A new study on social media, and its use by public professionals in particular, found, “that organisations need, but most currently lack, a social media strategy – an overall framework of objectives, performance indicators and management processes to achieve these, including training, governance, monitoring and measurement.”

In an ‘information obesity’ world, what can public relations practitioners do or say to cut through the online corporate corpulence and still add ‘meat’ with nutritional value? Two answers are that we need to ‘re-calorie-brate’ our focus and activities and add internal journalist and search engine optimization (SEO) expert calisthenics into the working skill set.

The adage of what goes around comes around rings truer than ever when applied to business referrals and social media. If you give, you get, is the way I look at it. Biblical, in some ways. In social media terms, the parlance is reciprocity and its strategic manifestation is thought leadership provision resulting in meaningful [...]

The rise of social media has created untold new tools and channels for all public relations practitioners. But in the field of issue management it is having a dramatic impact not just on the day-to-day practice of the discipline, but is changing forever an organisation’s stakeholder relationships and the expectations of its stakeholders.

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.

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.

The emergence of social media, an entirely new tactical discipline, has presented an enormous challenge to the teaching and strategic and tactical practice of PR. It’s new, it has a wealth of platforms, it demands a lot of content produced in an online-friendly mode, its rate of change is eye-popping.

Public relations teeters on the precipice of hyperbole, but it is no spin to purport that the profession is at a critical juncture in its development. And it is with some irony that it is a communication tactic, not a strategic approach or a grand conceptual issue, that is the prime reason for this. You are familiar with it – the loved and sometimes loathed ‘social media’.

Over the past decade the practice of in-house PR has grown as management of large companies and organisations better appreciate the value strategic communications can bring to their brand. Despite this, however, it is external PR consultants who are leading the way when it comes to (a) understanding today’s hyper-connected marketplace and, (b), actively participating on the social web, thus making them an invaluable commodity in today’s cynical and information-overloaded world.