This white paper provides an overview of the strategic dimensions of the Holy Trinity and some practical manifestations of how they can be applied in a business environment.

Throughout the paper, the complementary dimensions of the Trinity pillars are illustrated. Supporting this, tactical, practical advice on how they can be applied collectively, rather than as standalone methodologies, is provided.

Individually, the three pillars of the Trinity are a robust means of delivering tangible business outcomes, yet applying them in an integrated manner provides economy of scale. More importantly, however, when connected each pillar will then generate a greater momentum to deliver a collectively-driven result that exceeds the sum of its individual parts being applied separately.

Triple-treat challenges in applying the Trinity, then, and well worth getting right, are ensuring that:

• individually, suitable constituents of the pillars are put in place
• collectively, if applying an integrated Trinity approach, the different elements work well together and are likely to optimise investment
• an approach, or strategy if you like, that ensures the varying characteristics of any single or collective Trinity elements are harnessed and directed to optimise investment.

Holy Trinity PR pillars explained

Thought leadership – the provision of content that is original, thought provoking but, above all in the context of business results, useful for organisational target audiences and, ideally, prompts them to tell others about the value that it has provided them. Ideally, these ‘others’ will either be more target audiences or influencers on target audiences.

3^rd party credibility – provided by non-organisational employees that have credibility and/or influence on organisational target audiences, with their views on issues relevant to the organisation (but not necessarily about the organisation) being made apparent through communication mediums such as the media, social media or events.

Strategic alliances – forming business relationships between organisations to help them achieve their objectives, with primary rationales for the alliances being:

• They expand the reach of communication (i.e. information about each alliance partner can be included in each other’s communication vehicles)
• The credibility of each partner can be enhanced due to its involvement with the other credible partner
• ‘Riding on the coattails’ of the alliance partner’s communication vehicles normally costs either nothing or very little, thus making it comparatively easy to generate excellent ROI on the alliance ‘investment’.

Why the Holy Trinity is good PR = good business

Each of the Trinity pillars facilitate credibility to the organisation being delivered. Sometimes through non-organisational stakeholders (e.g. individuals, companies, non-government organisations such as think tanks) endorsing the organisation, either directly or by insinuation, and sometimes by providing value of substance to organisational target audiences.

The extensively interconnected nature of the Trinity is founded on relationships. None of the three pillars exists without taking into account and dealing with the relationship dimension:

• Thought leadership – to provide content of value, the needs of target audiences must be understood, which is almost impossible without a relationship existing or for there to be a genuine desire for a mutually beneficial relationship to be constituted
• 3^rd party credibility – necessitates a non-organisational stakeholder endorsing the organisation (either explicitly or implicitly), which will not occur without a mutually beneficial relationship existing
• Strategic alliance – one of its characteristics is mutually beneficial outcomes or ROI.

As noted, mutually beneficial outcomes are a consistent necessity and outcome of the Holy Trinity being applied. This is an extension, and application, of two-way symmetrical communication.

Evolving, learning: PR leads to better organisations

A qualitative manner in which the Holy Trinity, and hence PR itself, helps deliver ROI is through the learning and insights gained from actually applying the Trinity. As such, this is a continual improvement process that benefits an organisation’s entire business operations.

The methodologies:

• necessitate working with non-organisational stakeholders
• frequently require challenging organisational orthodoxies
• compel an organisation to adapt to the needs, methods and thinking of non-organisational stakeholders
• will see organisational approaches and content examined and tested; in essence providing a form of focus group or qualitative testing before ‘going to market’.

In each of these instances, the organisation can evolve and improve the way it operates.

Thought leadership for content strategy

Because so much communication, relationship building and reputation enhancement is based on content that is used in social and other digital media formats, the Holy Trinity pillars are a natural means of helping facilitate the development of this content. Of course, they should be integrated into any approach that delivers content to the organisation.

And if the goals of creating content are educating, informing, entertaining and inspiring, then this isn’t so far from what thought leadership entails. Certainly, all four of these characteristics need to be considered as part of an organisation’s content strategy, in itself a 101 pillar of any best practice public relations and/or marketing strategy.

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One dimension of this discussion is the opportunities blogs in particular are providing organisations – through PR-driven brand journalism – to make a proactive, high profile contribution to discussions on key issues, including industry news. Large organisations especially have the resources to gain high SEO rankings because of their relevance to issues and topics of conversation.

They can therefore rival even large news organisations as a provider of content – analysis and thought leadership in particular, leaving the daily grind of ‘news’ to the old school woolly mammoths.

It doesn’t have to be either/or, though. The two paradigms can operate in tandem, just as they are evolving to do.

And why wouldn’t organisations do this (i.e. create reputation-building safe haven sources of information that goes STRAIGHT to stakeholders (i.e. unmediated – getting the message across without media bias)? As long as this is done with credibility, authenticity and with stakeholders’ interests in mind, it will make an impact and is already doing so.

This is taking an issues management approach. Intelligently done, it is an approach that can not only build reputation proactively, it can also provide a bulwark against negative criticism that occurs in a crisis situation, including from the woolly mammoths.

But it’s not just organisational blogs that are at play there. There is the 3^rd party: the independent blogger. We’re coming to the new tiger in the jungle.

Public relations needs to be proactive in issues management

One strategic approach for brand journalism, especially when using a blog platform, is to frequently link to and address issues discussed by and/or relevant to influential, or potentially influential, bloggers (in the context of an organisation’s reputation and/or a specific issue). The organisation should be addressing these issues from its own perspective, providing insights and information that will be unique to it – thus helping with differentiation, SEO and thought leadership positioning.

Why should the woolly mammoths have all the exclusives, pray tell?

The recognition of the blogger’s perspective through taking this approach will make them make feel valued and respected, even if the organisation takes an oppositional perspective to them. This will definitely speed up the information flow in a crisis (i.e. potentially stamp out the brush fires of disinformation that can escalate an already explosive situation).

Would you say the same approach would work with traditional journalism (i.e. link to journalist’s stories on either their own blogs or media website)? In my view, it won’t work as well because the journalists are bred and paid to be difficult folk, taking the cynical, uber-sceptical position.

Journalists have egos. Who would have thought?

But there are exceptions to this rule, especially in vertical/B2B media outlets and, let’s not forget, journalists are people too and as such possess egos (often quite colossal ones) that will feel gratified and respected if an organisation links to their online endeavours and accords them recognition and respect when addressing their positions. So, in summary, it can’t hurt!

Non-journalist bloggers – tigers without manners?

Because non-media bloggers aren’t restrained by the same standards and regulation as journalists, they can put unfounded content and utter speculation on their sites, meaning the genie can escape from the bottle (even if the genie is a figment of the writer’s imagination or ego) very quickly. If the organisation has an established blog and possibly even relationship with the blogger, this fire can be doused extremely quickly.

PR content marketing is more than join-the-dots

As social media is such a well resourced and many-limbed conductor of contemporary crises and issues of a reputational nature, it is imperative that an organisation of any size cultivates more than just a ‘placeholder’ presence on a blog and other social media, as well as having a presence that talks not only about positive ‘pretty’ issues impacting on the organisation, but also about challenging and divisive ones.

For brand journalism to resonate with its stakeholders it needs to take this holistic approach, embracing a wide range of issues relevant to the organisation and its stakeholders’ interests, needs and wants.

Independent bloggers influence the media itself, thus giving their presence greater resonance. In an interesting summary articulated in a study in the Journal of Public Relations Research, which has influenced this post itself, it was stated that bloggers:

• Act as ‘watchdogs’ to media by identifying inaccuracies
• Remove barriers to information access that media might put in place
• Upset the once dominant agenda-setting primacy of the media woolly mammoths
• Democratise the sources of information and perspectives available to stakeholders to gather information.

All of this is true, of course. So now we have three sources of news and blogs:

• Media woolly mammoths
• Organisational elephants in the room
• Independent tigers of the jungle.

Care to venture outside?

Stop press: Very soon a new, free whitepaper will be launched on this blog called The Holy Trinity of public relations: thought leadership, 3rd party credibility and strategic alliances. Spread the word! #PRholytrinity

What role do you think organisations should play in the provision of thought leadership, industry information and news – either through social media such as blogs or other platforms? What are your observations on the rapidly evolving tripartite sources of news and insights we have – media, bloggers and organisations? Where are we headed?

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If we don’t use the complementary elements of triple treat, we’ll struggle to have the content to leverage organisations to their potential, no matter what the platform:

• Media
• Speaking engagements
• Trade shows/expos
• But especially – SOCIAL MEDIA.

Of course, there will be situation where the utilisation of every (or any) element of content marketing, inbound marketing and brand journalism in an organisational communication strategy will not be appropriate. But they should always be on the list of boxes to check to see if, in fact, they should be leveraged.

Inbound marketing for public relations

Inbound marketing is not about interrupting people with television ads, print publication ads or cold calling, it is about providing resources of value to target audiences (e.g. through videos that potential customers want to see, business blogs with valuable insights and other forms of content such as white papers).

This leads to prospects contacting us looking for more information and sharing thoughts and observations on our organisations through social media and other avenues. The changing landscapes of media, communication and society are making outbound techniques less effective and more expensive.

Inbound marketing is an incredibly important strategic approach that the clever communicator will integrate into a plethora of proactive issues management and reputation building activities.

Additionally, it is a definitive platform through which to promote thought leadership (a prime approach to achieve organisational differentiation). It is an unmediated form of communication, so target audiences receive information and messaging precisely the way you intended it to be received. And, at its best, it enhances the anthropomorphic qualities (human characteristics) of an organisation, which is an effective way to enhance relationships with stakeholders.

Brand journalism underpinning excellent PR

Brand journalism ramps up to a more credible, values-driven level what PR professionals have been doing since the year dot, writing about an organisation and the issues which are relevant to it and its stakeholders.

Brand journalism has become a fundamental element of public relations:

• People don’t trust the media as much as they once did (due in no small part to its trend towards under-resourcing)
• People are looking online for information before picking up a magazine or newspaper
• SEO is directing people’s enquiry to well optimised sources of information.

Enter the opportunity for organisations to be THE provider of credible information on their organisation, their issues, their industry.

As Brian Solis has said of brand journalism, ““We have to become the resource, we have to become the influencer”.

To be an effective brand journalist, you must:

• be a trustworthy, consistent news source about your organisation and its industry

• provide information that has balance, authenticity and is produced in consideration of what your stakeholders are interested in (balanced with what drives your organisation)
• recognise that an emotional connection is key when it comes to stories and journalism.

Content marketing for stakeholder management

Content marketing is now an integral element of public relations and is an extension of the notion of thought leadership. It varies the thought leadership approach, however, in various ways:

1. It includes content not generated by the organisation
2. It can include content that is not necessarily ‘insightful’ or ‘high-end’
3. It broadens the range of issues an organisation might offer content on
4. It can increase the number of organisational employees who might speak, or represent the organisation, on certain topics.

Content is more than thought leadership. Not all content needs to be cutting edge, ground breaking etc. But it should provide value to the target audience.

By choosing some core pillars to provide original content (such as thought leadership), then having a ‘satellite’ of secondary topics where a content curation aesthetic is applied, organisations have the opportunity to have their cake and eat it too.

Excellent content educates, informs, entertains and/or inspires – all of which give you the best possible chance of engaging with stakeholders and developing advocates of them.

Other than thought leadership and curated content, options for inclusion into content marketing include:

• case studies
• analysis
• employee, customer, stakeholder stories: a diversity of voices (anthropomorphising)
• 3^rd party/strategic alliances content
• images
• videos.

As effective an approach as content marketing is, it is an insatiable beast. So remember to repurpose content as much as is feasible, customising it for target audience segments, to save time and get better ROI on marketing efforts.

If you’re looking for a great resource on content marketing, then I heartily recommend checking out DavidHenderson.Com.

Stop press: In a couple of weeks a new, free whitepaper will be launched on this blog called The Holy Trinity of public relations: thought leadership, 3rd party credibility and strategic alliances. Spread the word! #PRholytrinity

Do you include the triple treat methodologies in your organisational public relations or marketing strategy? How does your organisation offer insights and value to stakeholders that doesn’t have the explicit objective of turning a buck? Are you a good (make that an excellent) brand journalist? If so, share your secrets!

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Identifying and applying an appropriate approach to media relations will be close to top of the list for communication directors.

How needy, for instance, are senior stakeholders (e.g. organisational hierarchy, government ministers, ministerial staff etc) for extensive media coverage, whether this coverage is beneficial for reputation, community stakeholders or getting the job done?

The reality of some stakeholders’ needs may not reflect communication best practice. It’s not an issue of whether this is good or ‘not good’, it is a question of adapting to the political situation in which organisation and, hence, its communication exists.

[This is the fourth of a six-part ‘case study’ series on devising communication strategy for an infrastructure project, but can also be applied to non-infrastructure-related initiatives.].

Elements that PR media relations activity should include

1. The creation of a database of journalists, including information on individual journalists’ informational needs, the history of their perspective on the project and potential future angles and information that may be of relevance to them. Ideally, a record of all interaction with individual journalists will be kept, but often this sort of information moves too quickly to capture. In many cases, a media enquiry/interaction log can be kept.
2. The cultivation of relationships with specific, strategically important journalists and editors, and those with a great interest in the project should be undertaken on a consistent basis.
3. Ensuring site visits are provided for the journalists and they are given fresh news angles and content to run with.
4. Recognising that conflict is of key interest to metro media in particular. Relationships are critical here. Gaining balanced coverage is often the best one can hope for. Seeking supportive coverage all the time is not viable. It is important that these messages are consistently hammered home to internal stakeholders.
5. Radio will be key in many contexts due to its reach and utilisation by commuters in the morning in particular. Radio will often also leverage off morning print coverage, early which enables multiple placement of positive news, whilst also providing an early warning of further critical questioning. Conversely, if incorrect, unbalanced or problematic information is included in morning print media, the organisation can proactively seek out radio presence to put its perspective on the record and undermine the claims of the print outlet.
6. Generating guidelines for interaction between organisational employees and the media, including notification to the communication teams when the possibility of such interaction may occur and not undertaking media interaction without communication support and guidance (if at all!).
7. On the other hand, open and willing communication with the media is a default and it may be appropriate non-‘official’ media spokespeople to speak on certain issues and for certain opportunities, especially if this helps create connections between stakeholders and the organisation (i.e. humanise the edifice!).
8. Identify and cultivate spokespeople relevant to the strategy. This may well include a corporate overarching spokesperson, an engineering spokesperson and possibly a social/society spokesperson who talks about benefits of the project to local and other communities. The latter area will ideally be covered by the corporate spokesperson, but this may not always be possible. Potentially the head of comms could cover off on these issues but it is best if the PR person isn’t the spokesperson except for media and events and media of lesser importance (always a difficult call).

Strategic alliances: PR or marketing communication?

When cultivating strategic alliances, identify BIG organisations – business, sporting, community, councils –that have much to gain from the infrastructure, or are somehow involved in its development. They will provide 3^rd party credibility to the organisation.

Have a plan in place to integrate the alliances’ own activity/content into the communication, especially the digital content strategy. There also needs to be an approach put in place that has the organisation’s content syndicated through whatever comms mechanisms the alliances have – a mutually beneficial outcome.

Be aware, that whilst the forming of strategic alliances and the sharing of content has multiple upsides, the organisation needs to be self-conscious about maintaining its point of difference and positioning. Alliances should enrich the difference by providing a bedrock of context, relevance and support that allows this to occur with greater impact and resonance than would otherwise have been the case.

For some, media relations IS public relations (and that’s pretty much it). What are your thoughts on this? What can you add to the points about what approaches should be applied in a media relations program? What business area should look after strategic alliances – are there specific occurrences when PR should be responsible for them, but not others?

The next post in this six-part series talks about the website, social media, digital and database tactical elements of the communication strategy. Previous posts talked about approaches to public relations, market research and target audiences; the listening, conversational and adaptive characteristics of excellent communication strategy; and the Holy Trinity of PR.

PS. If you got something out of this post, spread the word with a Tweet or Share!

These thoughts were initially prompted by Ford Kanzler’s contribution to this blog. To gain a better understanding of his thinking I read his Connecting the Mind and Voice of Business book, from first page to last. I found it interesting, full of practical knowledge and useful for any PR professional.

But I also found what really annoys me at the very start, in these few sentences: «The whole purpose of business is marketing… marketing is, or ought to be, the brains of the outfit…Public relations, an aspect of promotion, is a sophisticated and highly effective way for marketing to express its brand and products’ values to the market.» Clearly, PR is «the voice» behind «the brain».

I’ll come back to the book in a moment but I must now share some of my views.

[This is a guest post by Guy Versailles.*]

PR is NOT marketing

I’ve been in PR-related positions for many decades. There was a time not so long ago when most businesses were entirely focussed on financial profit and did not believe they had to address environmental or social issues. This is not because they were heartless or cynical; most business persons were then, as they are today, respectable citizens; at the time, it was simply the dominant world-view.

Accordingly, marketing was entirely focused on the commercial aspects of business.

The growing concerns about the environmental and social impacts of business, fuelled notably by the spread of the concept of sustainable development, brought about a remarkable change. Today, business people understand the importance for small and large businesses alike to behave as responsible corporate citizens.

During the same period, advertising gradually fell out of favor, becoming more expensive and less effective. Al and Laura Ries have describes this in their seminal book, «The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR». What they suggest is quite simple: advertising does not work any longer but PR does, so let’s use PR to sell our wares.

On a very personal basis, this angered me for two reasons. First, PR has been there all along, going back many decades with a theory and body of knowledge centered on the building of relationships with stakeholders. It has never enjoyed the same favour as marketing has with the C-suite, being seen more often than not as a necessary expense rather than as an investment. But now that the marketing people see value in it, they simply «re-brand» PR as marketing and whatever influence we might have enjoyed before, we now risk losing entirely to their benefit.

Second, the Ries’ 2002 book really got me riled up when they took direct aim at what has always been the central focus of true public relations: to establish and maintain mutual lines of communication between an organization and its publics.

They quote an eminent PR pro: «Public relations is the art of earning and leveraging the trust of an organization’s key stakeholders» and they answer the following: «Come on, guys, you’re not trying out for the part of the in-house guru. You have a job to do, perhaps the most important job in any organization. Building the brand.»

Reading this book, I had the distinct impression that what they had in mind was to roll us back to before the 1950s, when PR in fact could be summarized as «publicity» in the traditional sense of the word (i.e. unpaid advertising). If this is the case, then PR is in jeopardy.

If its primary focus becomes «the brand» instead «the relationship» and if it is under the control of the same people who assume the all-important role of selling the product, then PR in danger of losing its credibility and of being seen as just another sales tool. In other words, if the marketing people simply decide to use PR to replace advertising, then PR will go the same route advertising has and lose credibility.

I have read other books that are more nuanced and that recognize a specific role for PR, if for no other reason that the social media today requires genuine engagement that goes way beyond any traditional means of «pushing the product». Nonetheless, there is always this nagging idea which is presented almost as a self-evident truth: marketing is everything, the rest is accessory.

Acknowledged, this can be considered «radical» but in no way do I intend to be disrespectful of the marketing people. Many exchanges are required to help us better understand how to efficiently work together.

Connecting the mind and voice of business: commenting on the book

I totally agree that businesses exist to sell products and services, that good marketing is essential and that PR can contribute greatly to supporting the brand and to push the product.

But PR is not only «an aspect of promotion». It is not even primarily that, in my mind at least. It is focused primarily on relationships, on understanding the socio-political, as well as the market environments the company – or any other type of organization – must contend with. Marketing PR is a branch of PR, not all of it.

I have great respect with PR people who support the marketing effort, but I have developed other interests in my own career. I have worked in strategic planning, communications management, media relations and crisis communications, in the public affairs, or corporate affairs divisions of many large organizations, tackling problems that have nothing to do with marketing but that can put a company out of business. For instance, securing the «licence to operate» in a world where using natural resources, generating pollution and constructing any kind of new installation are subjected to public approval.

Perhaps it is a question of perspective and culture. Just as in the human brain, rational intelligence, intuition, emotions, must work together well to produce a well-balanced individual, «the brains» of a company is its management team, not any single corporate function, however important it may be. Profitability and sales are paramount, but must be rounded out with proper consideration for everything else that makes a company efficient, from good management of its employees, production and finances, to government and community relations.

This reservation put aside, Ford’s book provides very valuable insight and practical knowledge for marketing people who should understand how PR can work for the brand and for PR people who choose to work in marketing PR. Indeed, much of the advice applies to all types or PR situations and I enjoyed the refresher course:

• identify the defining characteristics of your organization (or product)
• define strategy before choosing tactics
• find the specific media and journalists that are interested and tailor your approach according to their interests.

The book also argues convincingly on the importance for all of management to understand the importance of PR and to get involved personally, as well as on the importance of sustaining the PR effort over time: «Consistency, continuity, credibility.»

As well, Ford’s advice on client-agency relationships is right on and it applies to any type of PR. And, finally, I share with him the importance of putting «PR 2.0» in perspective: technology changes much more rapidly than the human brain. We should not believe we are reinventing the discipline because the social media provides us with new ways of communicating.

Despite the general statements quoted above, Ford often argues convincingly that PR must have a brain of its own, for instance when he argues that PR must «avoid drinking marketing’s Kool-Aid…PR pros have a responsibility to maintain a healthy dose of skepticism and ask hard questions.»

As I read on into the book, my original misgivings were overcome by the recognition that we indeed do share the same craft: public relations. But we need to further explore our relationship with marketing.

What is your reaction to Guy’s thoughts and his critique of Ford’s book? Does PR have more importance to commercial organisations than being simply a sales tool? How much does PR actually build up reputation and how important is this in your experience? Is public relations at risk of losing what credibility it has established for itself due to marketing trying to claim its ‘territory’?

*Guy Versailles, APR, has expertise in communications strategy and planning, with a special emphasis on press relations, public affairs, internal communication and crisis management. He has worked in high profile government positions (including the Office of the Premier of Québec), Hydro-Québec and the Solidarity Fund QFL, a major investment fund based in Montreal. He holds a Bachelor of Arts with major in Journalism, has completed a graduate course in «Management and Sustainable Development» and is a past director of Quebec’s foremost association of public relations professionals. He was recently awarded the Yves Saint-Amand Award for Excellence, in recognition for his contribution to the advancement of professional public relations. He is President of strategic communication consultancy, Versailles Communication.

The solution to best practice utilisation of social media by organisations is encapsulated in that summary. All we need to do apply – with rigour, creativity and tenacity – all of those elements articulated.

The new study – Social Media Strategy and Governance – gaps, risks and opportunities* – can be viewed through either a positive or negative prism:

• The negative approach can look at a finding that says only two in ten organisations have a social media strategy and declaim that this is a terrible result and a stain on the reputation of those that are responsible for its application
• The positive approach can point to a large number of steps that organisations have taken since the emergence of social media, supported by the salient observation that it is still a field that has, if anything, increased its acceleration and depth of subtlety since its emergence.

What is PR trying to achieve?

Whether taking a negative of positive approach, it is clear that there is a wealth of opportunity to capitalise further on the discipline(s) of social media. And, yes, whilst a core opportunity is to engage more deeply with stakeholders with effective communication, a more profound opportunity is to utilise the interactive and environmental scanning dimensions of social media.

This will help organisations learn more, so they can effectively evolve to meet their stakeholders’ expectations. But, as the study says:

“…most PR and corporate communication practitioners see social media as ‘another marketing and promotion channel’ with less focus on two-way engagement, listening and collaboration. Thus, the unique benefits of Web 2.0-based social media and networks are not being fully realised.”

This goes to the very crux of what we are committed to achieving in public relations, which may well be the topic of another post, but here are my options:

• Communicate organisational messages and information, sensitively and in a targeted manner etc, but that’s it
• Listen to stakeholders and adapt the communication that occurs according to stakeholder needs (content, mechanisms etc)
• Listen to stakeholders and both persuade them to alter their knowledge/perceptions/behaviour as well as providing information to our organisations to alter their knowledge/perceptions/behaviour.

The latter is where I think public relations offers a truly meaningful value to organisations – and, sure, it means short-term pain for long-term gain – and manifest itself as the most business-relevant discipline possible.

Control and capability in social media

One of the themes of the report is the tension between organisations ceding control of communication to their stakeholders by engaging in social media or, and this is pretty funny in many ways, ceding control of their communication to their own employees!

I always thought employees were meant to be an organisation’s number one brand ambassadors. And yet here are organisations still thinking that it’s okay for their employees to engage in BBQ conversations, yet not participate in online versions of BBQ forums, social media. It’s an attitude verging on censorship and repression. Some organisations, or their power-wielding hierarchy, really do think they can withstand the forces of curiosity and individual self-expression.

I guess it can work for a while, but eventually – Libya etc – the walls come crumbling down.

Lack of strategy in PR’s application of social media

The dearth of organisations taking a comprehensively strategic approach to social media – Brian Solis recently bemoaned the absence of direction in social engagement – was made crystal clear through a number of statistics:

• 65% of private or public sector organisations have no specific policies or guidelines in relation to social media use by employees
• 67% of organisations provide no training for employees using social media in relation to work
• Almost half of organisations do not monitor social media regularly
• 36% of organisations do not analyse social media content at all.

This raises the following questions:

• How are employees meant to be excellent advocates (and hence a marketing asset) for their organisations, or even satisfactory ones, without guidance and training?
• How can excellent reputation and brand building occur without being aware of what is being said about an organisation on the behemoth that is social media?
• Do organisations actually believe that social media content/communication/conversations operate in a siloed manner that does not influence other modes of communication?

I would once again point you back to this post’s opening paragraph. Without taking a comprehensively strategic approach to social media, without giving employees the skills and licence to be effective brand advocates and without recognising the power of social media as one of many potentially relevant communication mechanisms, this social media journey will be one beset by more pitfalls and more pain than is necessary.

How developed is your organisation in the strategic application of social media? Are all social media activities integrated across your organisation? Is your social media activity fully integrated into overarching organisational communication strategy? What are the barriers and frustrations you have in applying social media for your organisation? Do you take a positive or negative view of some of the findings discussed here?

Social Media Strategy and Governance – gaps, risks and opportunities was written by Jim Macnamara, Professor of Public Communication at the University of Technology, Sydney and Co-director of the Australian Centre of Public Communication.

However, what’s unfortunately more often the case is marketing being rather clueless about what the business or brand story (competitive differentiation) should be. Then it becomes a case of the tail wagging the dog, where PR needs to lead marketing to effective strategies for being heard in the market place and help drive brand awareness and credibility.

[This is a guest post by Ford Kanzler.*]

If marketing is only focused on “turning a buck”, it’s not being undertaken by very good marketers. They probably ought to move over to working in finance. Those are the ones who just look at numbers and typically have no sense of connecting with customers or any other constituencies, except perhaps for stockholders, who are also quite often just trying to turn a buck as well.

Marketing leads

If an organization is set up to deliver goods and services, then frankly marketing ought to be at the helm. Consider what PR would be doing if there were no Marketing…finding and delivering something for an interested group.

What organizations exist without an aspect of Marketing? What organizations exist that exist solely for the purpose of public relations?

• PR is a service to the organization: it’s the “voice of business”
• An election campaign is marketing a candidate
• A benevolent cause is marketing to potential donors
• Manufacturers are marketing a product.

Consider that reputation, community relations, issues management, internal communication, investor relations and much more are all supporting and sustaining the organization’s or business’ purpose of delivering a goods and services to “customers” or whatever you want to call the recipients.

Cooperation is key

Certainly, I agree that marketing and public relations must work together effectively. PR doesn’t exist in isolation.

However, PR serves the purposes of the organization whose essential reason for being is marketing. I suggest getting upset about who’s directing the show is quite pointless. What’s true is that PR quite often needs to provide communications direction when marketing fails in that area.

Skilled marketers know what needs to be transmitted to their market. Lack of marketing direction doesn’t automatically make PR necessarily ‘in charge’. We’re merely filling an often occurring leadership vacuum.

PR pros shouldn’t get too full of themselves about doing that, even if it’s often a very necessary and valuable role. After all, what are you promoting or communicating about if there’s not a marketing objective?

Effective marketers, now and historically, have a clear vision of what customers want and why and provide PR (and/or marcomms) with the insight and direction needed for communicating well about the organization, products and services.

If PR is also “dedicated to the holistic organization-stakeholder set of relationships, including marketing imperatives,” so much the better. Then both functions are on the same page and things will likely work out a lot better.

Bringing a focus

I prove my value to clients by helping them understand what, how and when they should be communicating about their business. Then I help execute appropriate campaign tactics that carry their story to receptive prospects.

Am I doing PR when I move back up the chain of events to create communications strategy? I don’t think so. I’m doing the work of the marketer who should have figured out how to tell their story before I showed up. Thankfully, lots of businesses haven’t figured that out, so I and other PR pros can help marketers that way. We’re doing marketing so we can do effective PR.

The mind directing the voice

If public relations isn’t a service to marketing, then apparently most companies have it all wrong.

Everywhere I’ve been PR reports to the Marketing VP or Director. If it reports to someone lower on the totem pole than that, it sure isn’t going to be very strategic to the company’s business.

What also enters into today’s PR practice has been labeled corporate social responsibility (CSR).

I suggest strategic-thinking PR pros have long focused on their organizations’ or clients’ social or public responsibilities as critical to protecting the brand’s overall, long-term perceived value.

Were they always listened to? Certainly not and often to the detriment of the business they were counseling. Now we have a name for this traditional aspect of PR, specialists practicing it and books written on it.

However, CSR also must connect with the business objectives and either temper or enhance what the business is planning, doing or not doing. It’s here where there certainly may be potential conflicts between marketing, other groups and PR.

CSR, or PR pros working in that vein, have the opportunity to act as a corporate conscience. When PR pros want to separate their work from marketing and seem to consider PR a higher or loftier calling there’s going to be trouble. Corporate and marketing management will be quickly turned off by PR pros who are not well connected with Marketing’s objectives and strategies.

To Craig’s point that, “organisations are driven by their vision, values and business objectives,” I agree. The last time I checked “business objectives” are definitely about communicating and selling goods, services or an idea, typically to earn revenue. Creating awareness, credibility, preference, willingness to engage and purchase or adopt something from the organization sponsoring the communicating drives revenue.

This is at the heart of PR’s support of the organization’s marketing and sales effort. Creating good will or positive regard or reputation are all intimately connected to business growth or maintenance.

Even organized religions are marketing and publicizing in a range of ways to raise funds or gather members.

I’ve done PR for the Boy Scouts to help grow membership, community support and involvement. It’s all the same game. Yes, the scouts are driven by their ‘vision and values’. However, bringing new scouts and their parents into the fold to grow and maintain the organization is what the organization’s survival is all about.

Not tying PR efforts (objectives, strategies and tactics) to business objectives is, frankly, a sure way of losing your job or your client. Do marketing and public relations need to play well together for best effect? Certainly! Their working hand-in-hand is key.

What did you think of Ford’s assertions? Should public relations always be a service to marketing? Are those PR pros working in a CSR vein taking the opportunity to act as an organisation’s conscience? Even if PR is not working in a CSR-specific (or branded) area, should it still be acting to some degree as an organisation’s conscience?

*Ford Kanzler is a Managing Partner at Marketing/PR Savvy and has extensive experience in both marketing and public relations. His just-published book, Connecting the Mind and Voice of Business, illuminates the ups and downs, and pros and cons, in each discipline cooperating and understanding each area.

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.

One of public relations’ strongest and most defining characteristics is its facilitation of, and influence over, the exchange and cross-fertilisation of stories, beliefs and demands between an organisation and its stakeholders. It is, therefore, somewhat remiss of PR professionals not to invest more time into underlining the profound impact we have on positioning, whether it is in the context of an organisation, or one of its products or services.

For a long time now I’ve been conscious of the importance of positioning to PR practice, but have failed to see many discussions of the issue. There’s an excellent, comprehensive and thought provoking one in relatively recent edition of the Journal of Public Relations Research, by Australian PR academic and practitioner Melanie James, entitled A Provisional Conceptual Framework for Intentional Positioning in Public Relations* (NB. Don’t let the title put you off!)

In this post I identify, discuss and tease out aspects of this article, but to get full value I suggest you seek it out at your local uni library.

Marketing and public relations: positioning contested

As usual, the notion of a contest is easily transferrable to marketing and PR. One of the quotes I like that James’ uses is Ries and Trout’s, “The basic approach of positioning is not to create something new and different, but to manipulate what’s already up there in the mind, to retie the connections that already exist.” Positioning, they also said, “is what you do to the mind of the prospect.”

Now many aspects of this are insightful and useful, but when marketers start using the word ‘manipulate’ it reaffirms my perceptions of the discipline and one of its essential weaknesses. Whereas public relations, practiced at its optimum level, is about mutually driven outcomes, marketing seeks to contextualise and, yes, position to seek optimum profit for an organisation.

Who’s spin-criminal-in-chief now?

James spends time talking about the marketing and sales-aligned general notion of positioning and the inappropriateness of many discussions on the topic to public relations. Yet, as her research points out, positioning is endemic within our public relations discipline.

Positioning, when practiced by PR pros, is much more likely to lead to change from the organisation, rather than focusing on the one-way and sales-targeted communication that marketing employs. Pointedly, James says, “public relations works to co-construct particular meanings in the minds of publics [i.e. stakeholders]”, underlining the transactional nature of our field.

Compare the two:

• Marketing “re-ties” perceptions that already exist
• Public relations constructs meanings in a partnership (though admittedly, in most cases, probably a partnership of unequal power).

Public relations position on positioning: positioned

James says that, “Positioning in public relations can be defined as the strategic attempt to stake out and occupy a site of intentional representation in the contested space where meanings are constructed, contested and reconstructed.”

Key roles played by PR, James says, are stakeholder analysis (i.e. market research), framing of organisational positions (i.e. contextualising of communication, driven by strategy) and organisational narratives (which are always, to some extent, co-constructed with stakeholders).

For the most part, positioning undertaken by public relations is intentional, even if it is in response to positioning or communication from organisational stakeholders. The responsive dimension of positioning necessitates fluidity being inherent to most positioning, reinforcing its negotiated characteristic of positioning. And if social media isn’t emphasising this then I don’t know what is!

James introduces work undertaken by psychology researchers Harre and Langenhove, called a “positioning triangle”. Her research underlined how accurate this conceptualisation is for PR:

• The position of various players within the organisational ‘relationship environment’
• The social forces of action and interaction that is occurring
• Narratives (stories abound!).

James makes perhaps the ultimate point that, “positioning is a significant part of public relations practice.” In an applied sense, this suggests public relations practitioners should:

• be conscious of how their communication impacts on organisational/product/service positioning
• understand the relationships relevant to positioning between an organisation/product/service and other relevant organisations/products/services/stakeholders, as they exist in a fluid, transactional environment
• counsel their organisation to evolve based on the varying needs of the organisation and its stakeholders – thus helping to build and sustain mutually beneficial relationships between the organisation and its stakeholders
• be assertive in claiming the practice of positioning within their activity and spelling out to organisational hierarchy the importance of public relations’ role in this area.

What work have you done in the area of positioning in your public relations practice? Have you been frustrated by your organisation not recognising public relations’ relevance to positioning? Do you relate to the various concepts noted above and how would you contextualise them to what you do in your workplace?

* James, M. (2011). A Provisional Conceptual Framework for Intentional Positioning in Public Relations, Journal of Public Relations Research, 23(1)

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.