Why do you think a well-known global PR firm recently appointed an ex BBC journalist as Chief Content Officer?

[This is a guest post from experienced corporate communicator, Craig Badings.*]

We all know content’s not new. It’s what we’ve been doing for years.  In fact when PR first started in the US, companies employed journalists to write content that looked and sounded the way the company wanted.  So why would I flag something that has been around the PR world forever as one of the biggest changes facing our industry?

Because the rules of the content game have changed dramatically.  First, traditional content development and production required a significant process, budget and distribution, but nowadays you can do it from your mobile phone and include sound, image and video if needed.

Second, the gap between the customer and the company has closed.  Not only is the time of content to market almost immediate but clients and customers can interact with the company in real time with real people – except of course for those wretched voice response calls when you call your telecom provider!

Three words come to mind:  strategic, authentic, storytelling.

Companies can no longer interact with their audiences the way they have in the past.  The days of controlling and owning brand messages are gone.

Today, brands need to engage and interact with their audiences in different ways.

We no longer live in the world of top-down story telling.  Instead we have entered a world where entertaining, authentic and engaging story-telling is what our customers want.

Our content should connect with an audience so they feel inclined to interact, share, comment and most importantly own and believe it.

The PR person of today and tomorrow needs to be a great story teller.  No more corporate speak, no more messaging cow clods, no more, “We’ll tell you what you need to know and don’t ask us questions.”

The way customers search for information these days means we need to deliver a fantastic content experience.  Instead of pitching products and services, our role is to deliver customers knowledge in an entertaining, timely, informative and non-promotional way that helps them make decisions and that enables them to share the content with their consumer friends or B2B colleagues.

First we need to know the customer

But to get this right and in order to deliver great content that hits the right spot we better be sure we clearly define the audience.  We should understand their needs and their issues as well as know where and how they consume content.

Only then can we truly develop a content asset and distribution strategy to reach, educate and inspire them.

Content strategy is long-term

The key is to engage the customer for the long-term.  To do this, as PR practitioners, we will need to measure the impact of our content across various stages of the buying cycle.  Finding and understanding your audience in the first place takes time, effort and resources so why do it if you aren’t in the content game for the long haul.

Our clients must become publishers

Most companies, whether they are consumer or B2B oriented, will need to become publishers.  If not they are missing not only a huge opportunity to engage with their customers but they will lose ground to their competitors.

When someone like Seth Godin says that content marketing is “all the marketing that is left” as PR practitioners we should sit up and take note.

Craig Badings is a director of Sydney-based Cannings Corporate Communications and has his own blog on thought leadership and is the author of the thought leadership guide the experts refer to, Brand Stand: seven steps to thought leadership. He can be networked with via LinkedIn or Twitter.

[This is a guest post by public relations and communication management specialist, Judy Gombita.***]

Helping to flow stakeholders to relevant and useful pools of information about our companies or clients is definitely a worthwhile investment of resources. When monitoring what stakeholders self-select – particularly when they land on and dive into organizational reservoirs of core offerings or knowledge and expertise – opportunities exist to refine and shape the direction and current of corporate story telling (from both a mediated and disintermediated standpoint).

The sustenance and water analogies aren’t a prescriptive diet to abandon traditional PR practices; rather, think of it as adding new dimensions and value as an internal journalist and SEO pro. It’s a natural progression, as the 21^st century PR regime really needs to be looking to the internet as a legitimate outlet for ‘earned media,’ particularly via our own ‘media’ sites. (See my interview with Ira Basen about Engineering Search: The story of the algorithm that changed the world.)

By examining subject choices and phraseology, the focus of PR pros can move from a ‘how’ to attract attention, to a ‘why’ (and about ‘what’) search perspective. And, in assuming the role of internal chronicler, the organizational narrative can then be framed and shaped accordingly.

Support from research

From a strategic PR and marketing perspective, lending credibility to these supplementary-role suggestions are two recent studies:

• Pew Internet ‘Generations Online’ research, succinctly summarized by MarketingProfs
• (In particular) the annual Edelman Trust Barometer (Executive Findings 2011 PDF page numbers referenced below).

Top-line takeaways

What do both studies tell us? No matter what their age, increasingly people[ii] are using the internet to search for information, verified and/or analyzed by subject experts (both externally and internally) and, to a less significant extent (in terms of generations and numbers), to connect directly with organizations.

They are searching for organizational collateral beyond products and services offered. People want to determine if a business is a ‘good’ and humanized one, which can be trusted in the way it treats a variety of stakeholders (e.g. its employees – Trust Barometer, page 26).

Although companies continue to funnel resources into social media, results of the 2011 Trust Barometer suggests the self-collecting of desired information (much of it by way of search engines) remains more prevalent than the ‘two-way symmetrical communications’ (beloved by many in PR) afforded through new media channels (corporate blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc).

And yet, I see some tremendous opportunities to build on early social media efforts (partly by using search), based on the data provided.

Edelman Trust Barometer 2011 news release (January 25, 2010)

“Trust in business may have stabilized globally, but it is different and conditional, premised on what a company does and how it communicates…. Search engines rank No. 1 as the place people go first for information about a company, followed by online news sources and print/broadcast media. Traditional news, in one form or another, rank as the most trusted sources in major markets… (business magazines, radio, television, and newspapers, respectively).” Richard Edelman

Working with the Trust Barometer data

From an organizational PR perspective, following are 2011 data extracts that I see as significant in terms of areas for consideration and future focus.

PR-perspective mashup: internal experts

1. From a strategic corporate perspective, what’s particularly significant in the 2011 findings is that the highest ranked (and new) trusted internal source is ‘Technical expert within the company.’ This information is important, as likely internal experts (e.g. engineering, HR or financial staff) were hitherto under-used in ongoing organizational narratives.

Suggestion: don the internal journalist’s workout gear and start sourcing internal experts and information that might be of interest to stakeholders. (Use existing ‘search’ information gleaned from corporate websites and/or social media channels to influence the nature of the experts and information used.)

2. Given how often PR practitioners make use of the head honcho as the organization’s public face, it’s encouraging to see that the CEO position has increased in perceived trust (by 19 per cent, globally) over two years, regarding credibility.

Perhaps now is the time to push for implementation of (and real commitment to) a corporate blog and/or Twitter account, with at least some of the postings (or tweets) coming from the CEO. The organization’s various ‘technical experts’ could contribute posts, too….

Corporate blogs allow for both disintermediation (i.e. a nimble platform of wholly owned real estate – versus some third-party social media sites, such as Facebook, where your organization is really a sharecropper[iii]) and the humanizing of the organization (from the top down).

It’s prudent to implement disintermediated social media platforms prior to an unforeseen crisis or even before monitoring efforts unearth information searches from stakeholders that use negative terminology. Both potential circumstances should move the ‘do-we-need-a-blog?’ debate onto the critical-priority list, with lightening speed.

3. Although trust in the ‘Regular employee’ rose two per cent, overall the rank-and-file descended to the bottom of the ‘trust’ (or ‘interest’) heap. This undercuts declarations by social media gurus who believe the focus of organizational digital channels should be on ‘regular’ employees.

Rather than rejecting participation in corporate social media channels entirely, involve employees in figuring out what information and stories might be of the greatest interest and through which channels, particularly in regards to age preferences (as per the Pew Internet ‘Generations Online’ research).

Being platform-SEO savvy

As discussed, increasingly the success of organizations being heard or seen in the important online sphere, is dependent upon SEO earned media, whether it be through online news sources (i.e. mediated ‘pick-up’ of your organization’s stories or spokespeople, products or events) or via your corporate real estate (i.e. disintermediated corporate information and narratives).

Note that external journalists use search engines to find the same corporate stories perceived to be of interest (‘Why should this matter to me?’ and ‘How does this impact on our readers/viewers/listeners and what would they find of use and interest?’). Don that same (internal) journalist perspective during the ‘research’ and ‘subject-expert sourcing’ stages, in addition to the actual writing (for website, blog or Twitter) or telling (podcast or video) phases.

Original and valued information, whether on your corporate website (‘11 per cent trusted’), blog or other social media channels, can serve as resources to a traditional journalist researching a story. Third-party endorsement of corporate information (‘earned media’) and online (news) links only adds to your SEO clout.

Case studies of digital communication

Check out PR Conversations interviews with:

• Tom Murphy, of Microsoft, who focuses on the company’s CSR narrative
• Mike Spear*, of Genome Alberta – learn about the GenOmics site, a highly customized Facebook page that serves as a 24-hour science newsroom, collecting stories from around the world and laying them out like a digital magazine
• Andrew Arnold*, of LEGO, who makes use of social media, both for education purposes and to discover ‘brand champion’ communities around the world
• Avril Benoît*, of MSF Canada, who branches out the international NGO’s work onto a variety of platforms, whilst fiercely protecting a correct and sensitive portrayal of both its medical volunteers and the countries and victims served
• James Topham, of War Child Canada, who partners with musicians and pushes the boundaries of social media ‘games’ and depictions in the NGO’s fight for attention.

Is it a coincidence that three* out of five of these remarkably nutritious, fat-free ‘storytelling’ PR practitioners are former journalists? All five appear to have ‘worked up’ a pretty good handle on SEO, too.

***With more than 20 years of experience, primarily in the financial and lifelong learning non-profit sectors (employment, board member or committee), Toronto-based Judy Gombita is an accomplished, internationally well-networked and creative public relations and communication management specialist. In-depth experience includes initiating, planning, budgeting and maintaining integrated communication programs. Her skill set includes resource development, relationship building and reputation management. She values collaborative working environments, where strategy and ingenuity are valued. Judy can be networked with through the PR Conversations blog she co-edits, her LinkedIn profile or on Twitter @jgombita.

[This post is included, with many other posts, in a free strategic PR report that can be downloaded from this blog by email subscribing to it. The report - Public relations 2011: insights ideas issues - features professional practice-adding value from 10 global PR leaders (and me).]

Thank you to quality graphic design consultant, Pennington & Co, for its assistance with graphic elements of this post – CP.

[ii] Edelman Trust Barometer: 5,075 informed publics in two age groups (25-34 and 35-64) in 23 countries.

[iii]‘Sharecropper’ analogy courtesy of Valeria Maltoni, a prolific and articulate blogger who champions the necessity for ‘business transformation.’

Certainly, the marketing communication dimension of business communication, in the context of issues management, may have been glossed over quite significantly.

Marketing communication is an unusual discipline, if indeed it is a discipline. I tend to think of it as a set of tactical mechanisms that fall under both marketing and public relations.

From a practical perspective, I suspect marketing communication tactics are traditionally and generally implemented by the marketing team, but based on the strategic remit of public relations, these tactics are equally useful for public relations. This has been proven time and again by organisations that have a corporate communication function, but not a discrete marketing one (not unusual for government organisations in Australia).

Some marketing communication tactics include:

• brochures and flyers
• direct mail and email
• social media marketing, including Facebook, Twitter and blogs
• events, launches and stunts
• branding.

Marketing should think like public relations

Marketing in all of its guises should be cognisant of the broader remit in which its activities occur. In essence, marketing needs to think like more public relations. Questions marketers need to ask include:

• what are the ways in which this product or service could enhance or damage the relationship my organisation has with its stakeholders?
• what are the different perceptions that varying stakeholders could have of this product or service and what are the ways in which we can optimise the experience of our stakeholders in regard to the product or service?
• will making money off this product or service compromise the capability of my organisation’s other products or services to make money?
• if this product or service doesn’t deliver according to its objectives, what do we do?
• what is the history of producing products or services such as these and have there been issues in regard to them that could compromise outcomes such as profit, organisational reputation and stakeholder relationships?

Characteristics of the product or service that need to be considered in this thinking include:

• What is it designed to achieve?
• What is it made of?
• How is it manufactured and delivered?
• How much are workers in the production and supply chain paid and what are the conditions under which they work?

Marketing as broadcast; PR as interactive

Despite its many claims to the counter, marketing is essentially about selling, so it would do well to consider the broader strategic remit of public relations, which is also about selling but, more importantly, the long term reputation of an organisation and the relationships it has with all its stakeholders, not just its customers.

Marketing communication elements offer an opportunity to listen, engage and evolve, but so does their generally non-confrontational nature provide an excellent means to build relationships and reputation.

As marcomms is generally driven by marketing strategy, this strategy should situate itself in a broader context than profit and loss, thus providing room for marketing communication tactics to apply approaches that can enhance the organisation’s positioning and reputation.

The challenge is doing this in a way that doesn’t cloud the positioning of the product, service or initiative the marcomms is promoting. But it is possible. And doing so effectively will build the stakeholder ‘relationship bank account’.

What are examples of where marcomms can be used to build an organisation’s reputation you can tell us about? Does marketing miss the bigger picture of organisational reputation, focusing too much on profit & loss, in your opinion? Does marketing have a conversation with stakeholders for any other reason than to make more money and, if so, is this fair enough?

PS. This blog has just been named as one of Australia’s 25 best business blogs. Some great company I’m keeping if you care to check the other 24.

We’re lucky these days. The internet is a university. And some of the best lecturers (practicing professionals, academics and their hybrid sisters) in the world have blogs, which is where I’ve learnt a hell of a lot about not just social media, but a range of public relations, marketing and business issues. It is incredible just how much you can learn from great blogs and, underpinning that, how generous people are to provide their insights and advice.

One of these blogs’ best characteristics is that they cut to the chase. They’re pithy. You get some theory but so do you get the cold, hard, slap-in-the-face and here-and-now of what matters and what you need to do about it.

Content is king ipso facto content marketing is NOW

Content management and its nimble sibling, content curation, are the new marketing central. In this online-centred world with its reliance on search, its appetite for quality content and its proclivity to send it viral, quality content and its intelligent leveraging is almost unspeakably important for marketing and public relations.

And, partly because of the sheer NOISE of all this online activity, this means that thought leadership, value and insightfulness – and let’s not forget HUMOUR – are more valued than ever before.

One set of content management stats = this:

• 80% of business decision makers prefer to get company information in a series of articles versus an advertisement
• 70% say content marketing makes them feel closer to the sponsoring company
• 60% say that company content helps them make better product.

So that’s two posts I’ve flagged with only one promised. But the real point I want to make is encapsulated in the issue of where does content marketing belong in the social business? Now, this is an entirely valid question but, more importantly in my view:

What business cannot afford to be social, when so much of the conversation about it will be online?

The question of where does content marketing belong, however, is articulately explored in the conversionation post linked to above. One upshot is that if you have no single person or business unit coordinating content generation and utilisation, you do so at your peril:

• Content may not appear
• It may be shoddy and reek of a lack of professionalism and care
• Different elements may contradict each other, either in a specific tactical sense or an organisational branding sense.

In any of these cases: disaster.

Being a winner at getting targeted traffic for your blog or website

A post was published recently on Problogger by marketer Eric Enge that I consider one of the most important marketing/PR posts ever written. That sounds like hyperbole, but I’m sincere.

The reason it is the most important is that it provides an easy to understand explanation of long tail keywords and how to leverage them on blogs, websites etc. it is important because:

• as we now know, the internet is the number one source of information, after word-of-mouth (in fact, it’s often another version of word-of-mouth, but let’s not go there just now…), for many, many people
• searches/Googles for the most searched for keyword terms are extremely competitive, so being strategic about how we articulate content on our sites (i.e. the application of keywords) is absolutely stone-cold imperative
• the use of long tail keywords means that we will be able to funnel the most targeted, relevant search queries to our online real estate (and please remember, identifying target audiences as opposed to those who are generally irrelevant is crucial for effective marcomms).

Eric talks about Google Adwords keyword tool as the baby to use, but Google’s Wonder Wheel is another fun and very useful tool to consider utilising as well – both free!

And if you’re a B2B marketer or PR professional, don’t think long tail is not for you. In fact, I think the incredible specificity of much of B2B marketing makes long tail even more valuable.

PR and marketing needs to identify, cultivate and harness the power of 3rd party advocates

3^rd party credibility is a fundamental strategic approach that excellent PR and marketing uses. It works well with thought leadership, in fact. This is because not all thought leadership needs to come specifically from the organisation that wants to leverage off the goodwill and brand impetus 3^rd party credibility delivers.

Using a non-organisational employee to deliver thought leadership that the organisation benefits from is a subtle form of brand advocacy. But there are other reasons why your company should use brand advocates:

• They create lots of content
• They are influencers
• They talk a lot!
• They use social media a lot
• They care about their own reputation and like to share and influence
• They are loyal to brands they love/like/respect/ have a personal ‘thing’ with…

3^rd party credibility, thought leadership and brand advocacy are not the sole property of online communication, either. They are relevant to the entire big, wide world of marketing and PR.

Are your assumptions about media relations in PR on the money?

In a recently syndicated post, public relations and communication pro Greg Matusky explored five media myths that he believes apply to many public relations and marketing professionals.

• Sometimes it’s actually okay to say ‘no comment’. The main message here being don’t interact with the media solely on their terms. Organisational imperatives are important, too
• The media can play dirty. They cannot always be trusted. Don’t take them on their word unless you have good reason to
• If you don’t ask, you don’t get. Query a journalist on their rationale for the story. It might actually help to provide them with information that suits the needs of both the journo and your organisation
• You can negotiate with the media. If you don’t try, then you’re leaving options and opportunities unexplored
• Media can sometimes surprise you by taking a perspective or running a story that logic doesn’t always tell you they will. It goes back to the section on content noted above. Have you got the content and rationale to convince?

For mine, another myth you can also add is that a PR media relations pro needs to have a network of journalists to get good media placement. Rubbish. The main element a PR pro needs for this is decent content, insights, thought leadership, POD in perspectives.

It is simply not necessary to have a journalist relationship that requires them to be a Facebook friend, to be going to each others’ kids bar mitzvahs or to have season tickets to the same sporting teams. Relationships, of course, help. But how do you think the PR pro-journalist thing became a useful relationship in the first place?

Because the journalist was consistently provided with quality content, customised to their needs with probably a little bit of ‘exclusivity’ icing on top.

Why we don’t need to measure PR

Measuring the impact of business activity, and oh yes that includes PR and marketing, is somewhat of a no-brainer for any pro that is serious about their work having an impact. How else can you tell whether your work is achieving meaningful, business-relevant outcomes?

Determining what those objectives should be is one thing, but taking an arch-eyebrowed contrary view, Sean Williams argues that sometimes, well, you don’t need to measure PR. Sean says don’t do measurement when:

• you’ve been flickpassed a dodo. No matter what you do it won’t make a difference
• your organisation isn’t going to change or do anything to meet stakeholders’ needs and wants. Clearly, stakeholders are going to crucify you. All you can do is hand them the hammer and nails and grimace politely whilst they are put to use
• the cost of measuring exceeds the cost of the program or work you are measuring. Time to take a punt on the impact. Or talk to a few of the target audience. Measurement for the price of a pint. There are worse ways to do business…

On the other hand, do measurement when:

• you care about the program’s results. Really care. You might even depend on the results for your own organisation’s or your own (i.e. Le job) existence
• you know you need to change and data is the way to convince the purse-wielding powers that be
• you want insights and information to speak confidently and persuasively on your key issue(s).

What are your thoughts on the propositions put forward by each of these five (plus) posts? What is missing from the arguments put forward? Should there be another topic included? Is there anything here which has challenged your own perceptions of what we need to prioritise and implement?

PS: I’d welcome you joining my 1,500-strong LinkedIn network (send me an invite!) or interacting with me through Twitter. You can also learn more about my PR and marcomms business through my About page.

Now – of course! – marketing will claim the high moral ground for branding ascendancy. And it has very good arguments for doing so. But if public relations is the best qualified in, and most concerned about, ensuring all stakeholders’ (including the organisation’s itself) holistic well-being, then I can’t see the logic in marketing trying to boss PR around in this argument.

But whether PR or marketing holds the branding reins (and you can be sure that when marketing falls over due to a dodgy product or a death on the fun ride then PR will be called in to save the day) the main point here is recognise the value PR adds to the branding magical mystery tour.

Paul Barasa, however, in a fascinating post on branding and PR, purports that the two areas have little to do with each other. PR is all reputation, he says and its role was, “never really to build a brand.” He goes on to say, “…reputation – which can loosely be defined as trustworthiness – is not brand. Brand is image, while reputation is reality.”

Interesting stuff, though I’m not sure marketers will be too pleased to hear this! But do they care, with their fixation on short-term profits, rather than long-term organisation-stakeholder benefiting relationships?

Classically speaking, Paul is probably right about what a brand actually is, but limiting it to a name/logo etc seems pretty hollow and inane. A brand should tell a story and that story will include the good and bad bits, all the narratives the stakeholder is aware of. And as PR should be a master storyteller, it has got to be fundamentally concerned with the brand and all the equity it does or doesn’t contain.

PR brand building platforms

There is a range of ways in which PR can contribute to a positive brand impression – events, sponsorship, stakeholder newsletters etc – but, really, brand means big. So unless these platforms are big ones, and there is no reason why they can’t be, then they aren’t going to have a huge impact on the brand.

The two main broad-reach platforms that PR can use to help build brands are media and social media.

Positive placement of stories about a brand in editorial media, sustained over a period of time, is an excellent way to build a brand. Editorial discussions of a brand, or discussions that feature it, will deliver a much higher degree of positive stakeholder engagement than advertising.

Editorial has an implicit third party endorsement of the brand, whereas advertising does not. And as the media is typically thought of as being quite critical in their reporting, their implied or stated approval adds impetus to brand momentum.

PR is the discipline that is generally best placed to implement, or at least have the strategic oversight of, social media activity, too. Social media is clearly a dialogic activity and PR has traditional strengths in dialogue. Marketing’s commitment to dialogue has been a façade.

Product pushing social media programs driven by marketing are all very well. But they should be part of a broad, strategic approach, otherwise they will undermine and fail a brand.

Other key areas of business communication that PR manages which can have an immense impact on brand equity include (HT to PR pro Jocelyn Hunter for some thoughts on this):

• government relations and lobbying (yes, sadly, lobbying is a sub-set of public relations, though the capacious egos that operate in this field tend to have a problem admitting this…!)
• investor relations and mergers & acquisitions
• employee communication (employees are the most potent weapon any organisation has in building a brand)
• as implied earlier, issues and crisis communication.

Strategic PR brand building approaches

Thought leadership is an excellent way of building a brand. It can be rolled out through any number of platforms; such as media, social media, direct mail (e.g. white papers to those on a database) and speaking engagements.

Thought leadership entails determining a position on a topic, then adding value to stakeholders’ perspectives through the sharing of insights and analysis. It will often refer to the perspectives of others, but it should add at least some unique value through the process (or else there’s not much leadership going on!). Inherent in the process is adding this value without a blatant sales emphasis. Hard sell is inappropriate in this context.

In a crisis communication scenario, organisations have a number of choices to make that can often be reflective of strategic decisions that have been made about the culture of the organisation itself. Needless to say, because of PR’s boundary spanning dimension, it is ideally placed to provide intensely valuable information to an organisation to assist it on its cultural – and by extension, branding – journey.

Some of the basic strategic crisis scenario decisions an organisation can make include:

• quick or slow response
• use the CEO as a crisis spokesperson or not
• communicate openly or stonewall
• apologise, rationalise or seek the righteous, moral high ground.

There are more, and I am not saying any of the approaches are right or wrong, but they will each impact on brand equity. In fact, by taking one of these approaches a mini brand story is being told in itself, don’t you think?

Boundary spanning is an incredibly strategically significant aspect of public relations. By identifying stakeholder information (issues, interests etc) of relevance to organisations, this can influence the way organisations shape themselves (i.e. their brand). Choices include:

• not always going to make big bucks and quash the opposition
• looking outside the profit-driven marketing square
• integrating stakeholder advice and thinking into the brand/organisation.

In many different ways, PR is essential to the big picture thinking which informs effective branding.

Have you contributed to brand building and/or the planning behind it as a PR professional? Where have you met barriers as a PR pro when trying to make a contribution to branding? If you are involved in PR wearing a marcomms hat, has it opened doors to branding? What other ways can you suggest PR adds value to branding that are not articulated in this post?

PS: I’d welcome you joining my 1,400-strong LinkedIn network (send me an invite!) or interacting with me through Twitter.

Which immediately leads to two discussion points:

• What about the social dimension of PR? Businesses exist in society, do they not and won’t at least one of their stakeholders involve the community, as opposed to the ‘non-society’ ice cold edifices of big bizness? Thus, will not their organisational communication need to relate to society and operate in its context?
• The relationship between arts and business. Because you just know I am going to hit you with five great writers who happen to be novelists, don’t you?

Well, maybe you didn’t.

A social dimension to PR writing

Public relations is about giving a voice to both organisations and their stakeholders. An implication of this is working and negotiating with society’s stakeholders. Another implication is about giving the marginalised a voice. This notion is even incorporated into public relations’ only Standard and it’s certainly integrated into PR’s dominant theoretical model.

Based on this, it makes sense that in our public relations writing we are conscious of, and empathetic towards, the different dimensions of society that exist.

• We aren’t able to personally experience all of the different dimensions of society.
• We aren’t able to conceptualise the experiences and emotions of all people within society.
• We aren’t always able to imagine scenarios that society might encounter.

Into this breach steps the great novelist. With their imagination, insight and help we can improve our own capabilities in relating to the different range of stakeholders we interact with in a professional capacity. (And, certainly, exposure to great art – literature in this case – humanises us in an holistic sense as well: yet another reason to spend more time in a book than in the often debilitating inanity of Facebook.)

The arts and business: what’s the connection?

Business certainly has its tunnel visioned, relentless, reductionist aspects. But many of the world’s great businesses have a strong dimension called imagination.

Apple is an obvious example. But innovation is the lifeblood of business. And at the heart of innovation is imagination.

At the heart of great art, and therefore great writing, is imagination. Ipso facto, art can help stimulate the appetite and the muscle of imagination. If you don’t use it, you lose it. And we all had it at one stage…at rampant levels in childhood, in fact.

What great art can do for PR writing

A third dimension of how great art can help PR is that excellent novelists show you just what an incredible resource language is. My language is English, but everyone’s native language will, I am sure, have its own power.

Being taught that language does not have to be simple to communicate well is a treasure. We don’t always need to dumb down language to typically anodyne business-speak. And even if we do, the intensified capability with language great writing can instil in us can help make even our most prosaic explication sharper, more elegant and more adaptable to the different audiences and platforms we write for.

So who are five great writers who can help inspire excellent PR?

Dostoevsky

When I put this list together the words humanity and socially-oriented keep coming up. That they are incredible exemplars of language goes without saying. This is Fyodor.

I don’t read Russian so I imagine the power is even greater in this language. The grand sweep of his novels, but often done at such a prosaic, almost-gutter level, is mind-blowing. The man loves to prick egos and dynamite hypocrisy.

David Foster Wallace

Now if you are looking for left field, acid-out-there creativity – in the use of words, plot and structure –Wallace is your man. Of all the writers here, the most contemporary in content and approach. His anarchic, tongue-poking attitude to ‘normal’ society and astounding abilities of perception are stunning enough, but an added resonance is his multi-layered narratives, bursting with hyper-connectivity and totally analogous to Web 2.0.

William Faulkner

If I took the books of one writer to the grave with me, they would be Faulkner’s. I first read him, thanks to Nick Cave’s influence, when I was about 20. His works remain my overriding literary passion. His articulate, relentless narrative power; the deep and profound immersion into his worlds of wonder he plunges you; the sturm und drang. He also has a wonderful sense of humour that has you falling off your chair. Outrageous talent.

Charles Dickens

I came to Dickens even later in life than Faulkner. His social conscience and impeccable storytelling ability get me. There are books of his I, fortunately, haven’t even read yet. I’m in no hurry. I look forward to savouring them. Is there more heartbreaking/inspiring at David Copperfield or Great Expectations? I doubt it.

Marilynne Robinson

Robinson, she of the skinny portfolio. Only a few novels over an extended career/life, but what novels! Gilead is at the heart of her repertoire. Deeply religious on the surface, more like spiritual at its centre. Robinson has a habit of taking your heart in her hands, then gently cradling it until she releases you at the story’s conclusion, though its ramifications resonate endlessly past your reading’s finish.

The qualities of my PR-inspiring writers

Compassion, creativity and the ability to tell compelling stories. For PR power or sheer personal enrichment, these are five authors you cannot afford NOT to read (and I haven’t even touched on Marquez, White, Munro, Malouf, Astley etc etc etc…)

So where do you think writing is relevant to PR? Who are your favourite writers? Why are they relevant to the practice of PR?

Other factors impacting on the teaching and practice of public relations driven by social media include:

• It is a new strand to include in the subtle weave of business communication that was not previously available
• There are a wealth of social media platforms to choose from
• For best practice utilisation, there will not be blatant duplication across the platforms, so customised and greater amounts of content may need to be prepared, which demands more resources
• The need for content to be produced in a style suitable for this form of communication (often brutally short and/or written in a pyramid style and not a more traditional narrative – intro, plot, climax denouement etc – style), placing more demands on the skill that PR pros need above any other – good writing
• It is often video, pure voice (e.g. podcasting) and/or images that will communicate more effectively through social media, so the need for skills in these areas has increased
• The rate of change in social media is eye-popping. This relates to both the number of social media platforms available, as well the continual change occurring on them: Facebook specialists, anyone?

Tactics vs. strategy: the real social media challenge

So the actual tactical implementation demands have emerged almost out of thin air (some skills are transferrable from website communication). This has led to pressure on where and how to include them into communication strategy, as well as the need to teach these skills at university before graduates hit the workforce.

My view is that because of the mind-bending plethora of technical subtleties in social media it is actually easier to write a social media strategy than to do the implementation. This is, seemingly, logic turned on its head. Now if you are the boss/leader and you have people reporting to you that are more savvy in social media to you – how do you work that one?!

The experience of youth

I’ve written before that the emergence of social media has allowed some younger practitioners to climb the career ladder more quickly than they might otherwise have been able to.

And pity the poor uni lecturers. Many have practical experience and most are no doubt very good at their job, but it must be hard work teaching social media skills to students who are quite possibly are lot more savvy and ‘native’ at its application than they are! It has certainly emphasised the value of internships whilst at uni and probably with agencies not in-house, as the latter are clearly looking to former for the lead in this area.

PR needs to get its head around SEO

A further challenge/opportunity is SEO, as Judy Gombita points out in an article in the Public relations 2011: issues insights ideas report. Judy purports that social media and the importance of web search as a means of sourcing information has emphasised the importance of PR pros getting their head around search engine optimisation.

Of course, SEO existed before social media, but the increasing move to online for information, relationships and communication – even of the most asinine kind – means we need to understand it and know how to practice it. Even if only at a content and technical helicopter level (e.g. keyword, metatags, H1 H2 tags etc in blogs).

What are the challenges you have found that the integration of social media into the PR portfolio of tactics has presented? How ‘up’ are you on SEO? Can you talk about it in a literate manner? Have you or your peers been accelerated up the PR career chain ‘before your time’ due to social media expertise and what are your thoughts on this – was it warranted and why?

The reasons for this range from its ability to help PR practitioners do our job to, to its commercial vigour how it impacts on the discipline’s place in the catalogue of activities that occur in business.

Social media and dialogue

The emergence of social media is giving PR and its practitioners an opportunity to practice dialogic communication (this should be a tautology, but in business this is, sadly, not the case) in a manner and on a scale not experienced before.

Dialogic communication is fundamental to the most rigourous conceptual underpinnings of public relations, that of two-way symmetrical communication, which provides us with a light on the hill to guide our journeys and, sometimes, pilgrimages.

Social media helps with both the reach of communication and its targeting. Inherent in the latter is that if resources allow, the communication can be customised more effectively to specific stakeholders. Much is made of customisation, but it takes time and money so the talk is often more impressive than the walk in this regard.

You can argue that dialogue – talk – is cheap. Actions speak louder than words. Yes, I know the proof is in the pudding (okay I’ll stop now), but without dialogue opportunities for understanding are limited. So some talk is better than none. Assuming that at least some listening is being done by an organisation that is engaged in dialogue there will hopefully be some incremental organisational change, if that is indeed what stakeholders want.

Losing command and control in reputation management

Social media inherently provides stakeholders (including employees) with more ownership in an organisation’s brand equity. The platforms for speaking on a topic:

• have increased greatly
• are close to being free
• often have large audiences and/or very targeted ones, ranging from key influencers to stakeholders
• enable comments/messages/information to go viral at incredible speed.

Even for those organisation that haven’t been dedicated to a command-and-control approach, it is often a slap-in-the-face hello! for an organisation to realise their brand is controlled as much by their stakeholders as themselves.

Social media platforms are excellent for building a brand and selling products and services, but so do they present enormous challenges. Not least in crisis management scenarios.

Social media helping PR make money

New commercial opportunities have presented themselves to PR agencies due to the emergence of social media. Go to any social media conference. Who’s speaking? It’s not often in-house pros, I’m telling you. It’s agency folk.

This is doubtless partly because agencies are keener to market themselves to peer professionals than in-house pros, but it’s still a qualitative indication of the reality, as is the fact that more agency PR pros blog than do in-house operatives.

Agencies are the innovators, leaders and bosses of the knowledge bank in social media at the moment. So the best and most adept ones are creating new revenue streams and more money until – if ever? – in-house pros catch up and start creating a sophisticated in-house capability.

In-house PR should not build a social media capability

I’m a strong believer that you shouldn’t have an in-house graphic design team. Far better to have a panel of external providers in this area that you can use for different jobs. Some can be for bigger impact brand type work, some for more functional tactical work. Some for more complex work, some for more straightforward.

This has cost, brand and creativity benefits. And it keeps everyone on their toes, working hard and being very nice to you. Consultants are paid to be nice. Pains in the asses need to stay in-house because they’ll go broke or get sacked working in an agency (#PR truth!).

Analogous to this point is that due to the accelerating speed of social media, it might just be best to leave it to those really dedicated to the area. And to those who have to stay in front of new developments to be seen as literate in the area to get work (i.e. agencies much much much more than in-house pros).

Whether it is the deepening complexity and available options in Facebook or LinkedIn, or the emergence of new forms of social media, or changes in the preferences, use and jargon of social media users, it really makes a lot of sense to me just to leave it to an external expert. Then if they drop the ball (which can be determined through market research and results) you can go to a different supplier.

One caveat: you’d better still have someone in-house running the account who is educated on social media to at least some degree or else you won’t get sufficient ROI and the whole process will be one helluva potholed road.

Social media helping PR become a more influential business discipline

This is a topic that is also discussed in depth in the Public relations 2011: issues, insights and ideas free report. Suffice to say that due to social media’s scale, profile and ability to facilitate impact on reputation, relationships and sales, if PR gets it right it can be in the ear of the CEO, board, ministers and other power brokers more often than it could before.

There is also the ‘side-issue’ of how this will affect the marketing-public relations paradigm.

Marketing dinosaurs still think PR is a synonym for media relations. I thought dinosaurs were extinct but, no, some are still around. Marketing also often thinks they should own social media, whereas I believe it makes more sense for us to rule the roost (in jolly consultation with relevant parties, of course). But then again, I think marketing should report to PR anyway.

No matter the logic of either the PR or marketing industry on this issue, there is territory here to, let’s be frank, fight over and claim the ascendency on.

Don’t underestimate this issue. Social media could well be the BIGGEST OPPORTUNITY PR HAS EVER HAD, or will ever have, to get the ear of the organisational dominant coalition. And getting their ear because of this platform could obviously lead to enhanced esteem  for PR within organisations, potentially usurping marketing’s advantage in this area.

So what do you think – am I on the money or am I overestimating the scale of this opportunity? What are the challenges you have found that the integration of social media into the PR portfolio of tactics has presented? Tell us about how you have leveraged social media and, perhaps, integrated it effectively into other communication tactics. Has your reputation and influence (with anyone) grown because of your use of social media?

[This is a guest post by Trevor Young, aka The PR Warrior, Director of Strategy for Edelman Australia.]

The fact that many in-house communications departments have grown significantly in size means in some ways the need for external consultants has, to a degree, lessened. In reality, though, the fact that agency PR professionals are at the cutting edge of communication knowledge acquisition and implementation means they are a resource that cannot be done without.

Then the media landscape changed.

Not quickly at first, but it soon became pretty apparent the social web was unlike anything the modern-day communications industry has ever experienced:

• Blogging moved from being a geeky pastime practised in a darkened room to a highly visible mainstream activity.
• Backyard podcasters started gaining an audience (and therefore influence).
• YouTube became the world’s biggest search engine (after Google).
• Mark Zuckerberg – if you believe the film ‘Social Network’ – ripped off the Winklevoss twins and guided Facebook to half a billion users in under seven years.
• Twitter went from being a time-wasting novelty to an incredibly powerful, game – changing real-time medium.
• Then, just when you thought you had a handle on everything, Foursquare emerged and grew by an astonishing 3,800 per cent last year alone.
• And now Quora is taking the world by storm, with some observers boldly declaring it the future of journalism.

Shot in the arm or pain in the arse?

To some in our industry the advent of social media is one giant pain in the arse. It has upset the ‘communications applecart’ and meant we’ve had to learn a whole lot of new things, not to mention unlearn many old habits.

To others, however, the social web is a ‘shot in the arm’ for our industry – new technologies have levelled the playing field and changed our profession forever.

As professionals we need a raft of new skills in our vocational kitbag. We need to change the way we write. We need to be able to think and respond in ‘real-time’. We need to know our way around digital technology as well as we do a TV newsroom.

Agency PR leads the new world social order

A cursory glance at the most followed Australian PR people on Twitter reveals an over-representation of agency folk. It’s a similar thing with blogs and podcasts, online video, Facebook conversations, and ‘shiny new things’ like Quora. (LinkedIn I’m not so sure – I think in-house PR pros are well represented here).

But of course it’s not just about the technology, but what you do with it that matters.

It’s about immersing yourself in the culture of the social web as a way of better understanding its nuances and etiquettes. It’s about participating and interacting and learning and sharing. It’s about attending offline social media events and building connections that lift one’s profile (and that of their business or employer) in the broader online community.

In my experience, agency pros appear to have adapted pretty well to the changes brought on by social media, while their in-house brethren are still adjusting to the ‘new world (social) order’. While my observations for this article are confined to Australia, if I look at what happened several years ago a similar situation occurred in the US and UK (i.e. it was the agencies leading the new media charge).

While in-house PR practitioners were weighing up the risks of putting their names ‘out there’ on blogs, on Twitter or in YouTube videos or podcast interviews, consultants were taking a chance and experimenting with these new media channels.

Of course, this is understandable given agencies are commercial businesses that rely heavily on reputation and connections and therefore need to be out amongst it.

But by becoming more digitally savvy earlier in the piece, I think you’ll find agency pros started to kick away from their in-house peers. They experimented more, learned quicker, built connections and deepened their levels of knowledge in the social space.

So why is this the case and what does it mean for the PR profession?

Here are my thoughts – you might have alternative views and in the spirit of open dialogue that is the social web, I’d love to hear them. Am I heading in the right direction, or am I on the wrong tram altogether?

Agency people cross more boundaries day-to-day – they tend to be more entrepreneurial and participatory by sheer dent of the type of work they do, so it kinda makes sense they would gravitate towards the social web where connection is king and conversation is everything.

In-house practitioners on the other hand tend to be more narrowly-focused – they concentrate on the one business (their employer’s) and often have to answer to a conservative senior management that to this day is still trying (unsuccessfully) to control the message from within the confines of an ivory tower we call the boardroom.

I think it’s fair to say many in-house pros probably work in a culture that is inherently conformist and risk-averse. Big organisations hate change, and social media is ALL ABOUT CHANGE. This has to have an influence on in-house communications personnel.

Consultants, however, tend to operate in environments that are more open and dynamic and therefore are freer to experiment and take risks. More often than not they work in smaller companies and aren’t weighed down by process, protocol and policy.

Revitalisation of the PR consulting business

The agency business is being rejuvenated in a big way. All of a sudden clients need help not only with strategic communications generally but also in navigating the social web.

They face significant challenges in communicating effectively in a real-time networked environment and web-savvy PR consultants are ideally placed to provide independent and objective advice in this area. To join the dots with traditional communications methods, as it were.

But importantly, because external consultants tend to work across numerous industries and clients (and therefore are exposed to a broader variety of briefs, challenges and cultures), the level of knowledge and intelligence picked up along the way – and experience gained – is invaluable to smart in-house PR pros who can tap such skill and know-how for their own, and their employer’s, benefit.

* FOOTNOTE: Oh, I also know some savvy in-house practitioners who really get the social space, and, conversely, a number of agency people who are lagging behind so much I doubt they’ll ever really catch up.

[This post is included, with many other posts, in a free strategic PR report that can be downloaded free from this blog by email subscribing to it. The report - Public relations 2011: insights ideas issues - features professional practice-adding value from 10 global PR leaders (and me).]

So what do you think about Trevor’s thoughts? Are in-house PR pros dragging their feet? Are they following agency professionals’ lead? In what areas can in-house pros teach agencies something?

Trevor Young is a PR Warrior on the Frontline of the Communications Revolution – he’s a popular blogger, speaker and presenter who stands (precariously) at the intersection of public relations, marketing communications and social media…and tries not to get run over! In reality, Trevor works for Edelman Australia as its Director of Strategy + Innovation. He loves challenging the status quo of not only the PR profession, but the broader marketing communications industry. A journalist by profession, he has worked with some of the biggest names in the PR consultancy world before spending 12 years as an entrepreneur establishing three companies in the areas of public relations, experiential marketing, strategic communications and social media consulting. Trevor can be networked with at his PR Warrior blog, his LinkedIn profile and on Twitter @trevoryoung.

This is a thought leadership report on many of PR’s fascinating and subtle dimensions, featuring articles written by ten global PR leaders…with me riding happily on the coattails!

Read…the passionate and intellectually creative thinking in this report and your knowledge of strategic and tactical approaches to the practice of public relations will be broadened.

Read it…and you will experience thought leadership at a rarely articulated level.

Read it…and your ability to practice PR and harness its power will be deepened.

How to get a copy if the report? Subscribe to this blog and the keys to the kingdom will be yours.

Public relations content that engages

Other topics explored in the report include:

• Social media. Its emergence is presenting PR with a range of challenges and opportunities. We are very much on the cusp – what do we do from here? Can social media help our discipline become more influential as a business discipline?
• The importance of face-2-face communication. This is old school social networking, but one that is still the most effective means of communication and, often, analogous of social media
• Two-way symmetrical communication. There is no avoiding it, especially in a report edited by me. A new pragmatism may be emerging in its discussion and application, even from Jim Grunig himself. But is anyone offering anything fundamentally different to help us in our approach and give us something meaningful or – light on the hill – aspirational to apply?
• CSR. Sometimes overt, sometimes implicit. I don’t think you can practice PR at a strategic level and not be cognisant of the synergy between the two disciplines
• Strategy. Even when discussing tactics, writers are cognisant of their strategic remit and resonances
• Crisis management. Interesting – is crisis management the means through which public relations can become more valued in organisations on the back of social media’s application in this area?

This is a report that looks to the future based on experience. In some regards its content is speculative. But it is never less than insightful.

About this PR 2011 report

The report is defined by its thought leadership, which in itself has two dimensions:

• Content that helps us become better at practicing our discipline
• Thought leadership – views and speculations that engage and sparkle.

The content often challenges. It features ideas that are out of the box, sometimes reflecting either dissatisfaction with the status quo or a refusal to take it at face value. In either case, the outcome will enrich those who choose to tune into its frequency as issues are analysed and new thinking articulated.

The report illustrates the PR profession’s global connectivity. It takes advantage of our new(ish) social media paradigm, collating bold ideas and new thinking into an easily readable report format.

Each article in this report is worthy of serious attention.

I hope you enjoy Public relations 2011: issues, insights and ideas and see fit to share your knowledge of its existence with your colleagues, peers and friends through social media and old school email and face-to-face conversations.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the content in this report. All observations and critiques welcome.

The report is designed by Pennington & Co and features illustrations by Guy Downes – great quality and great value is provided by both. I highly recommend them!

NB. Any current subscribers who don’t want to resubscribe through my new subscribe process to get a copy of the report, or are having any other issue, just send me an email to craig@craigpearce.info and I’ll sort you out.