Yesterday was a day. A very busy day. Long and productive training session with an exciting new client, followed by a very interesting and productive chat with the proprietor of a prominent restaurant PR firm here in Manhattan. A short conversation over drinks turned into a longer conversation about social media and PR. Who owns it?
For me, the question might be settled for now. PR owns social media. Here is why:
- They have the clients
- They have the expertise
- Adding social media is easier than adding PR
- They are better at social media than they think
Let’s take a closer look at each of these in a bit more depth.
PR Has the Client Relationships
I cannot and do not want to compete with public relations professionals and firms on their clients. For one, I think its unsavory and that is not why I am in the business. Secondly, I am not interested in traditional PR and even though that may be my preference as a social strategist, it may not be the preference of other social media professionals. I do believe that social media is the most important aspect of marketing right now and believe that it requires enough thought and fortune telling that its more than adequate to keep a single individual busy.
But most important, PR firm has the relationships already in place. Surely many people are never happy with their PR, and some people don’t need it but still think they do. Whatever the case, PR firms has long established clients that trust them to do their work, to return phone calls, to get the job done. This is extremely important.
PR Has the Expertise
Let me be clear, they do NOT have the expertise in social media. They have the expertise, or should, in everything else though. And as I said in point #3, it is much easier to add social media into a package of services than it is to add in everything else (branding, PR, marketing, events). I think it is clear that if a firm has the ability to properly run a traditional PR campaign, than they have the capability to add social into that mix. This is just not the case with independent social media marketers. And even if lone wolves (and wolfettes, cause frankly some of the smartest and most able social media people I know are female) come from the traditional PR place, if they are on their own, they will be more successful to stick with just social media and adding it onto other peoples work.
PR Is Good at Social Media…
if they would only take the time to learn. And the best way to learn is how?
DIY. So instead of PR firms rushing to offer social media to their clients, I urge them to do 1 thing first. Socialize your OWN business. Do social media for yourself before you start offering it to your clients. Take the long term view and give up trying to offer something you don’t really grasp. The best thing a PR firm can do, if they want to capitalize on the enormous amount of business that will soon be coming their way in the form of the social media needs of their clients, is to learn the ropes. Listen to what social media is telling you, devise a strategy, launch the blog, get your people involved. Learn web design and development. Steal from the best sites. Learn to market your content, learn how to integrate Facebook and Twitter, learn to build up strong accounts (and please don’t chase followers) understand analytics, evolve along the way.
The amount of knowledge gleaned from even a few months of consistent social media-ing is worth boatloads of cold hard cash to PR firms. But you have to take the long term view. The PR companies I know and speak to don’t know what to do when their clients ask them to take on social media. They don’t know what obligations and responsibilities to assume, and they don’t know how or what to charge for that. Many still believe that social media is something that can simply be appended to a current marketing strategy or plan. It can’t. It needs to be held at a specific angle, wafted, twirled in one’s own hands before one knows how to wield it for others.
This is the only way. But PR firms should rejoice. Cause they won.
Image Courtesy of zhengxu on Flickr
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Not so fast. They won what, exactly? They have clients they won’t be able to keep much longer if they don’t figure out tomorrow what you learned yesterday? The sublime beauty of social media is that you can’t win with spin. Hey, that rhymes! The voice has to be a real voice from a real person who likes certain things and doesn’t like other things. A person who lives the live they lead online, for real. The fakers get found out quickly. If the voice is all PR, no one cares. People online are looking for more than information. They want inspiration which comes by way of individual transparency. I think all “clients” who are business are going to have to find a person who can represent that firm in online space. As a service provider, one could only do that work for a very limited number of clients. Because, as you so correctly point out, one must BE socially networked to advise properly on it. And you more than anyone knows that it a 24/7 endeavour. That being said, someone like you can train business on how this thing really works. They are still going to have to find a very very special person within their organizations to implement. PR firms haven’t the foggiest idea about it. I say, you win.
I think you’re both saying the same thing – PR has won for now.