Social Media Agency vs. PR Agency
I hope you had a great Thanksgiving. There’s something about a 4–day weekend that makes me think that every weekend ought to be 4 days long. It not only allows for DOWN time, it allows for THINK time.
Here’s what I thought about…
There’s no question: Social Media is having an enormous, life-altering impact on the communications industry. Everything is changing.
- The free and ubiquitous power of online publishing has created exponential challenges in relationship management. We must now contend with thousands of additional voices.
- The distinct lack of editorial “professionalism” in the blogosphere has ironically forced PR agencies to increase the genuine professionalism of their outreach. Indiscriminate “e-mail blasts” are on the wane.
- Consumers are ever more resistant to marketing messages that use the old “one-to-many” approach but are often enthused about marketing programs that are useful, empowering and inclusive.
- “Customer Service” has increasingly direct linkages to Marketing, and vice versa.
- Web 2.0 technologies have made participation more fun, accessible, instantaneous, trackable.
In this brave new world, how should the PR industry challenge itself?
We must always be able to “get ink” in media outlets that make sense for our clients. And in the not so distant future, “blogger relations” will be table-stakes for even the most run-of-the-mill agency. But what comes after that baseline level of proficiency is achieved? It’s not just about ink anymore. How else can we show value? What are our industry’s stretch goals?
Below are some current examples of SHIFT’s own work on the fringe.
- For a consumer products company, we work with the Customer Support group to monitor and flag customer comments throughout the Web, including Amazon.com, user opinion sites, message boards, etc., so that a support rep can respond promptly, directly and publicly to user questions and complaints.
- For a start-up video application developer whose product appeals primarily to Apple users, we identified Mac User Groups (e.g., Final Cut Pro users) and introduced company executives to the administrators of these regional groups. This often led to invitations to have client executives visit and present to the user groups themselves.
- For a Big Pharma client, we’re working directly with Facebook Groups devoted to specific disease areas, alerting FB Admins to guide their members to non-branded informational websites.
- Along the same lines – but in a very different industry – we previewed some never-before-released video footage of a major rock music icon to a select group of Facebook Fan Groups, to create a groundswell of grassroots interest in an upcoming DVD release.
- For another Big Pharma client, we created a YouTube channel, in which video content produced on specific disease areas is shared with the larger community. The informational videos are embedded by other bloggers at their sites up to 15X on average. The tags and video titles are all created to enhance SEO. And because the disease topics change regularly, we have fresh opportunities to visit (and re-visit) the topic areas, introducing the videos to external bloggers. Each video gets about 5,000 views.
- For a division of a major tech company, we’re in talks to create a private online community site for their Value-Added Resellers – where the VARs can interact with each other and with company representatives (via wikis, etc.). The community site will also house all multimedia assets related to the Sales process, e.g., collateral, ROI calculators, latest product specs.
- And of course you already know about the Movember Facebook app we created for Canadian Club. At last count, over 4,000 people had used the app. This was our 2nd Facebook widget developed in-house.
Please note how few of these examples are about “getting ink.” We get PLENTY of ink: I can point you to numerous, recent hits in outlets ranging from The View and Cosmopolitan to the Wall Street Journal and eWeek. But as noted above, “it’s not just about ink anymore.”
The cynical types no doubt see this post as “blatant self promotion.” I will cop to that because it means that the cynics agree that this is pretty cool stuff. But the larger point is that beyond the pride is a genuine state of confusion: these assignments raise questions with which I am struggling!
You see, as a Social Media geek, I am wildly enthusiastic and excited by projects like these, but as a PR agency owner, I spent the long weekend wondering: does this type of work make us a “different” type of agency? – and if we’re no longer “just” a PR agency, what are we? Am I fooling myself? – are these kinds of activities now run-of-the-mill? – are other PR agencies doing this type of work? – if not, why not? Is it appropriate (or inappropriate?!) work for a PR firm?
You tell me!
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Todd-
I love your examples of how you’re implementing social media into your PR strategies– and I definitely think it’s an appropriate and unavoidable integration.
Since I work with mostly b2b clients, thinking outside the trade pub box is not always easy. I DO think there are ways to integrate social media even when targeting at other businesses, and some of the examples you gave are proof of that.
I also think it’s tough for some veteran PR pros to get their head into the realm of social media. It can seem like too much, like they’re too far removed from it, and does it even really matter? I mean, facebook and twitter are just what college kids do when they’re messing around at work or posting pictures of a frat party, right? Of course most people by now know that’s not the truth, but I don’t think it’s quite made the shift from that to what it’s truly become, a totally viable and increasingly necessary means for reaching your audience, your public– whoever they may be. Once again, I think your examples help “solidify” what social media can do aside from getting people to go to a party or to simply build a personal/professional network for the individual.
Great post and I look forward to following your blog!
Valerie
Hi Todd,
Sounds like you didn’t have much of a long weekend at all, what with all of the thinking.
I don’t know if all PR agencies are doing everything your agency is doing, but I think they’re going to have to. The new web is turning PR on its ear and agencies are going to have to roll with it. You seem to be adapting rather well. While these activities are probably not run of the mill just yet, there’s certainly nothing wrong with filling the vacuum with your own ideas and tactics. It’s going to help you become the best agency out there, or at the very least the most plugged in to how people want their communications served to them.
That’s why SHIFT and my firm (W)right On refer to ourselves as ‘communications’ firms. Public relations pigeonholes its practitioners.
Third party, earned commentary and endorsement of the client’s messages is the essence of our output. The goal continues to be creating interest in and acceptance of the messages. It’s just that now social media enables our firms to reach out to stakeholder groups directly and in a way that encourages greater dialogue. It’s a giant leap forward!
A few minutes ago, @latimes subscribed to me on Twitter. Like many on Twitter, the reader is now the content provider and the media is the subscriber. (Geez, now I feel some pressure to Twitter more meaningful stuff!) Lines are blurring everywhere.
And earlier today, I initiated an SMS and mobile web campaign with a vendor to help a client in their public outreach campaign with messages targeting car owners when they’re out and about. That’s not quite traditional ‘ink’ either.
We’re a smaller firm, and keeping abreast of a sea change in communications is as exhilirating as it is completely exhausting. But I haven’t felt this jazzed about a new trend in communications technology since the late 90s and the early days of the dot com boom. (Sorry, fax machine — you just never really did it for me, but I’ll always fondly remember my early days as an account coordinator feeding you page after page and listening to you persistently redialing those busy newsrooms.)
As always, more great stuff for communicators to think about from PRSquared! Thank you Todd! And apologies that your posted promted such a lengthy comment here… It just spilled out of me…
The “public” is a vast series of interconnected community networks.
If you’re doing Public Relations, you’re seeking to reach those people/community/networks in whatever ways are effective.
To ignore new, effective, technology-driven methods would probably be akin to PR malpractice. Hard to see how you would NOT evolve into using these new tools, and still be able to best serve clients!!
Working on behalf of a PR firm I am known as the “internet guy”. I embrace and use social media ( I follow you on twitter), maintain a blog, all of the usual things that go along with being a typical social media geek.
While many clients look to use social media as a means of outreach and coverage not all clients need social media coverage. It really varies greatly on their business model. I think Social Media is just one of the many different tools in the PR arsenal.
While most of us PR types are embracing this technology there are many who fail to understand the nature of the beast. They don’t realize that it’s all about relationships and not direct pitching and outreach.
Todd,
This is a very great discussion and a nice continuation of some discussions we’ve had in the past. PR is changing, PR has to change and I think you are seeing in your own agency how it can change.
In its most basic form, your agency is still relating to your clients publics. You are just doing it in new and innovative ways, namely through social media.
If Shift was to shift (sorry could resist that clever pun) to being a social media agency, I think you’d be heading down the wrong path toward a tactic. No matter how amazing social media is (Twitter is awesome, along with many others) and will become it’s still pretty much a channel for strategic communications (a great channel that allows brands to connect with customers really well, infuse personality and use great storytelling).
So, that being said, please allow Shift to be a public relations agency. The PR industry needs great shops like yours to spread the good word and be a shinning example of what we all can and should be. Keep the faith man and smile.
I think you have to ask yourself what do your customers want from you? And what business do you want to be in? Traditional PR, or rather media relations is all about getting ink, through pitching and relationships within the publishing community.
Social media gives companies a new way to market themselves, one that actually bizarrely involves focusing on what the community is discussing rather than just trying to get your client’s message out there. If you will, by paying attention to others, part of your message through your actions is that you are willing to listen. That’s a different strategy, but the goal might still be the same getting more ink. You just get there in a different way, people become evangelists for your client because the client took the time to listen and engage their customers and community. Social media may have the same goals as traditional PR, but you achieve those goals with a different strategy.
I’m a marketer, and the concept of engagement using social media tools immediately made sense to me. Why not talk to people who want to talk with you, and about topics they want to talk about? Why not listen to what people have to say, and try to build a better product or service based on their ideas and suggestions. Marketers have always done these things, it is just that social media makes it a lot easier, and frankly an imperative that companies listen in order to conduct marketing well.
I don’t suggest you change your agency to a marketing agency.
I do think you might stick to the core of what makes marketing and public relations strategy so powerful, in both disciplines there is an element of listening, of building a better product or service that meets the needs and wants of customers. Social media just affords a new and better way to execute those strategies.
Keep the old strategy, use the new tools.
And this is the kind of brilliant forward thinking that put you on that Top 10 list!
I feel that the best agencies will definitely recognize the new ways to communicate (if they haven’t already). Bloggers are definitely becoming more visible as news sources/resources, and as recent examples on Twitter has shown (Mumbai, Motrin) that micro-blogging service is also key at getting news out.
Yet if PR agencies really think about it, all they need to do is evolve. One half of PR is “relations” – isn’t social media all about the relations we’re building?
There’s a definite change in the air, and thankfully there are people and agencies like yours that are helping to make the shift (no pun intended!)
The questions of who is your target audience(s) and how do you reach them have become complicated.
Public relations is changing from getting INK to getting ThINK. More specifically, mind share where you need it.
Web analytics is also changing. More psychographic data will become available on users. Analytics will be able to determine how to best interface with individuals opinions, attitudes and interests.
The future of public relations firms will have to either grow across media or become very focused. I’m not sure there will be a third option.
As a marketing and web analyst, I see the profitability in growth across all media.
Feel free to contact me, and good luck!
Wayne
Todd:
Thanks for your thoughtful fleshing out of these new issues we’re all facing in our workplaces about how to integrate social media strategies into our old PR strategies.
I think there would be much more of a problem if this blog was called ‘MR squared’ – as in Media Relations. If we think in terms of Public Relations, I think social media has finally given PR folks a way to actually engage with the public, instead of being at the whim of the traditional media outlets.
Of course (as you aptly point out) there will always be a place for getting ink. But if our goal is really to reach the public – and to create value for our companies or clients in the marketplace – social media engagement is the way to do that.
Of course, the scary thing, as many have pointed out, is that you feel less in control of your message. But perhaps this is where the ‘relations’ part of PR comes in. We’ve never referred to it as ‘public control’.