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.

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

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

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

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

Support from research

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

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

Top-line takeaways

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

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

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

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

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

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

Working with the Trust Barometer data

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

PR-perspective mashup: internal experts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Being platform-SEO savvy

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

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

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

Case studies of digital communication

Check out PR Conversations interviews with:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why and how helping other PR agencies is a good thing

The benefits of referring business opportunities manifested itself for me recently and think it’s an interesting anecdote to share.

Recently I was asked by a Sydney PR agency I’ve done a little work for, and had a few enjoyable discussions with, did I know anyone with financial PR experience as it had an opportunity. This isn’t something I’m skilled in, so I went to the trouble of searching for some options. Fortunately, a friend of mine who does work in financial PR made a recommendation so I put what I hope ends being the happy couple together.

Less than a week later, I get a phone call out of the blue saying good bloke and savvy PR guy, Daniel Young of Encoder PR, had recommended that this company talk to me regarding a potential public relations opportunity. Now, I haven’t won this work at the time of writing (fingers crossed), but what a lovely and much appreciated thing for Daniel to do.

What goes around….

Seeking money from referrals is bad PR and marketing juju – two dirty deeds

On the other hand, I have some tales to tell in regard to what I think is a negative, divisive and often fundamentally unethical and dishonest approach to business referrals. That’s right, I think it sucks.

Quite a few years ago when I was working for an agency, a friend (…) of someone in the agency referred a potential client to the PR agency.

Lo and behold, we won the client. Lo and behold, the ‘friend’ then asked for a considerable cut of the business due to their referral, the logic to this approach being you wouldn’t have got the business without me.

Now I railed against this at the time, spluttering in dismay and, yes, disgust, but it seemed there wasn’t much to be done. At the time this approach really was marketing industry pretty standard practice, so I’m led to believe, and kicking up a stink at the risk of losing the client wasn’t a preferred option.

Was the client informed of the cream taken off the top, which is a VERY BIG question to ask about these sorts of scenarios? I don’t know.

I do know, however, of the situation in a much more recent situation that I was involved with.

A business communication agency referred a potential client to us. This agency wasn’t capable of doing the work required of us themselves. We won the work. The referring agency demanded a very considerable cut of the revenue we generated from the client. The cut came in two ways:

• An over-estimation of time and effort and expertise that the referring agency provided on certain activities, built into our fee, which they received a bloated cut for – this aspect of the fee was, at least, made transparent to the client
• A second tranche of fees that was to be paid to the referring agency that was totally hidden from the client, for no other reason than being referred the business.

I won’t reveal what ultimately occurred, but it was a sickening and sad reflection of the marketing industry that such a thing even came to pass.

What should occur in marketing industry business referrals

I think I’ve clearly nailed my colours to the mast on this one.

If you have a business that is capable of delivering the desired services to a client, great, deliver away. If you don’t, refer on. Why should you get a cut of business that you haven’t provided any services on?

All you’ve done is referred/recommended another service provider that can deliver the goods. Surely, the opportunity may one day come back for those referred to, to refer back. I would have thought that if you have to pay for the referral it will stick in your back teeth and you’ll be loathe to help the initial referrer out.

So that’s two strikes against the bad juju approach.

And I haven’t even discussed how in this social media age that it is an even more outmoded, dinosaur-like approach.

The social media dimension of reciprocity inherent within its best practice application is the sharing of knowledge; generating a thought leadership positioning; being prominent by giving value, not doing the hard sell for new business and hoping it generates credibility and presence.

Social media has accelerated the death of the old pay-for referral approach. This is an inherently corrosive approach to business and does nothing but attach a pyramid selling, lowest common denominator stigma to business, with further negative knock-on effects to society in general.

Strike three.

It will be a rainy day in hell before I ask a company I’ve referred business to for me a cut of money generated through the investment of their time, their expertise, their sweat and blood. What an immoral, evil and reprehensible approach to take.

What do YOU think about paying for referrals? Is it fair or ridiculous? What tales can you tell of your experiences in this area? Does it still go on? Is it an outmoded approach to take? C’mon, give it up!!

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.

[This is a guest post by issue & crisis management expert, Dr Tony Jaques.*]

The growing expectation gap

Since Issue Management first developed, there have been various different approaches to defining what an issue is. One of the earlier ideas was the so-called Expectation Gap Theme. This very simple approach basically says that an issue arises when there is a gap between the actions of an organisation and the expectations of its stakeholders.

The expectation gap concept lost some popularity because it is very passive and lacks the proactivity that issue management should display. Now the rise of the social media is reviving interest, not because this approach changes the way we think about issues themselves, but because social media have changed the community’s expectation of what is acceptable corporate behaviour, as well as increasing the community’s capacity to communicate those expectations.

The rise of social media is commonly described as creating a more level playing field between those with power and those affected by exercise of power. However a less recognised impact of social media is the way in which community expectation is changing, which has significant implications for the future of issue management.

My online newsletter, Managing Outcomes, and my issue management-themed blog often discuss how organisations have paid a high price for failing to acknowledge this new reality. Two recent cases demonstrate the obvious increasing speed and globalisation of issues and, in addition, highlight the evolving gap between organisation action and community expectation.

Hyatt Hotels fiasco

When three Hyatt Hotels in the Boston area decided to lay off almost 100 housekeeping staff and replace them with lower cost, out-sourced employees, the Boston Globe alleged that the housekeepers had been tricked into training their replacements by describing them as temporary vacation staff.

Hyatt promptly issued a firm statement denying any trickery, adding that it was helping the housekeepers find work in Hyatt and other local hotels and that they had been provided with transition assistance and full severance benefits.

However the damage was done and through late 2009 the story became an internet and media sensation, focusing mainly on community expectation of how a luxury hotel chain should treat its lowest paid workers. There were calls for a boycott of Hyatt, a public protest in the city of Boston and politicians urged Hyatt to reconsider.

More importantly for a global brand, the story spread around the world through mainstream international news sources and hundreds of blogs and social media sites. Even the normally staid Harvard Business Review blog offered the headline: “Lessons from Hyatt: Simple ways to damage your brand.”

As HBR concluded: “There’s at least a small lesson here: think about the way your actions will be perceived by all your stakeholders before you take them.”

Gap’s new logo

Another view of new stakeholder expectations arose in late 2010 when The Gap clothing chain announced a change to its long-time logo, triggering a firestorm of protest around the world. In the face of widespread opposition, the company promptly said it would ‘crowd source’ a new logo, then within days jettisoned that plan and reverted to the original logo.

Although history is littered with brand fiascos – think New Coke and Vegemite iSnack 2.0 – the Gap logo backflip helped popularise an emerging stakeholder concept: that brands ‘belong’ to consumers and not manufacturers. Promoting this trend, influential bloggers argued that Gap had no ‘right’ to change the logo without consumer consultation and support.

Where to for issue management?

Some commentators have argued that Gap management grossly over-reacted to online criticism from a small but very vocal minority, while others claim the entire episode was a marketing stunt.

While the truth about this case may continue to be debated, the detail here is less important than the fact that for Hyatt and Gap – and for many others – stakeholders now have different expectations about how organisations should behave and about their own role in how issues are managed.

Working from the platform provided by the social media, stakeholders are reconfiguring the traditional ‘expectation gap’ and issue managers cannot afford to ignore that change.

*Dr Tony Jaques consults to corporate and government clients on issue and crisis management and risk communication through his company, Issue Outcomes Pty Ltd. He has been widely published in academic and non-academic journals around the world and writes Managing Outcomes, Australia’s only specialist online issue and crisis management newsletter. He can be networked with at his issue management blog and Linkedin profile.

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

And the pay(off)?

• Legislation
• Regulation
• More often than not…cold, hard and maybe even blood-stained money.

I don’t know about you, but there is something sleazy about lobbying. No matter how you scrub it, rinse it, clean it: the spin is not good. Ironically, of course, lobbying is where spin is king.

If best practice public relations is thought by many to have transparency as a defining characteristic, then lobbying is clearly the cloak and dagger exception to the rule.

So what of major Australian companies and industries that, in recent times, have resorted to big splash large scale broad reach media campaigns to achieve the aim that backroom bonhomie and Masonic palm-tickling handshakes have failed to hit the G-spot with?

Advertising not PR for lobbying impact

An interesting article in The Sydney Morning Herald, on the topic of lobbying, discusses how advertising pays when it comes to lobbying, prompted some thoughts:

• The big industries hiring lobbyists are getting frustrated
• It is virtually a hung parliament in our federal government and this makes it a great time to whip out the advertising option, touching up the pressure points
• Is it the dinosaurs, unable to understand the possibilities of social media that are grasping at the advertising straw?
• Advertising in such broad reach media outlets has got to be an unsophisticated way to reach target audiences
• The examples of the Obama campaign and GetUp! have not changed the way in which some industries and companies are approaching the public groundswell dimension of lobbying. Is social media only for community grassroots initiatives when it comes to lobbying, not for big business?

The last point makes me wonder, is the lobbying sub-set of PR somewhat of a dinosaur itself?

By integrating non-backroom boys-and-their-toys mechanisms lobbyists need to engage specialists in disciplines such as social media they are not proficient in. This is not an issue for the big agencies that have partner agencies or divisions that possess this competency, but for lobbying specialist agencies, this means sharing the budget around. Not something I’d imagine many would want to do.

A large chunk of lobbyists are ex-politicians and journalists themselves. Trustworthy? Maybe. Effective at what they are seeking to achieve? Quite probably. Social media literate and advocates? Hmmmm, I sort of doubt it.

The subtleties of lobbying are pretty acute. It takes a very sharp mind to get the communication strategy right. Intellect is not a characteristic lacking in good lobbyists. Nor is lack of connections. Mates count big time in this field (hence the heft ex-politicians and journalists wield in this twilight game).

PR professionals in the moral spotlight

I’ve worked on the fringe of lobbying, never actually in the thick of it. I’ve been fortunate in that I have not been asked to compromise myself by working on certain clients, for which I am grateful. I wonder how often that occurs in lobbyist firms?

It’s an exposed position to locate yourself vocationally if you don’t have a flexible approach to morality, I would have thought.

Most money on lobbying is spent by big business. If you leave yourself open to working in this sector it would seem inevitable that morally questionable industries are going to dominate your client list. The SMH article noted above flags cigarettes and poker machines, for instance.

There must be a buzz going around the SMH when it comes to lobbying of late. Their erudite and inordinately credible economics editor, Ross Gittins, also recently wrote on the topic. Gittins takes a kick at the self-serving approach lobbyists take to their often unsavoury tasks.

Like many industries, lobbyists frequently inhabit a questionable moral position. Business, Gittins argues, isn’t unknown to put its own sense of wellbeing far in front of society’s. “Businesses on the make invariably seek to pressure governments by putting the frighteners on the public,” he says. This means the production and presentation of statistics, analysis and arguments that are based on thin and ‘spinnable’ data that you wouldn’t call sturdy (unless you paid for the analysis, of course).

Can public relations theory underpin lobbying for social good?

As I have argued countless times before, public relations communications has an opportunity to positively influence big business’s self-serving and self-obsessed approach for the good, encouraging it to take a more society-centric view of its activities and its impacts.

But in my experience, it will not be the lobbying sector we can count on. A sad and sickening dimension of lobbying is that it is entirely self-centred. It does not care for people/stakeholders outside the scope of what can help fatten up its hip pocket.

How I would love to hear of lobbyists who have advocated that organisations or industries take a perspective and adapt their behaviour so that it is aligned with what is best for society. Yeah, I know, dream on.

Have you been involved in lobbying campaigns that have a morally sound of questionable dimension? Where does the thrill lie in lobbying? What can lobbying do for the good of society and can it actually prompt an organisation to become more morally aligned to society? Should business try to lead in this regards, or simply be happy complying with the law?

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

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

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

Content is king ipso facto content marketing is NOW

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

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

One set of content management stats = this:

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

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

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

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

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

In any of these cases: disaster.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why we don’t need to measure PR

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

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

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

On the other hand, do measurement when:

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

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

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

I was prompted down this particular sad-sack avenue by Heather Yaxley, when she summarised in a very interesting and engaging manner the direction an upcoming edition of online PR journal, PRism, is taking. (Both Yaxley and PRism are excellent resources, BTW.)

Of course, there is nothing wrong with making money through social media. Or turning the medium to an organisation’s advantage.  The piper calls the tune may be somewhat of an exaggeration, but no one needs to pay attention to a social media if they don’t want to. If an organisational stakeholder is stupid enough to think an organisation has anything but itself as its primary concern they are well and truly in la-la land.

But it does raise questions, perhaps in a more intense manner than pre-social media days, about how willing an organisation is to truly engage and to fundamentally change based on stakeholder feedback. With organisational stakeholders now wielding the keys to the mass-media castle due to social media’s reach, and its propensity for going viral if it’s seething digital proletariat mass of ownership sees fit, organisations certainly don’t have the muscle they used to!

“The commercialisation of cyberspace,” as Yaxley puts it, is very interesting in the context of social media, however. I’ve been as vocal as anyone about the virtue of thought leadership and its advantage to organisational reputation and positioning and, eventually, sales. Whether overtly through sales-driven advertising or branding approaches such as PR-driven thought leadership, it really does all come back to bucks.

Yet here we all are (and I don’t think using ‘all’ is actually a generalisation – it’s true!) saying that giving/sharing/being seen to be generous (i.e. exemplified by ‘pure’ thought leadership) is important and will yield organisational/organisational stakeholder benefits.

The magician’s cloak hiding social media PR truths

Are we kidding ourselves? Is this the emperor’s new clothes? Is social media a contemporary cloak that organisations are just manipulating to do what so many of them have always done, twist a reality into a pantomime that has them as the producer, director and star?

Where are the stakeholders in all this?

Are they even in the theatre, or are they watching a version on delay that has even the carefully orchestrated performance siphoned through a neutering, cleansing, positioning-enhanced process?

Well, if they are, bear in mind that a study by Australian firm Encoder PR determined that only four per cent of Australians trust digital advertising. Only nine per cent of Australian looks out for digital advertising. Only eight per cent like to follow brands on Facebook and four per cent like to follow them on Twitter (makes Australians sound quite sane to me – I must meet more of them).

On the flip side of this, 43 per cent of Australians will ‘actively recommend a brand they like to others’. 58 per cent are also open to following and receiving information from brands they like and 26 per cent would like more opportunity to do so.

Like any research, you can probably read whatever you damn like into this. And if someone did research with questions phrased slightly differently they may well be able to generate quite different, even conflicting, information.

Advertising is the new PR

What this tells me is that advertising on the internet and hard sell are not doing too well. Hard sell through transparent sales approaches to ‘thought leadership’ are just like advertising. Maybe even worse.

In fact, I have had this pet theory for a while that due to it being common knowldge for those with half a brain that most media stories are driven by PR folk, advertising may well be the least compromised form of communication there is – as it’s pretty obvious it is paid for, so clearly the organisation comes first and there is no balance sought or asked for at all.

Come to think of it, is advertising the new PR!? Well, according to Encoder PR’s GM, Daniel Young, perhaps not. He says, “…a digital strategy that relies too heavily on advertising is unlikely to deliver…consumer participation. An integrated, PR-led strategy is required to deliver actual engagement.”

Well, Daniel is a PR guy. And an astute one at that. Still, he’s bound to say that!

Which leads to perhaps the most pertinent question and point of this perambulatory post:

Is social media purely an advertising platform to sell product and to position brands more favourably with their stakeholders?

Are we fooling ourselves to think that PR and its use of social media is anything other than a self-serving opportunity organisations are gladly accepting? The new pyramid selling? Is social media finished as a medium to commune with friends, culture and the arts that can enrich our lives in a beneficial way, because it is so contaminated by the commercial?

Quite a depressing notion, really. About as depressing as a lot of Australians saying they want to get more info from brands. One can only hope these are not FMCG brands. I think arts/culture/social type brands are great for social media following and interaction:

• But Facebook for Coke?
• Twitter for a packet of crisps?
• Foursquare for a bar?

Jesus wept, is social media just facilitating the bottoming out of humanity’s descent into inanity?

You tell me. You’re part of it.

PS: I’d welcome you joining my 1,400-strong LinkedIn network (send me an invite!) or interacting with me through Twitter. You can also learn more about my PR and marcomms business through my About page.

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

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

Tactics vs. strategy: the real social media challenge

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

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

The experience of youth

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

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

PR needs to get its head around SEO

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

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

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

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

Social media and dialogue

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

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

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

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

Losing command and control in reputation management

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

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

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

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

Social media helping PR make money

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

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

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

In-house PR should not build a social media capability

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

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

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

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

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

Social media helping PR become a more influential business discipline

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then the media landscape changed.

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

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

Shot in the arm or pain in the arse?

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

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

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

Agency PR leads the new world social order

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Revitalisation of the PR consulting business

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

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

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

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

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

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

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