“Public relations is at a crossroads,” declares Jeremy Pepper at POP! PR Jots. With the backup of PR heavy-hitters Jack O’Dwyer and Richard Edelman and balanced by the boutique voives of Matthew Podboy of Voce Communications, Jonathan Zaleski of The PR Collective and Ben Silverman of PR Fuel; Jeremy and other industry leaders examine what exactly is in store for the profession of public relations.
Does the global reach and name brand appeal of larger multinational agencies work for or against the reputation of public relations practitioners? Or is the real hidden gem of PR in the creativity and excitement of the smaller shops, who are able to be less bureaucratic in their rules and regulations about billing, budgets and defining ROI measurement.
In considering how public relations is evolving, PR Squared examines the lifecycle of a social media news release (SMNR). Through a short note to a well known “marketing guru”, SHIFT Communications was able to secure Twitter updates, a blog posting, and finally a Boston Globe article for their client. By developing interesting and accessible content, reaching out to the blogging community and monitoring and participating in the conversations that follow, you have a great recipe for success with SMNRs.
Bloggers may need to take a break from blogging about public relations, to doing a little PR for themselves. However hard we try, bloggers seem to still get a negative reaction (astroturfing, anyone?) when it comes to truth and credibility. According to research from Edelman, bloggers in Australia have a trust/credibility rating of 3%.
Facebook is rapidly becoming not only a place for college (and high school) students to meet, greet and network; but for corporations to do the same. Rohit Bhargava examines Eight Marketing Ideas from Facebook Groups and how groups can grow into marketing influencers.
Our friend Toby Bloomberg at Diva Marketing Blog shows us how building relationships with companies and providing fresh ideas in social media can benefit everyone from the client to their customer. It’s all about engaging in conversation and giving an “untapped community” the opportunity to speak and share ideas.
And finally Technosailor has nicely summarized the “how-to” of Twitter. With more companies coming on board and adopting Twitter, it’s important to not only use it effectively in your marketing and messaging, but also realize that “Twitter’s power is in authenticity and transparency.” Make sure to take as much care in managing the relationships with those who are on your Twitter follower (and following) list as you would your blogroll. Make sure that you are not only engaging in the conversation, but are also participating.
I like twitter and since it is so easy to also use on my cell phone I think they will grow quickly.
BeachBum
Interested article. I think the issue with blogging is how it is being done. Companies like Sun Micro Systems are successfully blogging. I think what bloggers/PR firms have to be careful of is just putting something out there and not thinking through how the end user will read and receive. As we move forward into this world of new media, we are going to need us “old school” tactics to get us there.
I think that bloggers need to work on to improve their validity and ratings is focus on their ideal user group for their information. Companies like iquestions.com and ted.com get this.
Keep up the good work and the interesting articles.