Three of public relations’ best practice pillars are either commonly not applied to their potential or, worse, not applied at all. These pillars, the Holy Trinity of public relations – thought leadership, 3rd party credibility and strategic alliances – should be default characteristics of any public relations strategy. This lack of application, and the minimal amount of discussion on them, prompted me to produce a free white paper on the topics.

With the preponderance of social media in the form of blogs or ‘mini-blogs’ (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, even Pinterest) there is an opportunity to revolutionise traditional media’s approach of taking a negative, divisive and conflict-fixated approach. Of course, it has been observed that conflict is what interests people, but that doesn’t always need to be the case. Not being negatively oriented would provide a marketable POD.

The triple treat of content marketing, inbound marketing and brand journalism should be a default inclusion in any holistic organisational public relations strategy. This is because the internet is where people go to for information and where they are influenced; the relevance of SEO; social media helps drive SEO and viral word-of-mouth; it facilities content generation; increasingly mixed reviews on media credibility.

The importance and influence of listening on positive organisational reputation is emphasised in a crisis, with social media being particularly useful in this regard to help: identify emerging issues and key stakeholders and influencers; enable speedy communication during the crisis; and to provide information to improve future crisis operational and communication processes (as well as broader business operations).

Leading Australian corporate affairs and public relations professionals are, on the whole, “yet to be convinced that social media represents a paradigm shift for modern reputation and stakeholder management”*. This is despite there being a tsunami of continually building evidence to support the notion that social media is an incredibly fertile platform for engagement, influence and the achievement of business outcomes.

Public relations in Australia is, it seems, both aspiring to and actually achieving its disciplinary apogee of two-way symmetrical communication, if a recent industry survey is anything to go by. The utilisation of market research to understand key issues and stakeholders, as well as benchmark performance; the evolving of organisational operations so they are more in line with stakeholder expectations; and PR leaders having an important role in strategic organisational decision making – are all key tenets of best practice two-way symmetrical communication and are frequently being enacted across the country.

The pivotal role of public relations, and the fundamental tenets which underpin it, for business productivity have been highlighted by the findings of a 2011 survey of more than 1,400 corporate executives, employees, and educators. Poor communication, a lack of collaboration, compromised honesty, leaders often not seeking out the views of others, and a toxic inability of workplaces to identify and discuss issues truthfully and effectively, are stymieing productivity and the achievement of business objectives.

Here is a black and white tip for you: if you are considering a Sydney PR agency to do your PR work and they don’t do the following, then ditch them from your list: have a blog; employ staff who are active on social media; produce thought leadership content; have employees with professionally filled out LinkedIn profiles; know what they are talking about when you flag the topics of thought leadership, inbound marketing, content marketing, brand journalism, strategic alliances and 3rd party credibility.

The ‘challenger’ role PR plays helps mitigate the likelihood of the detrimental effect of groupthink taking place. Evidence-based market research helps it do this, as does its role in identifying, exploring and articulating organisational narratives – a pillar of public relations and why it can help organisations engage with its stakeholders.

How much control that the public relations discipline seeks to exert on organisational reputation has, due to the emergence of social media, accelerated to become one of the profession’s defining issues. There are benefits in ceding more ‘reputational’ control to stakeholders than has been traditionally the case, just as there are rational reasons for retaining the paradigm which seeks to exert the ‘command and control’ mindset.