public Relations Australia and St George Bank), Angela kindly answered a number of questions on this vexed issue.

A consistent KPI methodology

CP: Is there a straightforward methodology that can be applied to setting KPIs for public relations?

I think so. Start with a business goal.

Figure out which stakeholders need to change their behavior to better reach that goal. Research what knowledge and attitude messages will encourage the changed behavior, and which channels are most preferred for those messages.

Set targets for all of the above. Measure results through surveys and/or pilot/control groups.

Behaviour at the heart of PR KPI setting

CP: Considerable PR discussions and articles talk about PR KPIs being linked to organisational objectives, as well as them being “meaningful, reasonable and quantifiable.”^ To me, a lot of this discussion doesn’t provide anything of real substance and utility. What are your thoughts on the academic and business discussions on best practice meaningful KPI setting and the effective measurement of public relations activities?

I agree with you. They describe characteristics of good KPIs but not what you should set KPIs for. That’s why I always go back to my mantra above of knowledge, attitudes and behaviors—but created in reverse order. First figure out the behavior desired to make sure you’re working on the right knowledge and attitudes.

What are the primary notions to bear in mind when crafting KPIs for public relations strategies and programs?

Focus on measuring the desired outcomes first. Then measure only the activities (inputs) that your research identified as leading to those outcomes.

CP: Evaluation and KPIs tend to focus on the practical manifestations of a communication strategy (e.g. media relations, sponsorship). What are the implications of a relative lack of focus on measuring the strategy behind the tactics? How can we reduce the emphasis on the messenger being examined when, often, it should be the entity that crafted the message?

I don’t think we stop often enough to ask ourselves what we’re hoping to achieve, what will change, because of tactics like media relations and sponsorships. Until we clarify how we want to change the behaviors of people touched by our tactics, we won’t structure the events properly, or have the right key messages.

If we’re not doing the right things with our tactics to create intentional audience changes, it’s useless to measure the tactics themselves.

CP: You have written about how behaviour is the most important of the three potential dimensions resulting from communication-related activity (behaviour, perceptions, knowledge). Do you think this is forgotten in PR KPI setting sometimes and what are the fundamental reasons for prioritising behaviour over perceptions and knowledge?

If you don’t start with behavior, you’ll miss some of the most important key messages.

I often use an example from Malcolm Gladwell’s first book, The Tipping Point, where he describes a university health care clinic where the communicator wrote a brochure will all the key points the clinicians wanted on why students should get a tetanus vaccination:

• They even pretested the brochure, and the students scored very high on knowledge of all the key messages
• However, only 4% actually got a vaccination
• When they asked some of the original students why, with all this correct knowledge in mind, they didn’t get vaccinated, the most common answer was that they didn’t know where the clinic was.

Now that was a key message for the audience, though it never occurred to the internal client and communicator because they worked there. Once they added a map to the brochure, with no other changes, 28% of the students reading the brochure got vaccinated. If they had just asked five students what they needed to know and believe in order to get the vaccination, at least four of them would have said, “I need to know where to go.”

Many of our clients’ key messages are usually totally unnecessary, and they’re often far enough out of touch with their stakeholders that they don’t know what messages might be missing.

How to evolve KPIs on an ongoing basis

CP: Once KPIs are set for PR programs, what methodology should be applied to their ongoing evolution from, for instance, year to year? I think a factor especially relevant to the change in KPIs is that knowledge, perceptions and behaviour can, arguably, only change so much. How do you determine when the change that has been achieved is optimum and from that point it might be more relevant for the knowledge/perceptions/behaviour to be maintained, rather than changed? What are your thoughts on this?

It’s easy when you start from a low baseline to set targets, but as you say, the annual increases will become smaller and smaller as you reach more of your audience successfully. I’ve covered this in more detail in an article.

The “optimum point” would very well be different for different things you’re measuring. For example, if you’re trying to improve the knowledge of employees on something, your best possible percentage score is going to be seriously limited by the rate of annual employee turnover.

If only 75% of the people with your company in January when you start your campaign are still with the company by the next January, 75% would be your maximum possible target (though still not a realistic one). You need to work down from levels that reality limits.

Another way to look at the optimum, or highest realistic, target is to look at benchmarks.

I have clients where we index their success on metrics captured through surveys by determining that they would receive the maximum number of points for an item if they reached the previously highest score achieved by any company on that same metric. They’d be doing an average job if their score was near the norm (average) for that question.

For metrics based on things like online usage, we’ll look at the number of page views or visitors for the previous year. We look at the highest number of visitors/visits for any particular webcast or publication and set that as the top possible score that we could receive the following year as the average for the year.

What did you think about what Angela said? Do you set what you consider to be meaningful KPIs for your communication strategies and programs? What are the issues you have in setting these KPIs; what are your challenges? NB. A second post featuring Angela’s thoughts will appear in the near future on this blog.

 

Attention: a free ticket to Measuring ROI on communications, being presented on 3 August by IABC NSW, with the support of Ogilvy Australia and St George Bank, will be given to the person who provides the most interesting, value-adding comment to this post.*

About Angela Sinickas

Angela Sinickas, ABC, IABC Fellow, is president of Sinickas Communications, Inc., an international consulting firm that helps organizations plan and measure successful communication, including 23% of Forbes’ Global 100 largest corporations. She wrote the manual How to Measure Your Communication Programs and has earned 17 IABC Gold Quills. She also teaches an online graduate class on communication measurement for Northeastern University. Over 130 articles on communication planning and measurement can be read at www.sinicom.com

*The comment must be submitted by 9am Monday 2 August, Sydney, Australia time. I (CP) am the sole judge so don’t moan if you don’t like the arbitrary and subjective adjudication process! The winner must also be able to make the workshop, so unless you are willing to fly from Perth (Australia or Scotland), Southampton or Athens, don’t expect to win the ticket.

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^Guidelines for Setting Measurable Public Relations Objectives: An Update; Anderson, Hadley, Rockland, Weiner; Institute of Public Relations; 2009

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It should come as no surprise to hear that Google, one of the most potent organisations in the world, has trust as one of its positioning lynchpins…yet in a (business) world still coming to terms with the fact that those defining a brand are more often its stakeholders than the brand itself, this is still close to being revolutionary, especially if it is being effectively put into action, rather than simply being pontificated on.

Lucinda Barlow, Google Australia and New Zealand’s Head of Corporate Communications and Public Affairs, put forward this premise at Frocomm’s 2010 New Media Summit. “We all work for and represent brands and brands are all about trust,” Lucinda said. “People have certain expectations of a brand and that’s what we have to portray.”

But are all brands about trust? I don’t think so. Australian Wheat Board? Rio Tinto? Westpac? Not exactly high-performing brands in the trust stakes.

Google are a fascinating entity in many ways, but their confluence of the dimensions of communication, products and societal centrality is one aspect of this. As a result of this it possesses an enormous amount of power:

• The power over people’s ability to access information (including information being organised in a manner customised to people’s varying ‘niche needs’)
• The power over people’s means of accessing information
• The power of influencing government and regulatory regimes.

In summary, this means the company is playing a significant role in shaping society itself.

NB. A full and comprehensive PDF report on the New Media Summit can be downloaded for free.

The power of giving away control

Lucinda (@lucindabarlow) describes Google as having collaboration at its heart and giving up power to its stakeholders. What a breath of fresh air for a public relations professional!

“Google’s mission is to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” said Lucinda. “This means giving our users around the world access to the information they want, from the widest variety of sources, wherever they are.”

And it is interesting to note that, despite its competition being, “one click away,” Lucinda said Google’s policy is not to lock people into utilising the products it develops, but to, “allow customers to move their data out of Google’s services easily.

“We have a dedicated engineering team, working across all products, called the ‘Data Liberation Front’ to make this happen. To keep you coming back, we have to keep innovating to create great services that are important to people and change their lives.”

Making it easy to not use Google has a number of implications for a professional communicator:

• It gives more power to consumers to set the terms of the relationship. In fact, with products like Google Maps, consumers have the power to actually change the parameters of the product itself
• It is empowering the consumer to be a participant in the brand, not an observer
• The numerous listening and interactive posts it has in the online environment reflect the way its business model is profoundly influenced by its stakeholders’ knowledge, views and behaviour.

Analogous to this is the approach that Lucinda said Google takes to its stakeholder communication: “We need to be fast, responsive, open and transparent in our communication.”

Eavesdropping for insights

“There is a large and growing audience of people who actively listen to, distribute and publish their opinions online,” said Lucinda. “This gives real power to the vocal minority. According to Nielsen, in Australia 45% of people online publish their opinions specifically about products, services, and brands online and a massive 86% read them. It’s such an influential space.

“When you probe what the most trusted sources of information are, word of mouth comes out tops followed by online…because online is seen as a way to scale ‘word of mouth’ and tap into it en masse.
“And you’re not just about managing what gets said about your brand in order to effect sales directly. It’s also about consumer insight. It’s like being permanently tapped in to the world’s largest focus group. Our users decide what’s popular and what they want to watch. They talk about it. They debate with each other. Those comments are gold. Just ask United Airlines…”

Social responsibility

The power of Google means it has a more profound, socially pervasive social responsibility than most organisations. Its enormous global reach (i.e. all stratas of virtually all societies) make this more challenging for Google than most, as different societies and their various elements all have differing expectations of organisations.

As long as trust remains central to its business model, however, it has a reliable compass with which to steer itself. Communication, and public relations in particular, is the ideal mechanism to facilitate this journey occurring.

What are your thoughts on this post? What are your perceptions of trust in the business world? Are organisations working harder to earn it form their stakeholders? Are they sincere? Are Google sincere? What impact are public relations professionals having on organisations’ trustworthiness? Is social media making a difference to our ability to make organisations behave in a manner that makes them more trustworthy? It would be great to hear your opinions.

PS: I’d welcome you joining networks with me through my LinkedIn profile. Send me an invite! PPS. And don’t forget you can subscribe to this blog via email or RSS at the top of the blog’s page, or Tweet about this post using the handy RT button, adding your own editorial two cents worth!

PPS. And don’t forget you can subscribe to this blog via email or RSS at the top of the blog’s page, or Tweet about this post using the handy RT button, adding your own editorial two cents worth!

Related posts

• Free report: PR at war – opinion explosion at social media summit
• Strategic communication with Facebook
• Online content helping public relations manage reputation

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Trust, crowds (utilisation of, communicating to, segmenting of…), integration (or not) of social media and corporate websites, the death of ‘networked’ communication, content generation issues and the challenges of change within social media were some of the primary themes that were either explicitly stated at the 2010 Frocomm New Media Summit, bubbled under its surface or were notable not for their articulation, but by their surprising absence…

For your free report looking into and analysing the 2010 Frocomm New Media Summit, download the FROCOMM New Media Summit 2010_Report. And don’t forget to share it with your colleagues, peers and friends; RT about it; and get your contacts to subscribe to this blog.

Articles in the report feature content formulated in four different ways:

• Reports on summit presentations by speakers
• Interviews with speakers post-summit
• Analysis by Ruci Fixter and myself
• The integration of perspectives and content from other professional communicators, business people and bloggers.

The summit was a gathering of some leading minds of the Australian public relations and social media industries, as well as a large and enthusiastically interactive audience. There was an interesting balance of presentations that took a helicopter strategic view, along with those that were more hands on/tactically-based, with both leavened by plenty of case studies.

But perhaps the most notable message that comes out of gatherings like this is: don’t sit there and vacillate; get in and get your hands dirty; expertise comes with experience, not the endless pondering of ramifications.

Of course, the way we as communication professionals act should depend on evidence-based market research. We should consider all the options and seek to apply best practice methodologies.

But social media is still evolving at a rapid rate. Each strategy and its tactical dimensions need to be customised to the business outcome sought, to the relevant target audiences and to the issue/product/service at hand.

At the end of the day, your communication activity may be the first of its kind. So whilst you can listen and learn and formulate, the best answer to your social media dilemma may just be to do. But don’t dive in thinking you are going to kill it from the start.

Strive to become the expert. But, as many speakers stated or implied, humility and adaptability are valuable. Pack them in your baggage.

Trust your public relations

The notion of trust was elemental to many of the presentations at the summit. That is because trust is what social media is deified as helping generate (if not accelerate). Trust, of course, helps generate positive word of mouth, the holy grail of marketers:

• free endorsement of products, services and organisations
• the viral, no charge (well, sort of…) snowball effect (and especially when exercised through social media)
• extrapolation into increased sales/profits.

Social media platforms, as Brendon Hughes recently wrote, “have changed our definition of friend’.” The interesting question that Brendon posed was: “Is social media making trust weaker or stronger?” His feeling is that social media is not delivering as broad a degree of trust as marketers might like to think.

Social media, corporate website or trad media?

The question of where the greatest influence on consumers will emanate from in coming years was not asked at the summit. This surprised me. Options I put on the table to some of the speakers included:

• Social media sources
• Corporate websites
• Traditional (in both ‘hard’ and digital format) media.

Of course, it isn’t an either/or zero-sum game. Shades of grey are permitted!

But as I discuss in a series of posts from my blog that are included in this report, PR needs to work harder at website communication opportunities. Strategic communication, especially those elements with a digital bent, should be wary about putting all their tactical eggs in the social media basket. The corporate website has an opportunity to:

• provide engaging, useful and credible information to stakeholders
• rank higher in web searches because of this content, intelligent backlinking strategies and appropriate technical IT support
• act as a hub for social media activity.

This thinking has been reinforced, according to Andrew Hughes of Reprise Media, because Google changes means brands need to focus more on content and one of the best ways to do this is, “publish as much relevant content on your own website…”

PR: experts in content generation?

Content. What a hassle. What an opportunity!

But…if you don’t got it, you don’t got nothing to say. It’s the elephant in the room.

Generating content valued by your target audiences takes time and a lot of it. Think of all the social media platforms to feed. Recycling and customisation will work to a degree, but this won’t entirely sate the beast. So where are the resources coming from?

And who can’t love the switch that Matthew Gain pulled on summit attendees, saying we need to think like journos when creating content for our organisations, not like PR pros. This is a favourite topic of David Meerman Scott, the king advocate of corporate website communication.

Behind content are two further themes: creativity and viral. All three work together. A major challenge with social media is getting consumers to advocate the content. For it to go viral. This might occur because it is fun, because it is creative, because it is relevant to consumers’ lifestyles or because it exhibits thought leadership.

Thought leadership works if it:

• provides POD
• adds value to target audiences’ lifestyles
• is relevant to the organisation or brand that is promulgating it.

Networked communication is dead; long live the niche

Dan Ilic said it at the summit. Seth Godin has said it in the context of micro magazines. And Mike ‘Zappy’ Zapolin said it at a recent conference: niche is winning the war. Broadcast, big reach media networks are dead.

But this notion of big-reach communication being almost dead, whether it is in the context of media outlets, social media or other forms of communication, seems to me to be just a tad precious.

PR and marketing folk love reaching as many eyeballs as possible. So do clients and CEOs. (It makes for impressive reading in monthly reports, after all.) And I bet it is likely that a lot of direct mail is undertaken based on stats that underline that though there is a lot of waste, so is there sufficient ROI to keep on cutting down forests.

A very big challenge in going niche, in being very targeted and customised, is the ROI. Smaller audiences should mean, in theory, smaller investment (unless this audience is the influencer on a wider group). But easier said than done.

So whilst I love the notion, I’m not so sure some of the talk on this topic isn’t just a little specious. I fully expect there to be further debate on this topic, with warring tribes fully armed with rationales and statistics supporting their views.

Summary

The change that is occurring in the social media/new media/digital communication/traditional (on and offline versions) environment is intense. In the time it has taken to produce this report, here is a minuscule selection of some of the topics and issues that have arisen:

• Doubts over Twitter’s efficacy for tactical/sales generating communication
• MySpace regaining momentum through Facebook’s perceived privacy failings
• The relentless ascent up the social media mountain of Foursquare
• Apple’s patenting of a Facebook/iPhone app.Who has time to keep up? Can we pay someone to filter this information for us? Social media is forcing the PR professional pay a heavy price for staying on the ball.

In regard to the summit, only a few of its themes have been flagged here. The rest are in the articles featured in the report. Download the report for free, share it around, RT it, get your contacts to subscribe to this blog.

And please let Glen Frost from Frocomm and I know what you think about the content and how we can provide more useful resources for you in the future to help you do your job as a professional communicator.

So, your call to action!

• Download your free FROCOMM New Media Summit 2010_Report
• Share it with your colleagues, peers and friends
• RT about it and get your contacts to subscribe to this blog.

Posts based on the report will be featured on this blog and on Blueblog in coming weeks. All comments, questions, observations and violent disagreements are welcome!

PS: I’d welcome you joining networks with me through my LinkedIn profile. Send me an invite! PPS. And don’t forget you can subscribe to this blog via email or RSS at the top of the blog’s page, or Tweet about this post using the handy RT button, adding your own editorial two cents worth!

PPS. And don’t forget you can subscribe to this blog via email or RSS at the top of the blog’s page, or Tweet about this post using the handy RT button, adding your own editorial two cents worth!

Related posts

• Free report: PR at war – opinion explosion at social media summit
• Strategic communication with Facebook
• Online content helping public relations manage reputation
• Social media communication generating trust

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Contrary to its positioning amongst the professional communication and broader business environments, issues management is not always inextricably integrated into crisis communication. In fact, its strongest characteristic is strengthening an organisation’s reputation so it is less likely to be negatively impacted on by a crisis.

Issues management is, therefore, both an inherent component of all effective PR and a discrete approach (and even tool) that can be applied in specific situations.

You can almost tear issues management into two themes:

• Uh oh – here comes a proverbial %#@*storm down the funnel; let’s circle the wagons and try to resolve the issue or minimise the damage before we get started into crisis mode
• Party time! – choosing from a range of marketing communication and/or public relations tools (preferably as part of a broader strategy) to create strong, positive, mutually beneficial relationships with stakeholders.

Defusing the bomb: proactive reactive PR

‘Proactive reactive PR’? Okay, alright, I know it sounds like spin. But it ain’t.

This notion is founded on your issues management process identifying that there is trouble up ahead. You might find this out through your Google alerts, through your community consultation process, through employees that have enough savvy to let you know about an issue they have come across.

Hopefully, you haven’t found out about it through your media monitoring. By then the horse has probably bolted (i.e. bye bye issues management; hello crisis comms!).

Being proactively reactive means you have identified the issue and are going to do something about it before it impacts negatively on your reputation to any significant degree. The two main responses are to communicate with your stakeholders, or actually do something about what has caused the stakeholder consternation.

Too often public relations professionals will satisfy themselves with sticking to the former (i.e. meetings, consultation, letters to those concerned etc). The more strategic and braver professional will actually seek to attack the second potential response:

• do something about what has caused the stakeholder consternation.

In most cases only this response can actually make a long-lasting impact on the relationship between an organisation and its stakeholders. This response is at the heart of two-way symmetrical communication, the primary theory that underpins and drives best practice public relations.

There are exceptions to this, of course. Sometimes the issue that has been identified may actually simply be (simply? Well, on a comparative scale, yes, just simply) a communication-related problem.

Party time for PR pros

I get the feeling that a lot of PR pros have the view that doing consumer media relations, holding big events, sponsoring fun family days and the like are simply fluffy PR activities. They aren’t ‘serious’.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

As part of an holistic, integrated communication strategy all of these activities are thinking about the following:

• Who are the stakeholders/target audiences of most concern/importance to an organisation?
• What are the issues of most concern/relevance/importance to these stakeholders?
• What is the timeframe we have in making an impact on knowledge/perceptions/behaviour towards the organisation in regard to these issues?
• What are the communication mechanisms that will enable the organisation to get information on the relevant issues to the stakeholders most expeditiously and in the most influential manner (i.e. a short presentation by an organisation employee before a sponsored school event with local parents in attendance may be a more influential, targeted and quicker way to go than getting a story in a national newspaper on the issue)?
• What or who will influence the stakeholders? For instance, is there a 3^rd party advocate for the organisation relevant to the issue at hand that can communicate to stakeholders in an influential manner?

There are more questions than these (I’m thinking budget for one!), but these five elements are very important.

So the following can all be extremely ‘serious’ and much important communication activities than government lobbying, media relations and crisis management:

• Sponsoring a school fete
• Presenting to the local ladies View Club or Rotary Club
• Putting together a curriculum-relevant schools resource.

But let’s not forget the most import issues management/avoidance approach of all is: behave/operate in line with your stakeholders’ expectations.

The basics of PR

PR pros should never forget that we can change the world through a strategic application of our skill set. We can lobby internally to change the way an organisation operates:

• The processes it uses to manufacture products (i.e. no sweatshops)
• The products it produces (i.e. reduced fat/sugar in products)
• The way in which it responds with stakeholder concerns (i.e. engages and/or evolves and does not obfuscate or avoid).

Communication itself can only do so much. It cannot, in itself, change an organisation or the fruits of its labours. But it can help clarify, enlighten and facilitate engagement.

Perceptions are reality. It is our responsibility to our organisations and to society in general to be honest and ethical in the way we go about our jobs.

Now THAT is issues management.

What do you think about my proposition that issues management is an integrated part of ALL strategic PR activity? Is that the way you look at it? What examples of where you have applied this thinking that had an impressive impact can you think of? And what about the ‘proactive reactive’ model of PR? Also, can you tell me where PR activity has changed the way an organisation operates?

PS: I’d welcome you joining networks with me through my LinkedIn profile. Send me an invite!

PPS. And don’t forget you can subscribe to this blog via email or RSS at the top of the blog’s page, or Tweet about this post using the handy RT button, adding your own editorial two cents worth!

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This is a guest post by Tony Jaques*, an issue and crisis management specialist with extensive corporate experience. He has been widely published in academic and business journals and is a thought leader in his field.

As managers take a new approach to deciding when to launch a product recall, public relations professionals need to reassess how they are communicated. And how to avoid meaningless phrases like ‘abundance of caution’ which hinder organisations from communicating clearly, and effectively positioning themselves, with their stakeholders.

Two recent American recalls suggest companies are raising the bar (or perhaps that should be lowering the bar) when brand protection seems to outweigh the possibility of harm to the public.

Shrek drinking glasses

In early June food giant McDonald’s announced a recall of more than 13 million souvenir glasses in the United States and Canada produced to mark the launch of the new Shrek movie. The recall followed discovery of toxic cadmium in paint used to decorate the glasses. The level of cadmium was within all federal and state legal safety limits, but above new guidelines being developed by the US Consumer product Safety Commission.

As a result, McDonald’s that announced the voluntary recall was determined “in an abundance of caution.” Meanwhile the local producer of the glasses insisted the glasses were safe and, rather unhelpfully, described the recall as “an internal decision by McDonald’s”.

Spaghetti and meatballs

Two weeks later, Campbell’s Soup announced it would recall nearly 15 million pounds of canned spaghetti and meatballs because of “possible under-processing” (whatever that means). The company said there was no information that any under-processed product had reached their mainly American consumers, whilst the US Agriculture Department said it had received no reports of illnesses from consumption of the products.

But Campbell’s announced the recall “in an abundance of caution”.

Now it must be said that the Shrek glasses incident arose just two weeks after a high profile recall of Chinese-made Mylie Cyrus-branded jewellery with high cadmium levels way above the legal limit. Similarly, the Campbell’s spaghetti incident came right on the heels of successive health scares involving e-coli and then salmonella in lettuce.

PR needs to work more effectively

It is important to stress that no-one would question for a moment the need to protect the public against legitimate risk. But maybe corporate communicators need to find a better way to explain when companies are seemingly taking an ultra-cautious approach.

There is no doubt that public expectation about corporate performance is changing when it comes to protecting health and the environment. At the same time the rise of 24/7 news coverage and social media has increased the speed and the corporate risk of consumer backlash.

For example, the Tylenol recall of 1982 is often still held up as a ‘gold standard’ of how to manage a product recall. But in that notorious case – back in the days before the development of the internet and the blogosphere – the company took almost a week to announce a recall, despite seven people dying from consuming deliberately poisoned headache tablets.

Any company today which allowed such a delay would not be praised, but would more likely be pilloried by the media and crucified by the online armchair experts for being slow and unresponsive.

However, given the current speed and brand exposure of product failure – or perceived product failure –corporate communicators need to find much better ways to explain to a sceptical public why products have been recalled, especially in cases where the risk is minimal or virtually non-existent.

Finding a better way

The McDonald’s Shrek voluntary recall announcement was well written and provides a good example of how it should be done. But the news media ignored most of their careful wording and lazily latched on to that idea of ‘abundance of caution’.

But what the heck is an abundance of caution? While some lawyer may think those are useful words, it is really one of those silly formula phrases which have no real meaning – like ’full and frank discussion.’

Corporate communicators need to encourage management not to hide behind clichés, but to speak openly to the public.

My suggestion is: “We are not required to recall this product, but we believe it is the right thing to do.” I am open to any other suggestions or improvements.

What are your thoughts on Tony’s proposition that fear of stakeholder retribution is prompting companies to communicate illogically? What are better approaches companies can apply in situations such as he has identified? What attitudes/mindsets are best for companies to take in situations such as this?

*Dr Tony Jaques is Managing Director of the Melbourne consultancy Issue Outcomes P/L which specialises in issue and crisis management and risk communication. He also publishes the regular online issue and crisis newsletter, Managing Outcomes, which anyone can subscribe to, and can be contacted at tjaques@issueoutcomes.com.au

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David Park is the author of a change manifesto for corporate affairs managers, Reputation Renegades, which is a free, downloadable e-Book. Renegades addresses many issues, but chief amongst them is the fallacy that corporations have control of their reputation. In this guest post, he provides answers to three pivotal questions that shaped the resource.

Why did you use the opening line – ‘Does Your Corporate Reputation Have New Owners?’ –  for Reputation Renegades?

It was my personal wake-up call for corporate affairs. I thought:  if I was a crazily overworked corporate affairs exec, I’d like someone to draw this stuff to my attention.

It bubbled up from my own professional epiphanies over the past few years in seeing the influence of web-based communities grow: observing virtual tribes incrementally increase their impact on corporate reputation.

 So this influence is still seen as trivial by many corporations. The funny thing is that it was – and still is – bloody hard to define and target influencers in the ‘real’ world, let alone online.

Now that the e-Book has been published for about a month, I’m more satisfied that it wasn’t too far out-there. It’s had good feedback.

Pleasingly, I saw it reflected in the recent Boss magazine in the opening line to the article, ‘Brand We.’

It reads: “Forget brand management – it’s no longer in your hands. In the future, your customer community will control your brand.” For brand – read ‘corporate reputation.’ It headed a great story by Rachel Botsman about her new book ‘Collaborative Consumption’.

The pivotal message in Renegades is control. Corporations are all about keeping control: as they’ve done since corporations began.

But they aren’t. Control and ownership of brand/reputation is changing hands.

Just ask BP.

The issue is not that corporate affairs exec are sticking fingers in their ears and yelling ‘not listening.’

It’s that those who own and run corporations don’t feel the need yet for change: especially in response to invisible stakeholder groups hidden on the internet.

Let’s face it, corporations are quite odd entities. We retain expectations that they will behave in some humanised way. The sad fact is that they were never created with such empathy in mind. They are legal constructs: defensive enclaves with regulatory moats and thick walls of limited liability. Behind this fortress the aim is simply to meet profit targets.

But times change. “These fortresses are under siege,” as the bible, ‘The Cluetrain Manifesto’ says.

‘Renegades’ is divided into sections titled Ready, Aim, Fire. In ‘Fire’ you use the term ‘reputation’ as a 10 lettered mnemonic call-to-action. Tell me more about these three: –

1. Allies
   The tactic here is for corporate affairs to recruit in-house cadres: allies. While the C-suite and Board may not want change when it comes to comms, within the company there will be many who do. They will likely be passionate users of social media too. So create an army of partisans: quietly – up in the hills. Don’t try and do it all on your own. Magic some critical mass for in-house momentum to include, rather than exclude, when it comes to comms.
2. Tell tales
   Simply, this is about humanising. We love stories. Wherever you can, drop the use of polished corporate speak. (Take a lead from Don Watson’s ‘Bendable Learnings’ in this regard.) Allow internal corporate communications to be as natural as you can. Allow us, please, to tell our stories in our own words. Social media is not just about the web; it’s a state of mind that’s about warm, humane, empathic communications.
3. Trust.
   This big warm and fuzzy is often overlooked. The issue with most corporations, as the Edelman Trust Barometer shows, is that trust has evaporated. So the recommendation here is for corporate affairs execs to tackle this head-on. To purposefully (and probably awkwardly and painfully) ask difficult questions at meetings that seek ways to bring back trust. Not easy. But you have to start somewhere, so get it out on the table.

Corporate affairs has a tough job. They have to toe the corporate line because.. well .. they wrote it.

Reputation Renegades acknowledges this and details some tactics whereby enlightened professionals might consider bringing about change: hopefully without calls by the CEO for an inquisition or worse: the burning of a heretic.

What inspired you to write it?

At parkyoung over the past year we have studied the impact of the web on societal communications. During this review it struck me that corporations, which lead our society in so many important ways, were really dragging the chain in responding to the hyper-connected market.

The fact that most corporations remained unenlightened – and were comfortable about it – was a real epiphany for me. I was encouraged, however, that deep inside these big organisations there’s a growing number of enlightened ‘guerrilla’ PRs who are becoming ‘reputation renegades.’

The kick-start came when I attended one of Jen Frahm’s workshops featuring the guru David Meerman Scott.

I was really not that familiar with the e-Book medium at all. He was such a passionate advocate for them. I really took to the informality of e-Books: his especially.

At this business workshop, business colleague Yvonne Adele, nudged me and said: “Betcha you can’t write one in a month.”

It took six.

David Park

Author of corporate affairs manifesto Reputation Renegades, David Park (a.k.a. Parky) has over 20 years experience in corporate affairs in both in-house and consultancy roles. He entered PR via an urban planning background that gave him a strategic approach which he has applied to comms ever since. He describes his in-house career as very ‘beery’ with 11 years with Lion Nathan and over 5 with Foster’s. He runs Melbourne-based strategic communications advisory firm, parkyoung, with PR Warrior Trevor Young.

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I once was lost, but now am saved. So it seems, anyway. At a major juncture in my life and one year after starting this blog, I thought it an opportune time to explain how my discovery of the public relations profession pretty much saved my life. Maybe not in a fully literal sense, but close enough to it.

This is a very personal story. Not the normal gist of this blog. But, in some ways – at a sub-atomic level, perhaps – it is ALL about this blog.

It is also longer than my normal posts, but whilst it may be a mini-epic, it is no mini-series.

Fundamental messages of my story include:

• If you have a sense, an intuition, of being capable of something, exhaust that sense until you are 100% satisfied it has been resolved. Otherwise there will be a vacancy within you that will eat at you like acid
• You can begin a career later than in your 20s
• Determination and persistence get you an opportunity; hard work and talent create a career.

Looking for a career, vocation…wherefore art thou??

In my early thirties I was struggling. I had spent time as an actor, waiter and restaurant manager and stood fairly accused as the worst barista in Sydney. I was also a DJ and a journalist on popular culture (mainly rock music – starting out on punk and new wave, then evolving into soul, funk, jazz and roots/country music). I was a pretty good music writer (I thought so, anyway) and DJ and had, as you can imagine, some pretty wild times in these vocations.

In fact, I still write about music for street mag Drum Media for fun, with highlights of the 20+ gigs I have seen this year being the astonishing Wayne Shorter, the lovable Ricki Lee Jones and the unique Lyle Lovett.

Back in my early thirties, though, I couldn’t get a grip on life. I knew I needed some sort of stable vocation to get me on the straight and narrow. I dropped out of post-school college/uni (I studied drama, an early passion, acting with Glenn Robbins aka Kath and Kim in one play) and so didn’t have that elusive degree behind me. I tried to enrol in a journalism course at uni as a mature age student a couple of times, but was rejected.

I had a sort of fearful, fragile confidence in my writing skills. And I thought if I can just get a gig applying these skills in a business environment that might be my ticket out of my personal cul de sac. So I went to see a couple of careers advisers. Supposed careers advisers. I told them about my writing skills and wanting to apply them in a business context, but…

You might think the term ‘marketing’, even if not ‘public relations’, would have come up. But no, not on your life (dickheads).

Making ends meet, but what and where is ‘the end’?

So on I struggled, surviving on the dole and labouring jobs, some meagre takings from freelance rock writing and the odd restaurant gig (as by this time I couldn’t take the hospitality industry anymore: pandering to people’s inane predilections, and their condescension, takes more forbearance than I was capable of consistently delivering).

I applied for over 100 jobs, never seeming to get close to an interview.

Ex-PM/cultural-social-political icon/Australian hero Paul Keating’s Working Nation program gave me some extraordinarily rudimentary desktop publishing skills to go along with the writing skills. Then…one fateful day. I got an interview with the Retail Traders Association of NSW.

The PR ‘break’

Armed with incentives to take on unemployed people like myself, along with my new ‘graphic design’ skills (…), I scored a job – thanks Bill Healey. After three months I asked Bill, well, my probation is over, have I got the job. I loved his response and still do: “Well, you’re still here aren’t you?” Now that’s what I call a performance review!

I was writing case studies, placing them in the media and providing internal communication resources. This was pretty cool, I thought, this seemed like what I might be looking for, but wondered: what is this? What is this vocation I seem to be in?

Next thought: I’d better get a qualification in this ‘thing’ (whatever the hell it is) to make sure I can keep this baby rolling.

I saw a short course in PR and that rang a few bells. Am I in public relations? So I took the course, given by the legendary David Potts. About 10 minutes into the first session, the scales fell from my eyes: JESUS WEPT, I’M IN PUBLIC RELATIONS!

As soon as that course was over I enrolled in a Graduate Certificate in Public Relations at UTS (I was too dumb, underqualified and under experienced to get into a masters). There, I had the extremely good fortune to be taught by more Australian heroes like Gael Walker and John Carr. I ate it up, then articulated the certificate into a full Masters of Communication, where more very wonderful teachers like Shirli Kirschner, Rebecca Harris and Jane Jordon shared their practical and academic knowledge with me.

The masters was the best thing I could have done. It provided me with insights into the wonderful potential of PR and the structure of strategic communication.

So I got my degree when I was just shy of 40, the first person in my family to get one. I was proud, sure, but my God I was relieved. I had something to fall back on, yes, but you know what? One of the greatest gifts that the Masters gave me was self-esteem, a belief that maybe I wasn’t as worthless as I thought I was. Sure, I had the ego to protect myself, that masculine, brittle bravado that held all doubts at arms length. But really, they were there, feasting on my psyche and soul in private moments, shaping who I was in public.

My career progressed at an exciting pace, with excellent jobs in a number of organisations such as 2iC Integrated Communication (with the inspirational Cath Stace and other wonderful colleagues) and the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (where I have also made some friends with people who I hope stay in my life for as long as it lasts).

What PR means to me

Before PR came along, I was a drowning man. When it appeared, it was solid land onto which I held. And what at first seemed like a desert island that would suffice, quickly evolved into a continent that has nurtured me and allowed me to explore myself on both a personal and professional level.

PR suits me as a person. I am politically inclined towards social democracy. I believe we all have a responsibility to global society. PR, to me, has that notion embedded into it.

Fundamental elements of public relations that attract me include:

• It facilitates communication, understanding and engagement between organisations and their stakeholders
• It helps prompt organisations change as much as it prompts stakeholders to change, leading to a more equitable, responsive and respectful society
• It necessitates empathising with ‘others’ and, as such, learning from them: it is a humanising professional discipline
• The way in which it is analogous to culture or art; the way it captures elements of contemporary life and helps reflect back those elements with different emphases; and also because it can be very creative and packed full of ideas
• It is intellectually stimulating as you learn about different industries, ideas and a diverse array of people (not to mention their views of the world)
• Writing is the number one skill you need. This is the technical skill I enjoy practicing the most and have a high degree of confidence in.

Public relations and I: now

So, 16 odd years after discovering this wonderful profession called public relations, I am a much happier and more satisfied person. The last few years have been another story in itself, with me struggling to find a specific job in which to satisfactorily work. The GFC got me retrenched, but it has led to me operating my own business which has been an unplanned eye-opener and extremely rewarding. But that is a story for another day…

I was very, very lucky to find what I consider to be my ‘home in professional business communication – or public relations. Its principles have made me a better person and a better father than I would otherwise have been (as for better husband, well, my wife might want to post on that. But then again, maybe not…).

As for the future, well, let’s think about that….

How did you discover public relations? What does the discipline mean to you? Did you come to it from another profession? Are you tired of it and/or do you think you’d like to move to another profession? What would that be and why that particular profession?

If you liked this post, perhaps you have a friend who would also like it you can send a link to.

PS: I’d welcome you joining networks with me through my LinkedIn profile. Send me an invite!

PPS. And don’t forget you can subscribe to this blog via email or RSS at the top of the blog’s page, or Tweet about this post using the handy RT button, adding your own editorial two cents worth!

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In the partner post to this one, I presented 14 reasons why working in public relations in-house kicks agency butt. This post, obviously, presents the flipside.

Working in a PR agency is one of the most exciting, valuable and positive experiences any PR professional can have. In the early years of your career, in particular, you are less hamstrung by process and get your hands on a range of projects. Agency employees are often perceived as experts; it presents a range of professional and life opportunities; and you are surrounded by peers who understand the discipline and provide excellent support.

What do you need to work in a PR agency? Hunger and a can-do attitude. Wallflowers need not apply

But what do you think?

The advantages of agency PR roles

1. As you are working at a remove from an organisation, this distance often allows you to see issues more objectively and more clearly, thus helping develop solutions that those in the ‘organisational mist’ don’t generate.

2. Without a doubt, working in an agency is a more pressurised, and hence more dynamic, environment than in-house. This can facilitate a quick learning curve because of the exposure to different responsibilities you are given and the faith that is placed in your skills.

3. You are more likely to be perceived as being an expert in a certain area of professional communication (i.e. look at how agency employees dominate speaker line ups at conferences). Social media is currently an excellent example of this, but so is government relations/lobbying, media relations and CSR.

4. Speaking of experts, Geoff Kelly made the excellent point in a Public Relations of Australia LinkedIn discussion of my preceding post that often external consultants are respected and viewed as experts partially because they are…external! Great for both self-esteem and getting relevant, productive and interesting communication programs into play.

5. Despite often being introduced to an organisation to carry out tactical projects (with media relations and social media being king and queen), this often evolves into agencies making important strategic contributions to an organisation’s communication. This can be relevant to the specific project an agency is brought on-board for, or it can evolve into a broader remit, one that impacts on the fundamental nature of an organisation’s communication.

6. Winning new business is a great buzz. It needs to be, because as you get more senior in an agency it will always part of your responsibilities. The new biz process is outside the ‘PR process’ (strategy and tactics), but PR pros’ typical skills of networking, customising activity to stakeholder needs and empathy strongly come into play in the new business process. For some, it is an additive elixir…and it is ALWAYS a challenge.

7. Through interaction with a diverse range of businesses, issues and people, you will learn a lot about the world and you will, without even trying, be presented with a range of opportunities – PR/work-related and personal. You just need to be sensitive to these opportunities and not sleep walk through life.

8. By working with a variety of clients and in a diversity of industries, it gives you a great insight into the sorts of PR areas and industries you’d like to work in. This doesn’t mean you have to devote your entire career to these niche areas or industries, but it can help you learn where you will be most fulfilled.

PR areas include media relations, social media, CSR, public affairs, issues & crisis management, publications (e.g. annual reports) community liaison, event management, consumer, B2B and many more.

Industries include FMCG, utilities, renewables, NFP, government, engineering, architecture, resources and many more.

9. You can progress your career more quickly. Opportunities tend to come up in agencies for promotion more often than in-house. The war for talent seems to be stronger in agencies than in-house and agencies work hard to offer interesting roles at competitive packages. This means you can nearly always negotiate different responsibilities, experiences and opportunities into your role, even if increased remuneration isn’t always an option on the table.

10. You are less likely to be typecast into roles, which can occur in-house. Recruiters love to pigeonhole candidates. It makes their lives easier. Working in an agency means you are perceived, as a default, as being very flexible and able to adapt to the needs of a diversity of roles and industry areas.

11. It is much easier to get an in-house role with an agency background than the other way around. The former is the more common path. The simple reason is that if you have proved yourself in the furnace of agency life, you should definitely be able to make it in the, typically, less mentally and emotionally draining/demanding world of in-house PR.

12. One of my highly respected peers, Graham White (@GWhiteOz), believes it is less lonely working in PR when you are in an agency. Possibly Graham thinks that because in an agency you will have many (or very many!) PR peers who have a good understanding of the pressures and opportunities of working in the field. Working in-house you may be a sole operator or part of a small team, which can lead to perceptions of not feeling understood or appreciated in your role. ‘MadeTheSwitch’ said as much after making the switch to in-house PR. And in the same comments section Nicola said she really struggled to get moral and professional support.

13. You can generally negotiate a greater degree of work-life balance into an agency role. This is my experience, anyway. Promises of working from home and flexible hours are easy to give, but not so easy for any organisation/agency to follow through with, no matter how well-intentioned. The employee – not the employer – really needs to ensure the promises are fulfilled. There are no free passes in this area.

14. You are less likely to waste your life away in meetings when working in an agency, according to Marc Cornelius, who flagged this in a Public Relations and Communications Professionals LinkedIn discussion. By implication, you get to spend more time on ‘doing’ and ‘achieving’ then pontificating. Fair comment, I thought.

15. You are less likely to fall victim to client internal politics when you are working in an external agency, Marc also said. I don’t think this is necessarily true; politics has a way of wending its fingers around you when you work with a client long enough!

16. Working in an agency can lead to equity in the business. This is great if you want to eventually run your own show. You can often get experience in running a business in an agency environment, which is obviously beneficial if you have ambitions to run your own show. It can also lead to you making more money than you otherwise would have, which applies to both agency and in-house experiences.

17. And one final point. If you are in a global PR agency (and there are plenty of them) there are opportunities to work overseas for the same agency. Ah, if only I was smart enough to figure that one out when I was younger!

Summary

I always counsel less experienced practitioners to get at least a few years of agency experience under their belt. It is a dynamic, fast moving, pressurised environment that is a lot of fun. You are expected to deliver and deliver fast. Working in-house can lead to this high quality delivery mentality too, but with agency you are much more likely to get there quicker and to keep it. I highly recommend it.

What are your thoughts on working in a PR agency? What are your good and bad experiences? Is there one environment you prefer working in – agency or in-house? What do you think about the positive points of working in a PR agency made in this post?

PS: I’d welcome you joining networks with me through my LinkedIn profile. Send me an invite!

PPS. And don’t forget you can subscribe to this blog via email or RSS at the top of the blog’s page, or Tweet about this post using the handy RT button, adding your own editorial two cents worth!

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After having worked in PR for 16 years, both in-house and ‘in-agency’, I believe working in-house is clearly where one can make a more significant difference to an organisation and its stakeholders, as well as being a more rewarding environment in which to work: you write the strategy, pull the strings and don’t have the hideous ogre of new business to deal with.

But what do you think?

The advantages of in-house PR roles

1. You get to devise the overarching communication strategy and strategic approach. And if you don’t actually write it, you are closest to this particular coal face and, in theory, you get to contribute to and/or participate in its implementation in the most active way possible – rather than being at arm’s length with limited control.

2. You run the communication show. Consultants/agencies report to you. They are more often your arms and legs than a significant contributor to the central planks of your communication strategy.

 3. When running the communication ‘show’, you are more likely to be able to prompt an organisation to implement two-way symmetrical communication, facilitating an organisation operating in a manner more in-line with its stakeholders’ needs and wants. This also leads to a more equitable society, which has a multiplicity of personal and professional rewards.

4. You get to immerse yourself more deeply in the widest possible range of issues and experiences relevant to an organisation, giving you the broadest possible perspective on the organisation. This helps you develop the best possible solutions to communication challenges and respond in a speedy way to them. 

5. The fact that you consistently work on one client – your organisation – means that the impact of your work is likely to have a greater and more transparent impact than if you worked occasionally on this client. 

6. If access to power is important, when working in-house you are more likely to have interactions with organisational leadership. This can make you feel good about yourself, but it can also mean your ideas are heard more easily by senior stakeholders, potentially giving you opportunities you may not have otherwise had. Mainly, however, it’s an ego thing!

7. As the work you do on your ‘client’, and the results your work delivers, is more visible, that should generate more job satisfaction than skipping across a range of clients.

8. It is a more stable environment to work in than agencies. Your job is less likely to be downsized. Agencies are more downturn-sensitive, which in business quickly equates to a redundancy. If agency billable hours are reduced then there is less money to pay the bills, so even if your performance is excellent, you may need to hit the road.

9. Professional development (e.g. university courses, short courses, conference attendance) is better funded in-house. You only need to look where most PR conference attendees come from. In-house totally dominates (although, and this is both hilarious and tells you something, it is agencies that often dominate the speaker line ups!).  Non-agency organisations also tend to provide other support such as study leave to a much higher degree than agencies.

10. As working in-house is generally not as intense a vocational experience as working in an agency, you are given time to evolve your skill set and grow into your job. Billable hours is not normally a feature of working in-house, so ‘the work’ (i.e. public relations work) is far and away the focus. Whereas when working in an agency billable hours (i.e. profit) rules all other aspects and it can be troubling to have to balance the professional communication responsibilities with business efficacy responsibilities. 

11. You don’t have to spend time on new business. That. In itself. Is. A. WIN. There will be some who find the process of scoping and securing new business for an agency rewarding. Most do not. I did a Masters of Communication, for instance, to help with my ability to practice public relations. I didn’t do a Masters of Sales. I find the process enervating and boring. 

12. The strong focus on new business in an agency can generate a culture of fear. Not enough billable hours = my job is at threat = stress and uncertainty. In-house does not have this issue anywhere near as much.

13. Unless this is part of your specific role, you do not have to spend as much time on media relations as you typically do in an agency role. Media relations is rewarding, it often delivers ROI and helps achieve organisational objectives, but it is not the be-all and end all. PR is not media relations. Whilst extensive creativity, intelligence and tenacity is required to work effectively in media relations, so does it have a strong ‘sales’ (even telesales) dimension and it also becomes tiresome putting up with the scepticism and negativity of many journalists. 

14. Organisations tend to have deeper support systems and processes in place for managing employees. This is purely a small business vs large business dichotomy, but is very relevant to PR. This means that performance reviews, counselling, support, leave provisions etc tend to be much more employee-centric when working in-house.

But what do you think?

Next week I’ll explore why working in PR agencies is an awesome, galvanising and rewarding experience.

What have I missed? What else is great about working in-house in PR? Is it better than working in an agency? And even though I will list my thoughts on the advantages of agency life next week, feel free to beat me to the punch and give me your list – I’ll include your thoughts (well, if I think they’re on the money!) in my post.

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This is the second part of a two-part series on social media’s impact on the practice of PR and the profession itself. The thoughts in this mini-series were articulated in response to an interview with British uni student Hayley McDonald (@HAYCMAC).

In the 21^st century, PR should be leveraging its logical leadership of social media for all its worth and use it as an opportunity to position itself more favourably as a management discipline that delivers business-relevant results.

The most potent and potentially meaningful characteristic of public relations remains its ability to transform organisations so that they are more aligned with their stakeholders’ needs and wants.

No other business discipline has this capability. Social media can help it achieve this goal and it is already – partially because it is inherently a dialogic communication mechanism, rather than a broadcast one like traditional media, direct mail and sponsorship – doing this. It is in this area of transforming organisations that PR must shine and provide business worth, or else it will become marginalised.

The social media tools I use and ‘rate’

On a professional and personal level I am very comfortable with, and pretty knowledgeable about, blogs. I contribute to a couple of professional blogs, Public relations and managing reputation and Blueblog, the home of the public affairs and corporate communication consultancy, Bluegrass, I work with. I also use Twitter on a professional and personal basis, but keep Facebook pretty much for fun and personal uses.

All of these tools have professional ‘world’ potential, depending on the business objective, the target audience preferences and what you are actually communicating about. I don’t think any one of them is necessarily any more important than the other.

If you want to generalise, however, Facebook is the medium going ballistic. I am not sure why anyone would want to use Facebook to become a fan of a service or product provider, however. That seems pretty superficial to me, other than on a fun level. I can’t see how communication for a product or service on this platform can really engage and turn people into advocates, but perhaps I am being a snob. I can see its utility for the arts, cultural and sporting entities, however.

As content is really a very important issue in this Google-censored world (if you are not ranked by Google, then you may as well not, in many senses, exist – in fact, you don’t exist!), I think blogs are extremely important. They are the quickest and easiest way to update content and by doing so this means the Google spiders love you! They provide a great platform on which to exhibit thought leadership, which helps with organisational POD and reputation enhancement.

I am also a big user of LinkedIn.

Why I use LinkedIn for strategic communication

• I promote my blog posts there
• I engage in conversation with more people here than on my actual blog
• I have started using it to try to generate new business for the public affairs and corporate communication consultancy I work for, in tandem with interpersonal contact (check back with me later 2010 to see if I have any success!)
• I ask and answer questions to enhance my professional knowledge and to help out others
• I think it’s a wonderful way to make contacts, learn and to have fun with peers all over the world
• It enhances my reputation: by having others visibly associated with me; by having recommendations from peers visible; by providing a platform through which I can exhibit my experience, qualifications and thought leadership
• I have used the input of many global peers in posts I have created for my blog, enriching the content and, hopefully, making it more attractive for professional communicators
• One day I may try to leverage it further to promote any free or paid-for books or e-books/e-reports I produce.

I find it interesting, if not surprising, that many of my blog posts create more extensive conversations on LinkedIn discussion groups than on my blog. I guess LinkedIn provides a huge chat room-like environment that cuts straight to, probably, the biggest global aggregation of its blog’s target audience: PR and marketing professionals.

(I have already written about why I think why LinkedIn is a must-do for PR and marketing pros.)

Making comments in LinkedIn discussion groups is possibly more convenient than making them on my blog, though I don’t know why. If you read the post, then you have to go to the blog. Could it be that many people are making comments based on the excerpt I provide on LinkedIn, or on other people’s comments alone rather than reading the full post. Surely not…?

The main reason I think it occurs is for a mix of ego, grandstanding and networking. By commenting on LinkedIn it is more likely their peers will note their existence than if they make it on my ‘outpost’ blog. I don’t mind – many of the discussion group participants add a lot of genuine value – but of course it would generate a greater momentum and profile for my blog if the comments were primarily there and not on LinkedIn!

PR practitioners dealing with social media successfully

Students yet to enter the profession yet need to skill up in a big way whilst you are at university. Immerse, experiment and learn. Get as much practical internship experience in this area as possible.

The most important thing for any emerging professional is to get as much hands on experience as possible. Sure, get an understanding of two-way symmetrical communication and its importance to the discipline and society, but get your hands dirty and have fun.

Also, remember whatever goes online stays online. PR people need to be more careful than most to manage their professional and personal brands. If you don’t want your girlfriend’s or boyfriend’s mother reading it, don’t put it up or don’t let it be put up.

What role do you think PR will play in the 21st century?

Because of the synergy between social media and two-way symmetrical communication, public relations is the logical owner of social media from a strategic and tactical perspective, not least because dialogue and accommodation are essential to both. As such, if the profession has a gram of sense and capability, it will leverage this for all its worth and use it as an opportunity to position itself more favourably as a management discipline that delivers business-relevant results.

The underlying characteristics of PR mean that it can make a profound difference in helping society become more equitable and help protect the natural environment. We should be more assertive in claiming this ground, this opportunity and this responsibility.

Social media and CSR, two of the most important aspects of public relations, are helping to give us this opportunity.

Sally Falkow has a really useful presentation on Slideshare called Social media: the future of PR. Obviously, quite in sync with the discussion on this post, so I encourage you to check it out.

Public relations’ most potent and potentially meaningful characteristic is its ability to transform organisations so that they are more aligned with their stakeholders’ needs and wants. At the end of the day, no matter whether it is lobbying, events, community liaison, sponsorship, website content, digital and social media communication, or any of the other dimensions of public relations, transforming both organisations and their stakeholders is what PR is about.

We can always help sell more product and services, but as a profession we have the capability to leave a much greater legacy.

What use do you get out of LinkedIn? What role do you think PR will play in the 21^st century? What social media tools offer the best ROI?

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