One of the hardest things for any professional to learn is how to change. Many PR professionals are taught that that in order to be effective, you need to create a picture of success. Call it spin, call it BS, or call it simply stretching the truth; but in the social media world, that marketing speak doesn’t cut it.
The Psychology of Change
Any kind of change adoption requires innovation, knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation and confirmation. Right now PR and social media seem to be hovering around decision and implementation.
People are certainly aware that there are changes that need to be made in the PR profession, and there is certainly a lot of buzz and interest being generated. The question becomes, how willing are you to change? Whose job is it to change? The PR practitioner? The company/client? Both?
Social Media, PR and Change
The PR profession is changing, and social media is playing a big role in that. For many people, it’s about un-learning how to create spin, and learning how to be authentic. It sounds like a silly question, why should you have to teach someone how to be who they are?
Social media is about transparency and authenticity, so why is that such a challenge for many PR professionals? It’s not easy to change an industry’s mindset, especially one that seems to be so divided between the definition and relationship between PR, marketing, advertising, and even journalism.
As long as PR continues to be synonymous with media relations, then it continues to be difficult for social media to find its place among the PR professionals and marketers of the world.
The basic idea of public relations has always been to build a relationship between a company and community. PR provides companies with a cohesive voice and presence that people are able to relate to, and we as communications professionals are the ones that should be able to facilitate that relationship.
Change in Action
Over time, we have seen good and bad uses of PR, but the most successful campaigns are the ones that reach out to a specific community (consumer, product user, etc) and engage them in a way that they can’t help but participate (a call to action).
From Southwest to Dell and Coca-Cola’s Second Life campaign, some companies are finally getting it. And it’s not through spin, or false marketing (think of FEMA’s fake press conference). It’s from providing open dialogue and developing relationships with your audience.
For PR professionals to keep up with this changing conversation, they need to be open to change. Nothing can ever evolve and get better without someone starting the trend. Social media is a great tool to begin that journey. While it may be that nobody is ever really an expert, we can all take part in pushing the winds of change, and become a force of pioneers that brings the PR profession back to life.
One day, instead of being considered PR flacks and hacks who are only out for themselves, we have the potential to be considered true servants of the community, and in essence will really be providing the backbone to the relationship between our clients and audiences. And that’s a change I look forward to seeing.
One day, instead of being considered PR flacks and hacks who are only out for themselves, we have the potential to be considered true servants of the community, and in essence will really be providing the backbone to the relationship between our clients and audiences. And that’s a change I look forward to seeing.
As do I Larissa. As do I. Excellent post!