Chapter 15. The Path to Great PR

Does anyone really know the future? I've heard some interesting predictions, but like all predications, I take them with a grain of salt. Some communications professionals are forecasting the onset of PR 3.0. How could there be talk of PR 3.0? I don't remember successfully accomplishing a fraction of what there is to accomplish in PR 2.0. Ask yourself, have you perfected your PR 2.0 strategy for your brands? In this fast-paced Web world, occasionally you need to slow down, take a deep breath, and put everything into perspective. It's really important to review everything you know about PR 2.0 from the research and monitoring to new social templates and social networking. Then, you'll be able to figure out the best way to apply all your knowledge and experiences to create powerful Web/PR communications.

Your Path to Great Communication

At this point, most likely you've realized it's not just the Web 2.0 technological platform or a cool multimedia application that "makes" the communication. No, it's so much more. The technology will always enhance the communication; however, it doesn't matter if it's 2.0, 3.0, or someday 5.0. Regardless of the platform, it will always be your job to make sure that your public relations and marketing communication are done for the right reasons, at the right time to reach your stakeholders with information, in a manner that gets their attention. You need to interact with them where they thrive the most—in their communities—and always remember that marketing is one big online conversation.

PR 2.0 is not just about good communication; it's about finding the path to the conversations. Traveling this path will enable you to directly reach and communicate with the people who will influence decisions and ultimately help carry the brand forward, which ultimately leads peer-to-peer + influencer driven customer loyalty. I had a discussion with Brian Solis^[1], founder of FutureWorks in San Francisco, and also someone whose work I respect in PR 2.0. Solis is one of the "Founding Fathers" of the PR 2.0 movement. He is a firm believer that PR 2.0 leads to not only great PR, but also a new era of outbound customer service.

You've Come a Long Way

Solis was thinking about PR 2.0 back in the 1990s when many of us were only just experimenting with brand communication online. Reflecting on the past, he feels that although PR 2.0 has been around for years, it's only just popularized now. He pointed out that in the late 1990s, there were a series of Web sites that started to take off as "next-generation bulletin board services and user groups that appealed to the early market majority population." These included Yahoo! Groups, Copy Serv, AOL, and all the places dedicated to people with a particular and similar interest.

Solis' first experience with PR 2.0 was when he really started to get involved in reaching people who were considering jumping into digital photography. "Digital photography at the time was all so new and met with notable resistance from those who didn't believe film would be anything less than the mainstream. But, digital photography wasn't just about pros or early adopters. It had mass appeal and it was going to affect families who wanted to take pictures of their kids playing soccer or photos of family outings, picnics, or daytrips to the beach," he said. Solis became interested in social media, although at the time it wasn't called social media; instead it was referred to as new media and represented new opportunities to reach people. It was then that he realized he could actually go into a Web community and start fostering conversations with people, not as a marketer, but as a fellow photography enthusiast. He was able to get their feedback, hear their input, and also at the same time become a part of that community—an evangelist to help them understand the world in general digital photography. "I was just calling this whole thing PR 2.0; to document how the Web was changing the game for PR and opening the doors for knowledgeable communications folks to reach people directly. We participated in a way that helped them make decisions, based on the experience that we had as peers, not even as marketers at the time," explained Solis.

For Solis, PR 2.0 really is about doing two things. "First, it was a call from people to 'stop the bullshit' and it was also an opportunity for those who didn't buy into this process of PR, to find a new channel to connect with people and get back to basics, which was all about cultivating relationships." PR has and always will be about relationships—whether practiced well or not. At the same time, Solis feels that while PR is supposed to be about Public Relations, it was the advent of Social Media that really changed everything at the mass level. Solis experimented early on with multimedia, CDs, enthusiast sites (now known as blogs), streaming video, and then Web conferences. He invited users to come in and have conversations about products and chat with them over the Web. He knew it was a fantastic opportunity to meet groups of customers, as well as traditional media.

Even though this has been in practice for about ten years, one of the biggest challenges is getting brands to embrace PR 2.0 and social media. Although Solis feels that he fights a battle everyday with some of his clients with respect to implementing PR 2.0 strategies, he knows they will soon realize that "New PR" really helps companies connect with people through their channels of influence and conversation. "It's no longer about messages or audiences, it's about discovering the people that matter, where they go for information, and why what you represent matters to them specifically. But it's not just PR's responsibility to engage. It's a critical requirement for all corporate marketing up to the executive level, to participate," he said.

"I've been having the same conversations for ten years, and I still come back to an identical argument. For example, blogging is an important aspect of social media and it is important for a company, whether they are B2B or B2C to blog. I'm still having tireless conversations where I am blue in the face trying to explain the benefits."

I can relate to Solis' frustrations. An entry from my blog at www.deirdrebreakenridge.com reads:

Solis admitted that many companies still don't see the value of blogs. "They think blogs are just rants and diaries of what people do on a day-to-day basis. They completely underestimate the fact that a blog can become a destination, an aggregate of knowledge and expertise that helps customers make decisions while also building relationships with them. It just blows me away." Solis explained that there's also a misunderstanding of how to use blogs. "Some executives will say 'let's do it' and then have their PR people ghost write blogs for them, as if they were computer articles. Or, they use a blog as a marketing channel and start pumping news releases into their posts. But to me, the best thing a company can do is to get in that conversation and let people within that organization represent the brand. Technically everyone within an organization should be responsible for public relations, whereas media or analyst relations are specific responsibilities of communications professionals. Those conversations are going to happen out there with or without them, and if companies aren't on the radar screen, then they're missing opportunities," he commented.

Solis stressed the importance of how PR professionals need to embrace social media—including podcasts, blogs, lifestreaming, livecasts, social networking, social bookmarking, and many other social tools to join the conversation—not as marketers, but as people. It all starts with listening and reading. You need to hear what's going on out there before you can participate. Every community has its own culture, so you can't simply expect to come in and start spamming it with PR. It all starts with becoming an expert. There's no reason why PR shouldn't truly understand what they represent, why it's important and different, and how it helps people.

At any time a conversation can pop up about your company or a competitor, or its technology, or your product or service. Whatever it is, those conversations happen all the time and it's fairly easy for you to find those conversations to join. "Every time you place a noncommercial piece of information with valuable insight or expertise or simply answer someone's questions and help them out, those types of interactions bring people back to your site and introduce them to something they might not have known before," Solis said.

PR 2.0 Hot Topics

Because PR 2.0 is a different approach to public relations, it has caused confusion and excitement at the same time. This different approach also spawned some very hot topics in the communications industry. For Solis, the hottest topic is this whole social media movement, which includes blogging, blogger relations, Social Tools, community relations, the social media news release, and social media newsroom. Solis says he's in a different camp when it comes to the social media release. For him it's just a platform to present information and spark conversations, with or without journalists and bloggers. Many are under the impression that the social media release is the driving force behind PR 2.0, yet it is only one of the many tools that help conversations and relationships flourish.

At the same time, of course, the SMR opens up the possibility to enable people to embrace it in conversation. However, most don't realize that the social media release with pictures and links and all these things have been done for years by PR newswire under the MultiVu brand. Solis reminded me, "It's a multimedia news release. The point where I got passionate about the social media release just like social media in general, is the ability to engage with people directly, which by default forces PR people to stop acting like traditional PR people. News releases are notorious for being lumped in with BS hype and 'spin.' Social media is an opportunity to break the stereotype, to become experts, and create conversations directly and indirectly. This is our chance to evolve public relations into a more valuable branch of marketing, making everyone smarter and hopefully more passionate in the process." Solis proves a point. Now, with social media, everyone is basically socially empowered to do something with the information they create or discover. In the case of the Social Media Release, it's a social tool, which can be great for journalists to gather information and also ideal for customers to gather, organize, and share content.

According to Solis, "Stripping the garbage out of the release and sticking with the important facts and benefits" makes a good news release regardless of format. You're able to produce a credible, newsworthy resource that's unique and helpful. With the social media news release, the corporate legal speak is removed and the essence of the release is the information that helps journalists to build better stories. Releases are to the point and also offer information for the citizen journalists. Solis believes that maybe there isn't just one type of release for everybody. He references The Long Tail by Chris Anderson and says, "If The Long Tail has taught us anything, it's that there are many segments to markets and perhaps the same is true of today's business of information." Solis admits that the PR industry, like most age-old professions, has difficulty with change. "The most important thing is that once you start to experiment with New PR and Social Tools, it has less to do with replacing a news release and more to do with a concept that enables professionals to reach people and bring them into the conversation. It starts to become more about sociology than the technology forcing change."

Solis' favorite topic in our discussion was the future of PR 2.0 and what it means to professionals today. As a matter of fact, when PR Week came out and said the PR profession is entering into the "Age of PR 3.0," Solis stopped what he was doing at the time and as he puts it "just ripped the idea apart." For Solis, he hopes that PR 3.0 never sees the light of day again, and he'll keep fighting his fight. A big misperception is that PR 2.0 is a result of Web 2 0 and suddenly everything is 2.0. Solis wrote an article about this very topic. The article explains that PR 2.0 is more of a call for change than creating a new iteration for PR sociology. "This is about the renaissance of public relations and the ideas behind PR 2.0 will simply fold into 'PR' once the industry embraces the changes." Solis also stressed, "In the new game of PR, messages are dead, pitches are dead, and people no longer comprise one audience. There is no market for messages or pitches, only how something benefits those who you're trying to reach through the culture of the communities in which they participate."

I agree with Solis that PR 2.0 brings a new breed of public relations professionals. Now the real test is how professionals embrace the renaissance and the sociology of the communities out there. Through PR 2.0, brands are going to know how to talk to people; whether it's a journalist they need to reach or whether it's a customer or even a partner. Solis builds a strong case and it's true. As you practice PR, you're going to understand where to go and how to bring the information to people in the way they want to hear it. That's the mission of PR 2.0—it's to build relationships with reporters, bloggers, and customers. At the end of the day, it's all about people, although some are confusing the tools with the concept. Social media tools or applications (blogging, podcasting, RSS, social networking, and the like) are the tools that help better your job performance.

According to Solis, there's a problem and we need to admit it and do something about it. PR has become very bureaucratic and practically hands off. The larger the company, the harder it is to get the communication approved—so how timely does that enable you to be? PR 2.0 is about making PR better. Once you recognize there are things that need to be fixed, you can evaluate your approach. Although social media seems like advanced technology, it's actually in theory a back-to-basics approach as it enables you to go out and listen and in turn, participate. You know there are important conversations taking place. For those brands that think those conversations are unimportant or simply ignore them, think again. According to Solis, "Why give up opportunities to connect with customers and instead allow your competition to win their attention? Social media isn't a spectator sport." Solis' final words on PR 2.0: "For me, the inspiration behind all this is to someday walk into a room and be introduced as more than just some PR guy—to be proud of the PR profession and get a proper introduction. 'This is THE PR guy, the one you need to meet!'"

More Expert 2.0 Advice

I called on Brian Cross, who is the Director of Fleishman-Hillard's Digital Group in Saint Louis, and serves as one of the Global Practice Group Leaders. He has more than 12 years of experience in innovative, online customer-centric solutions, with expertise ranging from online marketing and outreach, search strategies, technology consulting, and Web 2.0/social media campaigns.

Before Cross answered my question about the future of PR 2.0, he wanted to discuss the confusion over the definition of the concept. If you look at the social media club (www.socialmediaclub.com), you will see there is still a big debate as to exactly what the definition of social media is and therefore, what the roots of PR 2.0 are. "But, if you boiled down social media, I look at it as collaborative communication. If you think about it, you've been collaborative all your life. How much different is writing a rough draft of your paper in grade school and sending it off to your teacher for comments? This is a similar concept to the wiki or a blog. You're sending out information for feedback. Social media can be a large focus group of sorts. Look at the group paper—isn't that a wiki?" Cross asked.

The conversation is what makes PR 2.0. For Cross, it's not about targeting your audience. He gave an example of advertising—advertisers want to target their audience, launch their campaign, and barrage the consumer. "Instead of targeting your audience, you're targeting yourself. PR 2.0 teaches you that you don't target audiences—you draw an irresistible bull's-eye on yourself, on your brand. Today's online audiences will target your brand. If you think about it, that's why the online search is so big. Audiences are changing. PR pros are used to targeting journalists to reach their audiences. Now you can go directly to the public, or better yet, they can come to you. You just have to make yourself as attractive as possible so that they find you." I asked Cross what's the best way to be found and he said to simply identify the right Web communities and have the members of the community agree to have a relationship with you.

Your Brand and PR 2.0

Cross makes a strong point about who controls the brand. Is it the executives who plan the marketing and advertising program? No, it's today's consumer who controls the brand. Because the Web is a conglomeration of what everybody else is saying about your brand, it's your consumer who dictates your brand's every move. That's why companies are engaging their consumers in their marketing. For example, during the Super Bowl, Frito Lay had ads created by their consumers. "Office Max allowed a consumer to upload his or her face and to become a dancing elf and then send it out to their friends. M&Ms allows you to make your own M&M candies. You can even make an M&M look like you," recalled Cross. These are all opportunities for the consumer to be closer to the brand, to be intimately involved, and to control what they want to see from their brands.

Cross believes, "One of the hottest PR 2.0 topics is trying to legitimize social media. There's an entire industry trying to figure out what the hell is going on. It's not like they know it so well that they are having a major debate about any one particular thing. There's a fundamental change in the way media is defined and delivered." Cross remembers a speech given by his CEO at Fleishman-Hillard. His CEO read a quote to the audience from a publisher of a New York newspaper. The publisher being quoted was complaining about a disruptive new technology and its impact on his newspaper. The publisher goes on to say that newspapers might as well accept their fate. They're going out of existence. He continued to say that there's been a lot of talk of layoffs at the newspaper. After hearing the quote from the newspaper publisher, most of the audience thought that the publisher of this New York newspaper was complaining about the introduction of the Web. The CEO then lets his audience know that the quote was from 1852, and to everyone's surprise, the new technology was the telegraph—same problems, different century.

According to Cross, the Internet poses the same problem, as did the telegraph in 1852. However, social media and the ability to share information is a great asset to society. Cross gave an example of the military dictators of Myanmar. Nothing can stop the world from witnessing oppression—not even by cutting off television transmission. Citizens used cell phones on the Web to beam out images of bloody Buddhist monks as soldiers were beating protestors. Certainly not a fun topic to point out but an excellent example of how a military dictatorship shut off TV; however, also an example of how they could not shut off the flow of information being shared by countries. People flipped on their cell phones and captured the atrocities and sent the images around to the world. As another example, Londoners were panicked by the terrorist subway bombings of 2005, and there was no way for traditional media to cover the story. People who'd been in the subways started beaming text messages and video clips to their families and friends, the BBC found out, and set up a cell phone news channel. Soon the whole country knew what was happening, and panic was replaced by information.

PR Has Changed for the Better

Today, with this ability to gather, share, and organize content, you no longer have the same traditional PR process. PR people used to write news releases and then send them to the newspaper. However, citizen journalists are now sounding off on their blogs and sending content to Twitter. As much as PR people are the middlemen, it appears that with PR 2.0 and social media, there's less of a role as middleman. Embracing this type of change when you've been performing in a role for so long is difficult. According to Cross, there are three trends feeding into this transitional role: exhibitionism, an erosion in formality and civility when communicating, and voyeurism. Cross suggests looking at other methods and other channels to understand the changes we're experiencing.

One of biggest trends you see in television is reality programming. "There is this increasing trend for informality. There are a lot of people who don't want the formality. We're an extremely informal society right now," Cross said. There is also the desire to lay it all on the line. Online consumers want their 15 minutes of fame, but with an audience of only 15 people and giving full details on the Internet, in their blogs, and in social networks. "It's crazy. I mean you can talk about anything on a personal blog. The rules have changed even when it comes to job interviews. Laws exist that say you can't ask about the candidate's age, religion, and the like; however, a prospective employer can log on to Facebook or other social networking sites and find extremely personal information about a job candidate and more," he said. The third trend is voyeurism—not the kind of voyeurism that makes people snicker, but the fascination with watching the lives of others. People love looking at other people. Cross believes that these three trends feed into the desire to move toward more social media online. "The truth of it is that we've gone beyond just liking social media. In fact, it's been given to us, we've seen it, we've consumed it, and now we definitely expect it."

Cross gives a good example of basic building blocks with three distinct layers. He describes the top layer as "your assets." So, for example, consumer generated media is your asset, whether it's a post, a blog, or a photo you uploaded or a video or link to a document. He refers to anything that you take and share with people, what you put out there, as an object. As for the next layer, the middle layer, Cross describes it as the area where people can vote, comment, subscribe, share rate, and collaborate. The bottom layer is for the tools, whether that's Wizard, wiki, blog, tag, IM, a poll, and so on. The third layer is the one that is always going to change. This is representative of the future. There will always be new tools. Even though the tools will continually change, PR professionals will always start the conversation, facilitate that conversation and then, of course, monitor the conversation. It's that feedback or marketing conversation that's meant to go back into the brand development life cycle.

Cross said, "I think that there's going to be a whole lot more direct conversations with the consumer and I think the consumer is going to gain more and more control, but not control in a bad way—control in a way that they're going to ask for exactly what they want." This will definitely help the brand. That doesn't mean that PR and advertising are going to go away because suddenly companies can bypass the communications professionals and just go direct to the consumer. He believes that when companies decide to go direct-to-consumer, they often have trouble figuring out which niches are right for them. The many different Web communities today make it more difficult. That's where PR is crucial. PR is going to basically come in and say, "These are the right target audiences for you in these communities, and we're going to now show you how to walk into that community and make yourself attractive enough that they are going to want to strike up a conversation with you." PR 2.0 and social media tools enable you to do this and do this successfully.

Don't Just Go with It—Go for It!

As a result of PR 2.0, the changes are immense, somewhat overwhelming, but definitely exciting for communications professionals. PR 2.0 and social media applications are here to stay. The PR profession is still evolving with the many new social media tools available and the means to engage more people in conversations. If people in their Web communities are craving information a certain way, it's not for professionals to ignore or deny these requests. Remember the target is the brand and brands need to be found. There's a big bull's-eye on your brand, and your customers have plenty to say and share with you. So, as a communications professional you need to inform your brands that it's time to evolve, be flexible, and deliver information in a way that can be gathered, organized, and shared in Web communities.

PR 2.0 is not a fad and as it continues to develop, so will the brands that adhere to these new rules of communication. You need to look at PR 2.0 with a fresh set of eyes. You'll never abandon what you've learned as a communications professional, but you will need to apply the rules of 2.0 to every part of the communication process. That means looking at research and monitoring with PR 2.0 techniques and selecting partners who have the technology that enables you to have better visibility in the blogosphere. You also need to reevaluate your PR templates. Perhaps use a blended approach and have the traditional pyramid style news release along with a PR 2.0 social media template in your interactive newsroom. You will also be reconsidering how you approach blogs and social networking. These social media applications will take on a whole new meaning for your brand. And, there are tools like RSS that provide you with the reach and targeting that communications professionals only dreamed about years ago. Video and podcasts will soon become a part of your brand's strategy and planning. Video tells an incredibly compelling and visual story, and podcasts relay information for audiences on the go. Today's consumers are looking for quick and easy ways to obtain information on the run. Of course, all these new PR 2.0 approaches will be strategic and used to accomplish your objectives, not just because they are cool multimedia applications.

Last, but most importantly, you will reexamine your role as a professional. For those of you just starting out or for the many who have watched the industry evolve, you have found your path to the greatest communication in the 21st Century. Blazing this path is PR 2.0 and all the incredible social media resources that go along with it. By nature, you might feel apprehensive about releasing communication in a different fashion. But if you've listened and absorbed the messages in this book, then you will walk away with a newfound strength. You will realize that with the risk of PR 2.0 and not as much control over communication is the tremendous opportunity to interact and build relationships with journalists, bloggers, and customers. Your brand will engage in dialogue that has never been experienced before.

PR 2.0 is an approach that translates into excellent communication. But, a word to the wise: Don't get hung up on the number sequence. In ten years, the rest of the world might be calling it PR 5.0; who knows. It's definitely not about a number. It's about the best communication you and your brands can achieve. Technology will enable the tools to continually change to better suit the online consumer's preferences. You'll find better conversations in communities that at one time never would have invited you to enter, to listen, and to engage in intimate communication. PR 2.0 is today and it's the future.

Endnotes

1. For more information on Brian Solis, go to www.briansolis.com.

2. Ynema Mangum stated that "Marketing is conversation" in her blog excerpt presented in Chapter 12, "The Pro's Use of PR 2.0."