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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Whilst I am an advocate of organisational change – short-term pain for long-term gain – to help create better stakeholder relationships, without the initial important component of listening being applied in an exacting, scientific manner, change and impact in any context will not be fulfilled to its best possible level.

The value of listening pre-crisis for PR and reputation management

In an issues & crisis management dimension there are a range of excellent reasons to have a sophisticated set of organisational listening protocols in place. Listening enables you to:

• pick up on organisation mentions and the context (very important) in which this has occurred
• identify and understand issues
• identify stakeholders, as well as key influencers on your target audiences
• proactively build up database of those who are either fans of the organisation and its issues, have an interest in them or who can positively influence others, enabling you to build programs targeting those receptive to information and giving you a good opportunity to amplify your content across the internet
• identify and develop relationship management strategies for those who are critical of the organisation
• gain fresh perspectives on how organisational and stakeholder change could occur, facilitating continuous organisational improvement (communication-specific or broader business-relevant)
• identify topics and issues of interest to target audiences that an organisation can create communication programs from (including inbound marketing and content marketing approaches)
• put in place planning to address potential issues come crises, including reaching out to relevant stakeholders before issues escalate into crisis territory. These potential issues could have been identified through stakeholder monitoring.

Why listening helps PR during a crisis

If you have an effective stakeholder listening process set up you will hear, and you can react to, the issue and where it came from. You can do this accurately and with speed, thus saving time and helping minimise issue/crisis escalation and negative reputation impact.

PR-driven social media helping organisations post-crisis

Social media is a boon for issues management, crisis management and continuous organisational improvement. This is because once integrated into an organisation’s listening strategy, it can provide deep information to help an organisation:

• understand and assess stakeholder reactions to crises
• determine what elements of the crisis stakeholders responded to most significantly (e.g. nature of organisational crisis management and response; what elements of the crisis generated greatest concern/relief)
• who the most active commenters were (both positive and negative), thus helping determine influencers and programs that can be put in place to leverage supporters and educate/inform/build more positive relationships with negative commenters/influencers
• prioritise stakeholders that could potentially become champions or advocates of the brand
• reach out to stakeholders to further explore their positions
• emphasise post-crisis organisational change that is occurring and continue the conversation
• anthropomorphise (give it human qualities) the conversation and, hence, the organisation
• determine the ROI on crisis actions undertaken, ultimately helping identify opportunities for the organisation to change its operations/crisis communication to create more positive relationships with stakeholders.

All of this information provides a valuable resource for continual whole-of-organisation improvement and, by extension, organisational cultural and – of course – communication change.

Stop press: In a few 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

What other activity can take place – communication-specific and more broadly business-relevant – as a result of effective target audience and stakeholder listening? Do you have examples of how an organisation has changed its communication and business as a result of listening to its stakeholders that you can share?

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According to recent data that has come from Nielsen, social media use in Australia:

• is up 127% in 2011 compared to 2010
• increased its share of being a leisure pursuit by 36%
• sees, on average, Australians spend nearly ten hours per week on social networks.

Additionally, a new study from the USA amongst  300 C-suite and senior executives found that companies that fully embrace social engagement are experiencing four times greater business impact than less‐engaged companies.

This is on top of the cold, hard fact that social media provides invaluable help in the field of crisis communication management to:

• identify emerging issues and key stakeholders and influencers
• enable speedy communication during the crisis
• provide information to improve future crisis operational and communication processes (not to mention business operations in the broader sense).

Bearing all this evidence in mind – what’s the problem?!

*This supposition, and a number of others noted in this post, are based on findings and analysis in Trends and issues in Australian corporate affairs 2012, a survey of over 300 of Australia’s most senior corporate affairs professionals, undertaken by leading public relations, communications and corporate affairs recruiter, Salt & Shein.

PR watches the social media boat sail by

Following are some quotes from the report’s respondents that had me raising an eyebrow or two:

• “I think there are ways and techniques that people will eventually refine that will allow you to control the message in a social media context.”
• “I still think it’s all about controlling the message. Social media is just another channel, but with tighter timeframes.”
• “The market predominantly reads the serious press, watches ABC news and listens to AM and PM. It doesn’t necessarily look at someone’s tweet or Facebook post.”

When PR pros start talking about controlling the message, I wonder do they actually mean controlling reputation? Because I would have thought by now that it is generally recognised as being realistic that reputation and brand are created jointly between an organisation and its stakeholders, with social media being one of the main reasons why this is in fact the case.

Controlling the message is, in many instances, an extension of the reputation control presumption. Messages are translated, modified, re-articulated by stakeholders, with value-adding occurring all the time. Trying to control the message, then, is like saying here is a bottle with a genie in it, but don’t you dare open it!

The report says its respondents are, “over-whelmingly… taking a “toe in the water” approach to social media whilst actively monitoring the medium.” A little bit of bravery here guys! It’s not like we are short on data supporting the need to alter our approach to communication, reallocating resources as necessary.

The response from what I assume is an ASX-listed company’s PR employee in regard to the ‘market’ implies that the market is the only stakeholder they care about. This further implies that the company’s focus is a narrow one. I am sure it has more than one stakeholder to maintain and build a relationship with.

The report further notes that, “Several senior practitioners at top 50 companies were scathing in their assessment of the medium, variously describing it as “pure hype”, “completely oversold” and “a re-run of the internet frenzy in the 1990s”.

This seems to fly in the face of best practice PR that espouses thought leadership and its placement on social media, the critically important approach of inbound marketing and the content marketing that needs to underpin it.

On the other hand, as noted through the rationale of the following report respondent, there can be a sound reason for avoiding social media, at least until you figure out a way for ROI to be delivered:

“In one part of our business we are avoiding social media altogether because it’s a hornet’s nest populated by activists who are well mobilised and organised around a single issue. We have assessed the impact of their social media activities on our reputation as miniscule, as the number of people following and reading the blogs and posts is very small.”

Public relations using social media for crisis communication

“The biggest issue for corporate affairs to manage is social media. It has fundamentally changed the paradigm from managing information to managing information flow. Whatever vestige of control there was is fast being dissipated through the fragmentation of social media and the rise of customer democracy in parallel.”

From a crisis management perspective, it seems hard to justify standing by and just watching and monitoring social media.

This notion is amplified by the findings of survey last year that highlighted brand and image as top of the list of risk concerns for 300 Australia and New Zealand executives, with social media highlighted as a “particular risk to brand, image and reputation.”

Well, here’s a news flash guys, unless you are on the social web engaging and influencing, it is going to be too late come crisis time to play catch up. Do you want to build up the relationship bank account before withdrawals are made, or receive the sort of withdrawal shock to the system that Greece, metaphorically speaking, is going through?

The Salt & Shein report notes, “Social media’s role in escalating negative news whilst compressing deadlines and response times is a recurring theme in our quantitative survey, with nearly 18 per cent of respondents nominating its role in issues and crisis management.”

Is a significant, if only partial, solution to concerns like this not screaming us in the face?

What did you think about the findings flagged in this post based on the Salt & Shein report? Does the level of social media engagement from so many leading Australian companies surprise you? Most report respondents were from the Australian financial services sector, so do you think the report results aren’t a fair reflection of PR practice by large organisations?

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Further dimensions of the above assertions are that:

• the blog should be from the agency or one or more of their employees
• a number of employees should be active, from a business perspective, on some non-blog social media platforms (e.g. Goggle+, Twitter, LinkedIn, new darling Pinterest etc)
• PR agency employees’ thoroughly filled out LinkedIn profiles should include recommendations from those they have worked with/for (not including colleagues!!)

And no, you don’t need to be interested in having an agency undertake a social media program specifically for an agency to be adept in the items listed above.

But, and get this, if the agency can’t tick these boxes then they are not talking the walk when it comes to best practice PR and they are not conversant with the application of best practice PR.

If an agency is not applying and/or cannot speak articulately on why or why not the above approaches are relevant to your business then you are speaking to professionals who are not the best out there – go elsewhere!

In regard to the elements PR agencies should feature listed above, each of them should be a default inclusion in your public relations and/or marketing strategy. Certainly, they may not be ultimately suited to your needs, but it most cases they will be.

You will also find some agencies and/or professionals say that they don’t need to be active in social media, including having a blog, or to be producing their own thought leadership content. What an absolute load of bollocks. Inherent within this argument are the following rationales:

• We are good enough to undertake your social media programs but we don’t spend much, if any, time on these platforms in a professional business sense ourselves
• We are focused on achieving our own business aims and don’t believe in contributing to the advancement of our profession through the dominant communication mechanism of our times, the internet
• We don’t believe that the internet is the best mechanism through which to generate positive word-of-mouth branding and tactical awareness after face-to-face interpersonal communication
• Thought leadership and inbound journalism aren’t very important for differentiation and stakeholder engagement.

If you subscribe to any of the assertions noted above, then you definitely need professional public relations assistance (but not from any who agree with the assertions)!!

This is the second in a series on choosing a Sydney PR agency. The first post discussed the issues of who works on your account (junior or senior employees), quoting and hour allocation, matching agency capabilities with client needs, Chinese wall, customised attention to PR needs and does the supplier need to be based in the same city as the client.

Measuring the impact of PR investment

Whatever path is taken in Sydney PR agency investment, it is imperative that metrics are put in place as part of the strategising and the final plan. This does not mean that an agency should be dropped if objectives are not achieved. There might be very good reasons for this (client dysfunctionality and inability to provide content or sign off as needed for one!) but they need to be discussed and ways to gain better outcomes identified and incorporated.

The rationale behind the metrics needs to transparent.

Agencies are adept at putting forward potential outcomes (media coverage, social media sharing, links to sales etc) that are wildly optimistic and bear little relation to reality. Don’t fall into the trap of accepting sexy looking outcomes without questioning the rationale behind them.

If an agency does fail to deliver on silly objectives, well, they’ve only got themselves to blame if they aren’t achieved. And similarly, clients should not push for ridiculous outcomes that bear no relation to their financial investment in the PR program or the quality of the content they can offer for the various tactical mechanisms they are implementing.

An agreement should be:

• in writing before ANY WORK commences
• pedantic in addressing the nature of the work that it is required be done
• conscious in addressing the issue of activity reporting (and for goodness sake don’t get too anal about this as where do you want your time spent – getting results or reporting on results….?)
• sensibly applied by human beings and not machines as the nature of the public relations service means that the operating environment will change and the PR work will need to adapt to these changing circumstances. This can only be done effectively when the relationships between the PR operator and the client is a positive, mutually respectful one.

Honesty and challenging presumptions by Sydney PR agencies

Inherent in the discussion above is the need for total and ongoing transparency and honesty between a client and its agency. The reasons for this are pretty obvious I would have thought.

To get the best from the PR agency clients should welcome their assumptions and perceptions being challenged. One of PR’s core attributes is to argue the point and dig deeper. This can have strategic and issues management outcomes, but so can it enrich the narratives that will form the central part of client public relations activity. It adds rigour.

I’ve seen it occur where a client wants activity and narrative to occur strictly how they perceive it should be. This always leads to lower quality narratives and less than best-possible outcomes. Don’t do it!

Pitches are for cricket, not for PR

One of my pet hates (and I’m not alone in this) is the tendency of potential clients to want full-on pitches made for their business – what an absolute waste of time and insult to the intelligence!

You only have to look at the marketing/advertising industry where agencies can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on pitches only to be knocked back. There might be a cursory payment for the pitch in some cases but this doesn’t come close to recovering costs.

It is an evil system and should be destroyed at the earliest possible opportunity!

A pitch is often undertaken by agencies before they have had a chance to get to know the potential client’s business as well as they need to, leading to pitches which may not be in full alignment with client business and communication needs.

Additionally, I can’t tell you how often I’ve seen the blood, sweat and tears of a winning pitch ultimately end up being ditched. This is because when the agency and the client got down to brass tacks, taking another path to success proved optimal. This means all that time and creativity is wasted. Oh sure, the agency and the client may say we can use it again elsewhere, but that rarely occurs.

Another factor in this process is that the huge amount of effort that is put in a pitch does not necessarily translate into a huge amount of effort put into a client once their business has been secured. Sad but true. You can also be stone cold certain the big agency guns will work on the creative and strategy in the pitch, but that not all of them will be involved in the running of the client’s account in more than a cursory fashion, if at all.

Outcome? To decide on what agency is right:

• Check credentials for experience and capability that matches client needs
• Check with past clients asking the right questions relevant to what your specific PR needs
• Interact with the agency and those who will specifically work on your account – do you get the ‘good vibe’, cultural match and d*#khead-free zone feeling from them?
• Ascertain precisely who is working on the account and what percentage of their time will be allocated to it.

What are your thoughts on the effectiveness and appropriateness of preparing extensive pitches for new business? What is your experience of them and what instructive tales can you tell us? Do you think agencies need to be active in social media to be credible, or be making a contribution to the PR industry through thought leadership on internet-based platforms?

PS. If you’re wondering why I use the term ‘Sydney PR’ or variations of it in this post, the savvy amongst you will have realised I am doing it mainly for SEO reasons, otherwise I’d have ditched the Sydney bit and made it more generic. I’m telling you this in the interests of transparency and also in case you find it interesting I’ve done this. I don’t agonise too much over keywords for search purposes (content takes precedence), but am always conscious of it, as PR certainly needs to be in its approach to content marketing. It seems to be working so far, so let’s see if it leads to client/work opportunities!! Wish me luck.

The two-way symmetrical model of communication has long purported that public relations can help organisations evolve to better meet stakeholder needs and, as a result, create stronger and more meaningful relationship with them. This has attendant reputation benefits too, of course.

But does this necessarily entail putting an organisation’s reputation on the line more than in pre-social media times simply because platforms where this can occur exist more than they once did?

Social media’s emergence has increased the possibility of more dialogue with an organisation (and certainly ABOUT an organisation), which doesn’t necessarily lead to change (thus making it one-way symmetrical communication).

Also, a hell of a lot of chatter on social media platforms isn’t about seeking change…it’s just inane, social chatter. Is it worth the risk for many organisations to ‘put themselves out there’ when it’s often the equivalent of random conversations down at the pub/bar after a few drinks?

Inherent in the nature of dialogue is an amorphousness, a lack of ‘fixity’. Whilst in certain formal environments it is possible to introduce guidelines or controls, even then the cat can escape the bag, so to speak:

• Look a court cases, for instance – the scandalousness that escapes when least expected! And this is an environment which, supposedly, is highly formalised
• A community forum or consultation, where PR folk often operate, is far less likely to pay heed to pre-set ‘rules of engagement’ than organisers would like…
• Then we go to the outpost of social propriety in contemporary society: social media! Good luck in trying to rein in behaviour there when the going gets righteous.

Every organisation is different in the benefits and negatives involved in ceding control. Stock exchange-listed organisations have legal issues as a factor to consider; imagine a school setting up a Facebook page – now that’s a brave (foolish?) risk management move, don’t you think?

The strategic question of social media in public relations

Ultimately, it’s a strategic question of positives and negatives.

If an organisation gets involved in social media to any significant degree, the hard, cold fact is that it is giving up more control of its reputation than it is currently doing. Of course, that is occurring already thanks to social media and the community’s increasing belief in its own relevance to organisational behaviour, even that of corporates who individuals may not be shareholders with.

So a primary strategic question is often: will our reputation be enhanced by involvement in social media and/or will it protect our reputation over the longer term?

At the very least, a long-term commitment and involvement in social media should help the organisation gain respect for its willingness to engage with stakeholders, even if the organisation in question has operations, products or services that are not positively perceived by all parties.

Positives of ceding reputation control in public relations through social media

Involvement in social media helps:

1. build relationships with stakeholders
2. act as an issues management mechanism through which to identify emerging issues that can be addressed before they become full-blown reputational nightmares
3. facilitate a dialogue with stakeholders
4. address concerns from stakeholders and correct misinformation that may have been posted
5. identify potential investment opportunities
6. identify opportunities to maximise reputation through different communication initiatives and platforms
7. instigate and leverage digital word-of-mouth opportunities
8. provide ideas for organisational narratives and stimulate creativity amongst organisational communication professionals
9. broaden and enrich the perspectives of those involved in social media and who see the results of this interaction and – why not! – can lead to a happier, more fulfilling lives for them
10. understand the motivations and rationales of stakeholders, providing information that should help organisations develop a greater degree of empathy with them
11. grow  brand awareness
12. provide a speedy means through which to interact with customers and address their queries and concerns
13. provide a means to accelerate interaction and collaboration between in-house public relations, marketing and customer service divisions.

Negatives of ceding reputation control in public relations through social media

You get to perpetuate the fantasy that you – and your organisation – really is in control of your reputation 24/7.

Good luck with that one!

So what do you think? Is your organisation in total control of its reputation? Is being engaged in social media worth the risk for its reputation? What war stories can you share that support or undermine the thoughts expressed in this post?

If you liked this post, why not Tweet about it or share through LInkedIn or Facebook?

[This is the fifth 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.].

With infrastructure projects such as the one under discussion it is almost certain that a corporate/project blog and a Facebook business/fan page will be utilised to complement the corporate website. The first question to answer is what is the role of each platform? What is the hub and what are the spokes? Some probable answers include:

• Website to contain basic information about the project, including detailed updates about progress and other major corporate issues
• Blog for ongoing thought leadership; insights into the project progress; primarily project-centred value for stakeholders; secondary stakeholder dialogic platform
• Facebook for small updates, links to blog and website, as well as other updates not about the project but of potential use to stakeholders; primary platform for stakeholder dialogue; issues management mechanism; contests, polls and other engagement activity
• Twitter definitely as an issues management early warning mechanism; depending on stakeholder needs could evolve into conversational medium and website/blog promotional medium, as long as content other than project-specific is shared
• YouTube and Flickr used for video and photo repositories that are linked to other platforms but conversation is limited and ‘pushed’ to Facebook and blog.

Video and images are incredibly important. These should be used liberally through social media platforms. It has been proven time and gain how much visuals engage and enthuse people.

Methods to engage stakeholders through social media

Interviews with engineers, sponsored groups and school students on the project are one way of engaging stakeholders.

One engagement approach could be having a contest among high schools in the relevant geographical area to identify six student ‘journalists’ each year who interview engineers and other project employees, members of the community, perhaps even politicians, etc that provide reports/insight into the project. The students might need to have engineering aspirations but, just as importantly, they provide a continual narrative through the life of the project and also explain what they have learnt and what resonates with them.

It could be a Facebook-driven competition and, of course, the content generated would be promoted through social media platforms with the intent that it goes viral within relevant stakeholder demographics. If possible, the content would be driven so it is relevant to school curriculum. This initiative will also be picked up by the media.

A key part of the strategy will be to build up a large database of social media followers to assist with unmediated communication occurring.

This can be used to help promote local businesses and community groups (using their thought leadership rather than sales pitches) and their own initiatives. A policy/approach needs to be decided upon for consistency, with it being preferable that these external organisations in some way provide information on the infrastructure project or direct their own stakeholders/customers/members to the project’s communication mediums.

Taking this approach is one way of embedding the project into the local communities and underlining what a vital part the infrastructure will play in it. It is yet another way of generating 3^rd party credibility for the project (whilst at the same time increasing the communication ‘footprint’ of the project).

Social proof is a variation on 3^rd party credibility; to optimise social proof benefits, steps need to be taken:

• Having counters on the social media share buttons that should be a part of relevant social media platforms (a blog in particular). This shows viewers how many shares have occurred through platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg and Twitter
• Of course, having the buttons themselves is a first step as it provides an easy way for ramping up the viral dimension of the content through viewers’ personal social networks
• Comments on blogs and on Facebook are another variation of social proof as they provide evidence of engagement to others, piquing interest and hopefully leading to acclaim and advocacy.

The challenges of content marketing and social media interaction

Just as media outreach requires content, so does social and digital media, but the insatiable demand that having these additional platforms to ‘talk’ on means the demand for content has increased in recent years. This means additional planning, creativity and vigour is needed by the communication professional. It also means hard decisions need to be taken on just what it is possible to achieve and what communication platforms or tactics, as a whole, are utilised: cue returning to the market research (i.e. what suits stakeholders’ best?).

In content marketing, clearly original content is required, but so can a content curation approach be applied to assist in generating the volume of material needed. Promoting the content of others (where possible, adding value) has the benefit of potentially getting others to promote the organisation’s content (i.e. 3^rd party credibility and increasing the organisation’s communication footprint). It’s a manifestation of a ‘returning the favour’ mindset.

A balance of ‘low risk’ and easy to generate (though still high quality) useful content should be delivered, as well as edgier content that has the potential to galvanise stakeholders. The latter will take more time to create but has the potential to achieve a better viral and positioning outcome.

Organisations that utilise social media each need to find a balance between how much dialogue they can cope with and how much they wish to use it for broadcasting their own content. Whilst there should be an intended outcome, or goal, before beginning the communication, such is the unpredictable nature of how people respond and interact on different issues that the approach will evolve and needs, in fact, to be pliable.

An elementary factor to consider with social media, as with any business activity, is how much time will be allocated to the activity and what employees have a role to play in it. As anyone who has engaged in social media at all knows, it is easy for it to become a ‘time-suck’.

Because of the transactional nature of best practice communication and the characteristics of social media, the content provision approach needs to be a blend of what the organisation wants its stakeholders to know, what will influence them and, ultimately, what stakeholders want to hear. It works both ways.

The primacy of ‘smartphone communication’, social media guidelines and crisis communication

Smartphone-customised technology is now a fundamental element of any digital communication. The smartphone optimisation of websites and blogs is more important than apps in my opinion, but both can be useful and, obviously, can complement each other. People are moving away from desktops and laptop computing and are increasingly relying more on the mobile web-access devices, so it is imperative to get some skin in this game.

Social media guidelines for employees – both for those using it in a professional communication basis and for those using it purely on a social basis – need to be created.

Additionally, social media is critical for crisis communication and needs to be integrated into the organisation’s crisis management plan. Twitter is an incredibly valuable tool for crisis communication, enabling monitoring at the very least but valuable, speedy reaction and firestorm-dampening impact too

What is your experience, or what are your thoughts, on getting the balance right between broadcast, dialogue and organisational change coming through on social media? Have you updated all relevant comms so it is smartphone-friendly – why or why not? How have you segmented, or what are your thoughts on segmentation, of communication activity on an organisational website, blog, Facebook and other social media?

The next and final post in this six-part series talks about sponsorship, school education and community communication programs. Previous posts talked about approaches to public relations, market research and target audiences; the listening, conversational and adaptive characteristics of excellent communication strategy; the Holy Trinity of PR; and media relations and strategic alliances.

Strategic alliances will enhance the credibility of both alliance organisations, expand the footprint of communication and providing excellent ROI, not least because it should not cost anything to create the actual alliance itself (other than employee time). They should also provide content for little cost and be relevant to organisational target audiences (precious in this content-hungry world).

Thought leadership is almost a tactical, rather than strategic, manifestation of an approach/desire that sees the organisation helping and/or providing unpaid value to its stakeholders, thus helping build loyalty, positive WOM and enhanced reputation.

3^rd party credibility comes from being associated from non-organisational people and entities – their ‘good vibe’ rubs off on the organisation. This can occur through positive editorial media placement, independent market research, and supportive comments from experts.

[This is the third 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.].

Content marketing by public relations

Content marketing needs to be an integral element of the strategy.

Really, this is a tactical outcome of thought leadership and providing proactive, information of use to stakeholders. But its recent social media-driven evolution is so profoundly important that it needs mentioning in a strategic context.

The content provides a reason for stakeholders to both visit and gain value from the organisation, as well as proactively share it with their peers, thereby potentially prompting it to go ‘viral’. A very strategic sub-text of this (hello, holy trinity!) is that the sharing generates 3^rd party credibility (from the sharer) towards the content and, hence, the organisation (sort of win-win-win outcome, really).

PR is well placed to undertake content marketing, despite some understandable misgivings by some, as PR is fundamentally dialogic, as it listens (that word again) to stakeholders and adapts communication accordingly. There is plenty to get wrong with it, however, such as expecting an immediate and sudden ROI. It takes time, as any relationship does, to make an impact,

Mediated, non-mediated and the public relations ‘holy trinity’

Incorporating a mix of mediated and non-mediated communication mechanisms into the strategy is imperative:

• Non-mediated (e.g. social media when it is used as broadcast, email marketing, website content, advertising) is a bridge. It facilitates direct communication with messages being delivered in precisely the way an organisation wants them to be delivered
• Non-mediated is critical in today’s business world as a hedge against organisational loss of control over their reputations due to the dialogic, viral and extensive user-base aspects of social media (which is heaped on top on general word-of-mouth and coverage in the media): ‘customer’ recommendations rule, remember!. The building of email databases and subscribers/followers to social media platforms, therefore, is an absolutely critical element of any contemporary communication strategy – yes, believe it or not, email is still bigger than Facebook
• Mediated (e.g. editorial media) often boasts the 3^rd party credibility of the medium itself

More on PR strategy: don’t be a control freak!

Further strategic approaches to be applied include taking an approach where ‘control’ is not paramount. This will help engender a sense of shared project ownership. Sometimes this will mean not stamping up and down on non-complimentary messaging about the project that may be disseminated by stakeholders. They would have appeared anyway and a recognition of the right of supporters, critics and infrastructure potential users to have their say will reflect positively on the organisation.

This mindset is equally relevant to working with stakeholders. It should be about negotiation and a recognition of difference rather than a closed, negative, bunker-down approach, which will only come across as ‘spoiling for a fight’, or non-cooperative at best

Recognising and leveraging WOM (word-of-mouth) is likely to be the most credible form of communication for stakeholders. This will manifest itself through both WOM mediums as face-to-face social media.

Further strategic approaches to apply include:

• Anticipating that there will be criticism of the project and building up the reputation bank as much as possible to provide insurance against those occasions when issues do arise
• Looking at ways to benefit the local community through the construction phase. For instance, using local suppliers whenever feasible and local people for employees in the construction of the project – is this possible, or even legal?
• On the back of the fact that the infrastructure will benefit the community, use this as a reason for engaging with school children, partially as they will be infrastructure users, partly because they may have an interest in engineering aspects of the infrastructure and partly because they can act as a conduit of information to adults and because of their influence over them
• Address the potential misfit between who community stakeholders perceive to be credible people or organisations to be associated with the project and who political stakeholders want to see associated with it (e.g. themselves!).This is a difficult issue to resolve and often there is little that can be done about it, other than ensure the spokespeople have the most positive, relevant and stakeholder-useful communications content possible to utilise.

Where have you found the letting go of or, conversely, attempting to retain, reputation/communication control has worked or not worked in organisations you have been involved with? What is your experience and/or view of the holy trinity I have outlined? Do you think PR is skilled up and intelligent enough to run the content marketing for an organisation?

The next post in this six-part series talks tactical elements of the communication strategy, including media relations and building strategic alliances. Previous posts talked about overarching approaches to public relations, market research and target audiences; and the listening, conversational and adaptive characteristics of excellent communication strategy.

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

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.