Passivity is the danger that public relations cannot afford when involved in lobbying. If we are only advocates, we risk marginalizing ourselves with clients, media and thoughts, and opponents. Beyond advocacy, there are two additional roles that help us keep perspective: monitoring and interpreting for clients the strong and valid points made by our “opponents”; actually bringing various parties together in a dialogue to determine and implement common interests.

Is lobbying where we hide the less savoury and morally questionable side of what our public relations communication discipline involves? Secret backroom conversations. Non-promoted initiatives. Unwritten agreements taken as writ. Clearly, there is plenty about lobbying that won’t pay(off) for it to be articulated.

Five critical topics that public relations and marketing communicators need to know about and be adept at leveraging are content marketing, optimising online real estate for search, the value of 3RD party brand advocates, the subtleties of media relations and evaluation and measurement. This post touches on all five, referring you to some excellent PR and marketing bloggers who have recently explored these issues.

A perfect storm has erupted over the issue of whether PR should, partially at least, be measured on its ability to drive sales and/or generate profits. Public relations is about building mutually beneficial relationships between an organisation and its stakeholders. Its contribution to business-related outcomes is significant. Better: stakeholder relationships, organisational reputation, awareness of and trust towards or of the organisation and/or its products/services.

A survey undertaken late in 2010 implies that public relations is not being used to make money for organisations. Rather, it is being used primarily for reputation, brand and issues management purposes. This raises questions about the utilisation of PR to sell products and services and the willingness of organisations to measure PR’s contribution in terms of financial bottom lines, ostensibly providing an insight into why public relations is hamstrung in gaining increased credibility and influence within organisations.

There is incessant chatter about the dialogic dimension of social media and how this enhances the potency of public relations. We can exchange views. We can influence each other. We can build relationships. So, hello, we can help make money and build brands through PR. But you know what, there is a burgeoning ubiquitousness of advertising or money-making distractions through social media, so you have to wonder if this preponderance of ‘dialogue, ‘sharing’ and ‘relationship building’ is just a load of total camouflage bollocks for turning a buck.

Public relations at its very core is about words – sometimes written, sometimes spoken, sometimes with images, but always about words. And it is driven by strategy – essentially comprised of the who, what, when, where, why, how of communication and engagement – which is sometimes made to sound more complex than it actually is. A little secret – public relations strategy is over-rated.

Employer branding is something of a chic sub-section of contemporary branding, yet marketing has yet to get its head around how to leverage PR to achieve a best-possible outcome. Actually, marketing has yet to figure out how to leverage marketing to best effect! But it’s an exciting and incredibly worthwhile dimension of business communication and one where dialogue/conversation/change based on feedback really does have an opportunity to occur.

The value of employer branding is becoming clearer each day as the battle for workplace talent gets increasingly fierce. Australia, for instance, is going through a severe skill shortage crisis in key areas. Yet many organisations are lagging in their thinking and application of employer branding, including how public relations can be incorporated into this quite specific, and generally marketing-aligned, business communication activity.

Public relations is critically important to branding; perhaps even its most important element. This is because PR is the primary architect and facilitator of stakeholder engagement, its brief being to be concerned about both the organisation and its stakeholders – their knowledge, opinions and behaviour. And a brand is built, these social media-powered days especially, as a partnership between multiple entities.