So far, we’ve covered how the modern PR and public affairs industries came about in the 20th century in Part 1 of this three-part article about the changing communication landscape as a result of the rising influence of a Web 2.0 enabled social networking setting.
We’ve also come to a sort of consensus or recognition (I hope) that no matter how we slice and dice the business and give it all sorts of important sounding titles, the crux of the matter will always be about people, and the strategic application of communication focused on building meaningful relationships with them (whether they are our customers, the government, vendors, suppliers, or the lay public).
With the next piece of the puzzle (Part 2), we talked about how – in my opinion – PR’s strategic focus may have been somewhat stunted because of the limitations in the latter half of the last century in mass communicating one’s messages. The position is that traditional media then were the most cost effective means for organizations (governments and corporations alike) to get their messages out to their targeted communities.
The drawback, however, was that the message was never really under the control of the sender, but rather under the mercy of the reporters and editors.
We also covered how changes in the technological landscape became a massive factor in democratizing the process of information development and dissemination, with computers becoming cheaper, with the advent of desktop publishing software, and finally with the Internet.
We discussed briefly about how the bursting of the dot.com industry in 2001 gave rise to a paradigm shift in how the Internet ought to be used – a repurposing from just being another content distribution channel to one that became an enabler of B2B (Business to Business), B2C (Business to Consumer) and even C2C (Consumer to Consumer) conversations, and the growing of an online social networking cloud. It was the recognition of this ‘new birth’ of the Internet that led O’Reilly to name it ‘Web 2.0’ in 2002.
It was also a near clairvoyant perception of where technology was heading in the late 1990s and what it could do for the PR industry that led Brian Solis to coin the term PR 2.0 back then to signal a paralleled renaissance of the industry. In this regard, I believe that the dot-com debacle was also a critical turning point and wake-up call for the entire communication industry as well.
Nearly a decade in the making, this topic of Communication 2.0 (allow me to loosely use this phrase to refer to the PR, public affairs and other rhetoric-related industries) is fast becoming mainstream, with the increasing recognition and acceptance of Chris Anderson’s theory of the Long Tail and how communication can’t just be for the mainstream community, but also the many niche markets and needs that are spawning at the tail end of the curve.
Today's Focus
This article, the final part in the trilogy, will primarily be focused on the trends and challenges organizations will face in adjusting their gears and taking in what social media and technology has to offer in terms of changing communication to conversation. For one thing, my position is that given the rapid pace of change in new media technologies, communication agencies and consultancies will no longer be able to rely on the old suite of skills and capabilities (e.g. organizing campaigns, writing press releases and speeches, training to face the media on camera or in person, etc). It will be these skills plus more…
Neither is it sufficient for agencies just to be good at helping organizations to integrate the most advanced Web 2.0 tools available into the business. That will be considered a basic function, but not one that tells who's top of the class.
It will have to be these skills plus more…
Why so? Just listen to what Dorie Clark (CEO of Clark Strategic Communications | Click here for the interview with Dorie) has to say.
“In the past it’ll be such that if the PR firm did a good job, it would get the client’s story on page A1 or B1 of the newspaper. Today, for the Web, we’re talking about some sites that see more traffic than other sites, so even though this may be a little grey right now, we’re starting to see more PR firms turn towards web placements, or urging their clients to blog, or place things on blogs, because it’s a way of getting ‘hits’ and making the clients happy.”
But the crux lies in being able to see the forest for the trees, she essentially cautions, because communication on the web is a different ball game.
“That being said, I think it’s important for them [PR and communications consultancies] to be doing it strategically for it to have value; you need people who know what they’re talking about because they’re dealing with online media pitching,” she says.
It’s far too easy for consultancies to claim to be New Media-ready, only to dish out advice and tactics that sound more like merely jumping on the nearest technological or social media bandwagon.
Following on from Dorie’s point, I would say that one of the defining characteristics that would separate the contenders from the pretenders would be the ability to strategically dissect the communication needs of the organization and map out strategies that involve a balanced-mix of the new and old in order to take the firm from the social media backwaters to a position of competence. In so doing, the consultancy must be able to take cognizance of the internal culture of the organization and institute plans that help to transform mindsets and gear the staff for dialogue and participation in their markets.
I would propose that organizations need to understand what to look out for when evaluating the different communication agencies to be hired to chart their progress towards Communication 2.0. One that is able to perform strategic-level planning and training (to gear the HR element for the social media environment, which is another thing to think about) would be valuable.
Conducting Web Measurement and Research
I would also argue that the ‘new-age’ communication consultancy needs to be one that is adept at understanding market metrics, and be able to conduct insightful behavioral and attitudinal analytics to help the client better touch-base with its customers. Leslie H. Moeller and Edward C. Landry, in their article ‘Measuring your way to market insight’ (2009, pp. 72-75), say that ROI (Return on Investment) analytics and consumer insights are the two foremost capabilities that marketing communication must develop. Not surprisingly, the authors also found in their research that media and messaging (which influences, and are influenced by ROI and market insights) is the next most important category in line.
Why does there seem to be so much attention being paid to Web-based events today? The reason lies in a key trend that is happening to the PR and communication in general as a result of the impact of Web 2.0 and the corresponding decline in print media.
“I'd say that part of the reason why the Web is such a big thing right now, apart from the reason that many more people are using it, is that it is getting harder and harder for PR agencies to place things in newspapers,” says Dorie.
“This is simply because the newspapers are shrinking because of smaller ad revenues. So consequently, they’re fighting a never-ending losing battle where they’re clients want certain pieces of stories in the newspapers, but there’s less room, so it’s much, much more competitive. They [the PR and communications businesses], consequently, are expanding more into the Web because it’s infinite, it’s very easy to post things online, and you continue to answer to your clients needs too [via online metrics]. I mean, it’s a very objective measure.”
According to Moller and Landry (2009, pp. 74-76), there is no silver bullet when it comes to marketing analytics and measurement, given the often-chaotic world of business. Nevertheless, analytics require data, and the availability of transactional data (derived from the customer’s behavior at the point of direct interface with the service or product) will provide grounds for behavioral analytics that, when done well, help organizations to better understand how and why their customers respond a certain way to a price change, a promotion, a TV advertisement, or a particular message.
Breakenridge (2008, p.73) says that the way measurement was done in the past was to provide the client with reports on gross impressions (i.e. how many eyes see the coverage, which differs depending on the type of medium) and how these clips turn into advertising dollars. Clippings of news coverage was another means of measuring progress.
A PR story that appears in a two-column segment of a newspaper would be weighed in terms of its equivalent costs in advertising, for example. That would be a form of business case analytics, which makes use of data that a company typically possesses (such as event cost, or attendance data, or costs accrued in media buys) to produce an upper and lower set of boundaries for organizational executives to weigh their investment decisions, much like a reality check (Moller and Landry, 2009, pp. 74-75).
However, the authors also make the point that such analyses do not generate any ROI, unlike attitudinal analytics and behavioral analytics. Hence, the kind of measurement an organization can perform is always based on how far it can push the data it possesses in terms of analysis.
“If transactional data is available, behavioral analytics should be the first choice,” Moller and Landry note. “[Otherwise, if] self-reported data is at hand, then attitudinal analytics are preferable. And if profitability and event cost data are the only data available, business case analytics may be the best option.”
This situation naturally favors the organizations with the deeper pockets and the human resources to be committed to such market monitoring and research. To be honest, even with the Web 2.0 environment, it’s companies with the most in terms of resources that will inevitably have a head start in the area of research strategies. However, the Web is a great enabler and a leveler of the playing field (somewhat) where it provides highly effective Internet research solutions on consumer behaviors that come at little to no cost for the small to medium enterprises (Breakenridge, 2008, pp. 30-31).
Anecdote from the Promulgation.Rubicon Blog
My own experience in this area, however limited, points to the same direction as well.
While maintaining this very blog, I rely on relatively basic but in-depth statistics and metrics generated by Google Analytics and Feedburner (e.g. daily page views, bounce rates, average time users spend on site, percentage of visitor traffic that lands on the site through referrals, search engines or direct entries, etc) to track how I'm doing. For example, I learned that between 18 Feb and 20 Mar this year, my blog managed a modest 1,226 pageviews (not bad for a startup, wouldn’t you say?). See the table below for illustration.
The amount of intelligence and the level of detail in which it is presented are currently much more than I can comprehend, but I find it empowering to be able to make use such statistics, coupled with other applications that come at no cost at all, to guide me in ways to make my site more efficient, attractive and successful.
Now imagine what this can do for other serious businesses?
Web-based applications and search engines make data widely available or attainable within easy reach. Small to medium organizations could elect to make use of the free basic membership programs provided by services such as www.news.google.com, www.highbeam.com, www.clickpress.com, and www.marketwire.com to aid their research; the larger organizations, on the other hand, could either use the same resources, or pay a certain premium for the more advanced research and intelligence services by www.lexisnexis.com, www.vocus.com, www.prnewswire.com, or www.businesswire.com, for example (Breakenridge, 2008, pp. 31-32).
So, as long as organizations are plugged into the Web, there’ll always be data available, as well as analysis solutions for their needs.
This, in my opinion, is the most fundamental leveling effect that the Web is bringing into the market today, hence my argument that the very least that communication consultancies should be able to do is to understand the market trends, as well as trends and potential of different social media and technological tools, process all these data and use them to inform the strategic plans for their clients. This would be the optimal service that the communications consultancy should provide.
Dorie agrees with the observation.
“You know, people are jumping on Twitter right now, and that may just become the next killer application, or it may just end up fizzling… The question is how these technologies are going to be used. I mean, are people going to be carrying their phones with them, with the Twitter application on their iPhones, are they really going to be checking it all the time? How does that fit into people’s lives? And I think that’s now an open question,” she concedes.
The real key, according to her, isn't so much the technology, but figuring out for clients the best match between the technologies that are available, and the best use of their time and money.
“I mean, that’s always been a question to think about, but right now, people are scurrying around, and they know they’ll need to be doing Internet things, but they don’t know what, and before we’re going to be able to advise them properly, we need to take into account their target audiences and how they can best take action. So that’s what I see as the biggest challenge: Trying to see around the corner and making good and targeted suggestions that are suited specifically to who your client is and who they are trying to reach.”
I also agree when Breakenridge (2008, p. 30) says that we're not ready for 2.0 research unless we have resources that are available who can review and analyze the information (see the analytics arrayed on the table below). She warns that even if the organization has the money to hire a third-party research organization, it ought to have an internal staff who understands the research process and the lingo (if you will) to act as a liaison between the two. The data mining and analysis functions are so dear that it should never be totally farmed out.
Jack of All Trades… For Now At Least!
Apart from measurement and analytics, what are the other kinds of challenges that the communication industry must content with? It seems the transformation must reach down to something even more fundamental – the reshaping of the individual skills sets and priorities of the communications practitioner.
“I think that the challenges that are faced by practitioners of public affairs and public relations are… part of it is that it’s a changing landscape, and the pace of change is accelerating very rapidly,” Dorie says. “You do have to put a foot in the door of a lot of things because you don’t know what’s going to take off.”
Companies are starting to seek out a new class of communication experts to help them effectively compete now and in the future (Solis & Breakenridge, 2009, p.2).
“A new, hybrid breed of Web-savvy communications professionals is emerging… these highly sought-after New Media PR practitioners include those who blog, run a podcast or video show, communicate in popular micro-media networks such as Twitter, create profiles across several social networks and actively cultivate their social graph, customize pages with an understanding of ‘lite’ HTML, and participate in the communities that are important to them.”
Chris Ranjitkar, a member of a local investor relations firm, in the lingua franca of the times, ‘pings’ the projection by Solis and Breakenridge.
“I think new media has and is continuing to transform agencies where you’ve people who’re much more technologically savvy now. Not only do they count soft skills among their expertise, but also a lot of people on… staff now understand basic things like HTML and other Web coding. I think on the whole, agencies are increasing their technological knowhow… Ultimately, adaptability to all these changes will be the main differentiator of successful agencies and those that will eventually fail,” he argues.
Chris also believes that it will be common thing for the future of the communications industry to see a lot of agencies and consultancies undergoing downsizing, integration of services and the evolution towards being genuinely full-service communications suites for their clients (which includes the integration of traditional and new media expertise, as well as Web-based research methods and analytics).
These are changes that are already happening, especially the downsizing and the integration, and have been gradually happening for years because of economic factors and the need to remain agile and adaptable.
“… You see a lot of smaller agencies now… a lot of specialty consulting groups performing well in this respect,” he says.
“Shift Communications are a big player in new media and PR, at least in Boston. A lot of people would consider them of the experts. You know, Todd Defren who runs the agency – a lot of people would think of him as one of the experts nationally. Another agency that’s done really well in new media is Topaz Partners. They’re in Malden, Massachusetts, and they’ve also had a thriving new media practice. These agencies [are the exception]… Topaz Partners is about 20 years old, and Shift is a couple of years old, but what you see is that are a lot of younger and smaller agencies that, because of their size, they are more adaptable, and this makes them more likely to be successful in this arena. I think this is true for a lot of agencies.”
He believes that communication practitioners and agencies are gradually realizing that they have to adopt new sets of skills and be experts in multiple areas. This involves not only an expertise or general competency in media relations, graphic design, speech writing, but also many other multiple areas. It is basic economics.
Recalling a conversation he had with a colleague back in his former job in a communications consultancy on the North Shore about a job they were doing for a client, Chris was told that the future is no longer going to be just about PR, or other loose aspects of the communication business, but about integration.
“PR firms are going to have to turn into integrated marketing firms as well because basically when you’re shopping for an agency, you’re going to want [one] that’s able to do everything for you. You won’t want to hire one media relations specialist, and then have to hire another website specialist, or hire a writer and hire a new media specialist. You’re going to [have to offer a one-stop service solution].
The Passing of the Old? Hardly…
Despite all these ravings on and on about the power and impact of new media and social networking, this by no means represent the death knell of traditional media like print, radio or television. On the contrary, because of the simple fact that every market and business environment will have its mainstream markets and its long tail (recall Chris Anderson), communication practitioners must learn to use an array of tactics to reach the widest audience base possible.
“No matter what industry you’re in, realize that the most popular blogs, newspapers, and magazines are only part of the process. Your market is divided by [different] adoption and buying behavior and documented through many means,” Solis and Breakenridge (2009, pp. 16-17) caution.
“You’ve to embrace both New Media and traditional media… In the tech space, for example, TechCrunch, Mashable, Venture Beat, ReadWriteWeb, and other channels will yield measurable traffic so great that most of the time it knocks out company Web servers. Every executive wants these channels… But by no means do they carry your value proposition to the entire collective of people who might embrace your product and help sustain your business…”
With all the specialization and niche interests going on right now, it calls for a broader net to reach the communities. This requires for a partnership between traditional media and new media, not a coup d'état by the latter.
As David Meerman Scott (2007, p.11) puts it, the traditional media will still play a very critical role to most organizations in the conceivable future.
“A positive story in the Rolling Stone, the Wall Street Journal or the Larry King Show still does wonders in terms of publicity and buzz for any organization,” he notes. “These ‘exposures’ help reinforce the notion of companies or firms that are important and worth paying attention to.”
This is because the systematic coverage of an organization’s programs or activities with newspapers, television, radio, and business (or niche) presses are vitally important for establishing a reputation of credibility and dependability over time (Post, 1982, p.28).
In a similar vein, new media also does not negate the conventional PR and marketing approaches. In fact, many PR 2.0 practitioners are calling new media the adjunct of traditional PR and communication (Weil, 2006, p. 61).
Scott (2007, p.11) adds another thought.
“Of course, there are exceptions [to this]. Very large companies, famous people and governments might all still be able to get away with using the [traditional] media exclusively, but even that’s doubtful. These name-brand people and companies may be big enough, and their news so compelling that no effort is required of them… and for such people, the [traditional] media may still be the primary mouthpiece.”
Mechkova (2009) adds a very thoughtful insight to this when she comments that the issue is more a question of where the target groups are. "As prestigious as traditional media may be, one cannot just target them and ignore new media, when more and more people are going online," she says.
It is therefore very important to understand the established practices in the content of the predominant culture and not just propose for change in favor of social media or new technology. Especially against legacy systems, change will be much harder to institute due to politics and forces of habit, which is why its pace must be graduated.
But on the whole, like how the Web is leveling the playing field for consumer research methods and analytics, Scott (2007, p.11) says that the smaller ‘fishes’ in the pond need not fear of losing out to the big fishes because the Web provides a terrific way for them to tell their story.
The game changer with new media that we’re talking about here is how it allows organizations that know how to make use of the many more tools that are now available a more cost effective means of getting their messages to their buyers or stakeholders – who are the real audiences (not only the media as was the case in the past).
This is because new information and opinions are now readily fueled and virally spread through peer-to-peer sharing. Hence, communication professionals have the challenge, opportunity – and might I add, necessity – to reach beyond the traditional media “A-list” and engage directly with the community in a dialogue (Solis & Breakenridge, 2009, pp. 1-2). And according to Scott (2007, p.11), the best thing to happen is that if the organization is able to do a great job creating that buzz and presence about a particular service or story on the social media side, chances are that the conventional media would eventually find out and want to make a story out of it as well.
Investment and Financial Firms Face a Challenge
Of course, in any paradigm shift of such massive proportions, not everyone will be able to make the shift immediately, especially for those businesses and industries that are more deeply entrenched in prescriptive regulations.
Talking to Chris [Ranjitkar] about his job in investor relations and media management consultancy, he tells me that while new media has touched the investor relations aspect of the business and has caused the entire industry to gain a new level of understanding about its potential for more intimate and immediate communication, they're still trying to map out where the boundaries are.
“You know, people are still trying to figure out what Twitter means, or what a blog means to shareholders,” Chris muses.
“There’s a lot of discussion going on right now about what constitutes public disclosure and what [dissemination] methods would be considered as providing everyone with equal access to that information. So, in a typical situation where a company is releasing financial results, the information goes through news wires, you know, Business Newswire, PR Newswire, GlobeNewswire or Market Wire. You know… what we consider as full public disclosure. Everybody [in this industry] has access to those information sources. Everybody has access to Yahoo Finance, for example.”
He fears that at the present moment, should such information be released via a blog, a critical problem could be the blog’s relatively fewer subscription base, which makes it unsuitable as a platform to update everyone who needs to know. That's not the same as pushing out a story that’ll eventually turn up on a terminal on Bloomberg, Reuters or Yahoo Finance.
Currently, from what I understand about investor relations, much of what it deals with have to do with market-changing matters like an organization’s performance, its market value or share prices. Hence, it's federally mandated that investor relation communiqués must be released through the wired news agencies before it can be considered as public information. It’s clear that the influence of the new media channels has yet to gain that kind of gravitas in a highly regulated industry as such.
But, there’s a silver lining.
“I think investor relations firms are still working to determine how social media can be used as an investor communications tool,” Chris shares.
“It’s still new, and there’re a lot of issues with the disclosure of financial information for companies that has to be dealt with sensitively because a lot of it is confidential information, or tightly controlled information. So I think the whole industry is still trying to determine how new media can fit into investor relations.”
Now How About Some Tangible Action Plans?
So while some industries have no choice but to play catch up, what can the other communications world tangibly do to gear themselves for the new social and communication environment?
Four simple words…
“It’s time to engage,” Solis and Breakenridge says (2009, p.3)
For starters, organizations totally new to the new media scene should just throw off all false pretenses about control, and simply start by playing around with the social media and Web 2.0 applications that are now available (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Flickr, Second Life, etc).
According to David Twomey (Email Interview, Feb 2009), who's currently working for the US Department of Justice and trying to reshape their Web 2.0 penetration strategy, he says that there are several US government agencies on Facebook, for example. Organizations like the CIA, the State Department, NASA and EPA are all there already. While there's varying strategies behind most of them, there are some departments that have yet to develop any strategic approach, but are choosing to just immerse themselves in the Web 2.0 world for ‘play.’
Twomey says that this is something to keep in mind, because it’s not always a matter about whether the applications are employed correctly or successfully, especially when you’re just starting out (My analogy: Nobody thinks about marriage when you first start dating right?).
Responding to Twomey, Chris says, “I think it’s an absolutely great idea. I think that participating is the only way we can learn about the technology, but also how to harness for your work purposes and to use it to your advantage. You know, so much about new media like Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, blogging… you can’t really explain how to use it until you have touched it and engaged with it. I mean, I can tell you all I know about blogging, but unless you actually sit down and read some blogs and even participate in some yourself, you will never truly understand what it’s all about… the only way for them to experience this is to sign up for an account and go run wild with it.”
Apart from getting ourselves familiarized, it’s also a way for us to start building our ‘presence’ on the Web (that’s what Dan Schawbel would say). In my opinion, tools like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube should rank among the easiest applications to start with.
Blogging is another way to develop a presence on the Web.
Debbie Weil, author of The Corporate Blogging Book (2006, p.55), says that blogs may actually provide organizations (and intuitively, this ought to include individuals as well) with a safe entry point into the Web 2.0 scene because of the relatively relaxed nature of its uses.
“Blogs that are primarily used for publishing [corporate] news or essays are really just an alternative kind of content management system that organizes information by date and topic,” she explains as an example. “However, there is nothing wrong with this if it suits the organization’s needs and goals.”
“The crux is that the organization is moving in the right direction by becoming part of the dialogue that is taking place on the Internet. At the same time, this provides a window by which its customers can peer into the organization and participate with it in shaping some of its policies, products or services,” she says (Weil, 2006, p.55).
Weil (2006, p.53) argues that theoretically, any organization (whether public, private or NGO) that has a product, service or policy that would have an impact on the community should be able to tap on new media to engage with them. Many advantages argue in favor of using blogs for communication at one level or another. The low cost, the ‘searchability,’ the relatively real-time nature of the postings, the ease of adding content, and the ease for other people to add their comments, are just some examples.
Where blogs (and even corporate websites) are concerned, it’s always about sharing knowledge and developing content or knowledge leadership by being a trustworthy and sought-after resource for the community (Solis and Breakenridge, 2009, p.18).
According to Scott (2007, pp. 16-17), thoughtful content-based leadership helps companies to gain an aura of legitimacy through their web-based communication. Citing the Cervelo site (which sells championship racing bicycles used in the grand prix) as a prime example, he says that instead of purely marketing the bicycles on the site as many organizations do with their products, Vroomen, the CEO of Cervelo, actually spends his time creating content on the website that are designed to educate the readers about general biking technology, construction and specifications. There’s an online museum showcasing early production models and interesting past prototypes, and there’re also vlogs and podcasts with professional riders from Cervelo-sponsored racing teams (Team CSC) to cater to the needs of racing enthusiasts.
“Our goal is education,” Vroomen says, “… We don’t sell on the newest paint job…”
Scott (2007, p.24) continues with his point.
“Instead of focusing efforts on a potential PR blockbuster success, say an appearance on the Oprah Show, it may well be more effective to have hundreds of bloggers reviewing the same product and service, and then virally communicating this across the web to reach potentially countless readers and customers.”
The key, Scott (2007, p.28) stresses, is to get ideas through thought leadership onto the web so that it influences bloggers to talk about it, which would lead to buzz and traction for the company and its products on the web. Doing a lot of small things, such as sending news releases and information nuggets regularly to engage the top bloggers to keep talking about it may be more effective than depending on that big bang publicity event that comes by every once in a while (not that these aren't important, but you get the point…). This is because the content an organization puts out has the potential and effect of branding that firm as a thought leader.
Instead of selling something directly, a great website, a great blog or podcast, or an ebook, is actually telling the world indirectly that you are smart, and that you understand the market very well, and that you would be a valuable person to do businesss with. Web content directly contributes to an organization’s online reputation by displaying thought leadership in the marketplace of ideas, and this becomes especially powerful when influential bloggers start talking about it (Scott, 2007, p.38).
Interestingly enough, as far back as the 1980s, the notion of engaging these influence-leaders was already contemplated.
Newman (1982, p.227) says that in the age of specialization, public affairs campaigns aimed at a few leaders need some updating. Although it works, the rapid diversification of the market has led to a plurality of opinion leaders. Hence, it’s no longer sufficient to communicate the message to the mayor, minister, college president etc. Now one must reach out to and persuade the specialist on the subject – the maven, if you will.
A maven is an ordinary citizen who speaks out regularly on a particular subject, and back in the 1980s when the handbook was printed, mavens were best reached through periodicals and print media as they were niche thought leaders who voraciously read up about their fields.
Today, almost 30 years later, the maven has become the blogger.
The time may have changed but the principal players haven’t, and genuine participation and dialogue – themes we’ve visited time and again in this trilogy – remain the key fundamentals to Communication 2.0 success.
As Steve Wilson (quoted by Scott, 2007, p.58), senior director of global web communication for McDonald’s Corp says, the Internet has greatly changed the role of information dissemination for large global brands. “If it [the organization] is going to get credibility and trust, it is necessary to participate in the blogging community, we can’t just jump into the blog storm without having built a dialog first.”
So I would argue that every organization should start thinking, if they haven't already done so, about strategic plans to penetrate the new media or social media scene. If there are strong concerns or reservations about D2C communication, especially if this has never been done before, it may make sense for organizations to consider using some of the tools discussed here for internal communication purposes. With experience, this could then be the staging point to enter the mainstream social media community.
It has been a long journey… now for a final thought!
It’s all about strategic communication: the crafting of surgical and incisive communication and content and making this available for different groups of people out there, the goal of which is to support the development and maintenance of a consistent and credible narrative for the organization – both online and offline – so that people view it as a reliable and desirable source of information and services, and will keep coming back to it for more.
But let me add one more thought here by Dorie, before I end it all.
If you're wondering if that's all there is to it, it isn't. With any communication plan that involves online support, it will always need to be translated into tangible real-world action.
"I mean, the goal is really to take people along a spectrum, from being interested and aware, to being active online, and then the culmination is where they are active in the real world," she says, as she recalls her experience with using new media in support of the 2004 Howard Dean presidential campaign.
"And you've to find ways to nurture them along each step of the way. So if you have a blog, then that’s one good way to take them from a [stage of] general support to being involved and feeling that they are part of a community."
It means nothing to have a million Facebook supporters if we cannot translate them into some mutually meaningful and beneficial relationship. This is the reason why we see people following others on Twitter, while others are choosing to disengage. It's those people who are able to build mutually-supportive and beneficial relationships that succeed.
And it starts with participation.
New media provides a tremendous opportunity, as Breakenridge (2008, p. 274) says, to interact, communicate and build relationships with journalists, bloggers, and [our] customers.
Excellent and meaningful communication builds relationships and fosters conversations!
But a word of caution by Breakenridge: Do not get hung up on the number sequence. Even though the world may call it PR 5.0 someday, it’s never about the number but the attitude towards the kind of quality communication we can build with our constituencies given the empowering of new media tools today.
Technology will only get better at developing applications that will give a louder voice to the public. The question is whether organizational communicators dare to step beyond their corporate veil and engage stakeholders and opinion leaders in an intimate dialogue, after years of funneling messages through the media mouthpieces.
Ultimately, it’s not so much the gadgets and applications, but an issue about the evolving sociology of communication.
Should we step into the fray?
My take on the issue is that we’ve ultimately no choice but to engage – both on traditional and new media platforms; through online and offline dialogues; using mediated communication channels, and trying to move towards the face-to-face where possible and practiceable. But start doing something...
‘Engage or die!’ I recall Brian Solis as saying.
Indeed, organizations and brands face being left behind if they shirk from the present realities. Because if we don’t put our voice and our opinions in the midst of the conversations, others will still be talking about us anyway, for better or for worse. Now where would that leave us?
The way I see it, Web 2.0, PR, public affairs and communication in general are actually a pretty good mix.
It marks a new era of quality and genuine communication that's characterized by connectivity, participation, innovation, dialogue, networking, transparency, and empowerment!
Quality communication allows quality relationships and networks to be built, and that’s actually the best platform to get one’s thoughts and messages understood, which goes on to feed a positive cycle of building a positive and reputable narrative for the organization, which goes on to strengthen the relationships and clout of the organization, which goes on... and on… and on…
The death of the old ways of communicating, and the rise of dialogue and conversations with different people about narratives that truly matter.
Now isn’t that what public affairs and PR is all about?
Think about it!
Selected References
Breakenridge, D. (2008). PR 2.0: New media, new tools, new audiences. Pearson Education, Inc: New Jersey
Mechkova, A. (2009). Personal communication via email.
Moller, L. H., & Edward, C. L. (Spring 2009). Measuring Your Way To Market Insight. In Strategy + Business (Issue 54; pp. 74-77). Booz & Company, Inc: New York
Post, J. (1982). Part 2 - Public affairs: It's role. In J. Nagelschmidt (Ed.), The public affairs handbook. New York: Amacom.
Scott, D., M. (2007). The new rules of marketing and PR: How to use news releases, blogs, podcasting, viral marketing, & online media to reach buyers directly. John Wiley & Sons, Inc: Hoboken, New Jersey
Solis, B., & Breakenridge, D. (2009). Putting the public back in public relations. Pearson Education, Inc: New Jersey
Weil, D. (2006). The Corporate Blogging Book: Absolutely everything you need to know to get it right. New York: The Penguin Group.
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