Last month, we launched a new monthly B2B expert roundtable series titled: B2B Marketing – In 140 Words Or Less. The intent is to start conversations on the toughest topics facing today’s B2B marketing community. Our goal – shape it’s future. Our first question started at the top by asking what should be a CMO’s top priority. This month, we turned to our experts seeking advice on social media and public relations. I asked and they answered.
Social and PR. Friends or Enemies? From your perspective, how is social media impacting public relations in 2011?
Read what the roundtable participants have to say. Then get involved and share your expert opinion.
Ardath Albee – CEO & B2B Marketing Strategist, Marketing Interactions
Social media is shifting PR from paid placement to earned coverage through content curation. As companies become more adept at creating and publishing content that’s recognized as a valuable contribution to their industries, online publications, bloggers and industry forums are picking up that content to share with their audiences. This means that the exposure that used to require continual paid investment can now be earned through effort and the creation of great content shared by readers.
It also means that who picks up your content can be indicative of new markets and audiences – which is a great boon for both marketing and PR. Rather than continually paying to force content exposure where we think it should be, social media will help PR identify which ideas resonate with specific audiences and can help us earn more attention and interest.
Trey Pennington – Marketing Pro, Business Connector, and Storyteller
Seems like social and public relations would be best of friends. Social gives PR pros nearly unlimited raw resources for ideas, content, conversations, etc. Social also greatly expands the field of available publishers. Though the New York Times declares blogging to be dead, bloggers continue to grow in influence. Microblogging (okay, Twitter) simply explodes opportunities to connect with publishers and content promoters. PR pros should have a marvelous play day in social media—all year long!
Jody S. Canavan – President, Launch International, Inc.
Friends. Forward-thinking public relations strategists were among the first to enjoy the kind of results social media efforts can deliver. For me, this topic goes beyond PR to include marketing communications, where content traditionally has been created and pushed in volume to varied outlets.
Now, PR and marcom organizations must evolve content and distribution models to be more social friendly. That means the content is getting shorter; there are links to more sources, and their final forms are more varied. The simple press release or data sheet now becomes a data source with embedded text, video, podcasts, etc. that can be pushed to or pulled from any type of device. The inherent challenge with all of this brings us back to my world where shorter content translates to smarter, more succinct content that drives intended results.
Joe Chernov – VP Content Marketing, Eloqua
For PR people who have reimagined their role and the value they deliver, social and public relations are more than friends – they are conjoined twins. In fact, even traditional PR performs a vital function when it comes to social media success: it generates content to fuel the social marketing engine.
Nobody has explored this topic more provocatively (and astutely) than HubSpot CEO Brian Hallighan did in his must-read post “Is PR Dead?” The PR and social media friction arises when PR people try to short circuit the system and fashion themselves an overnight new media “guru.” It is this persona that damages the reputation of both specialties because, in confusing noise with awareness and following with engagement, they add value to no one.
Billy Mitchell – President and Creative Director, MLT Creative
If Social Media and PR aren’t BFF, they should be. Years ago, media was categorized as either “paid” or “earned” with PR in the latter group. SM belongs there now too and I can’t imagine a PR strategy without it.
Publicity and Social Media for business both need to keep reputation management in mind. And both can be involved in either positive or negative situations.
Newsworthy or noteworthy content can often be optimized and distributed through both PR and SM with minimal alteration.
There’s more to PR than just press releases and more to social media than outbound, one-way announcements. Both are evolving in exciting ways and are important aspects of inbound marketing.
Jeffrey L. Cohen – Social Media Marketing Manager at Howard, Merrell and Partners
Social media has driven the notion of influence to a new level, and PR pros are looking to understand the changes to their industry landscape. In many instances, bloggers have more reach and influence than the trade media, yet they operate on their own terms. They are not necessarily journalists, so they are not bound by any code of conduct.
However, relationship building is still an important part of the pitch process. A generic email with a press release attached does not work. Bloggers want to feel like they were targeted for their area of expertise and their audience, not blasted from a database list. Pitching influential bloggers is not a numbers game. While you may get some pickups from a generic email, those may be no better in quality than free PR sites.
Amy Howell – Howell Marketing Strategies, LLC
Social media has been a game changer for PR. And when a crisis happens you must have two things ready: a plan for when and an execution strategy in place simultaneously. The most important thing to remember is that people spread bad news fast and talking online is where it happens which means you need a PR team that is social savvy.
Monitoring to what is being said is one of the key steps in crisis management. You also have to work with the media who are also becoming social media savvy giving them a larger audience to report to. Twitter is a “trip wire” for news. If anything happens, I guarantee you will see it on Twitter first. It is important also to remember that monitoring is one activity and responding is a total different activity. During one crisis project I worked on, we had a team of people monitoring online conversations which helps anticipate media questions and measure interest.
Mark Schaefer – Author of {grow} at www.businessesGROW.com
I started my career in PR and as a young man was always surprised by the insecurity and paranoia of the PR profession. Where do we fit in? Are we really a profession at all? I believe social media legitimizes public relations like never before and puts stakeholder communication at the forefront of corporate marketing strategy.
Doug Kessler – Co-founder Velocity Partners, Author B2B Marketing Manifesto
Social Media and PR: separated at birth.
When social media exploded on to the scene, I assumed that the PR pros would be the first ones in. In reality, they were among the last. But now the best PRs are all over it like white on rice.
They’ve figured out that traditional PR skills are PERFECTLY suited to the new social world. Online PR (the overlap of social media and PR, with some SEO underpinnings) is where the action is right now.
Online influencers matter. Backlinks matter. Engaging with audiences matter. Any PR pro that isn’t becoming a social media expert is way out of the loop.
Christopher Koch – Associate Vice President, ITSMA
Social media’s more direct conversational model threatens PR’s traditional role as gatekeeper between company subject matter experts and customers and influencers. Combine this with a shrinking pool or journalists who have little time to read press releases and PR should consider its cheese moved. It’s not that social media will kill traditional PR, but PR needs to transition from being mostly doers to being mostly coaches. There are three things that PR needs to do more:
- Visibility. Beyond discovering and prepping spokespeople for the company, PR becomes responsible for making these subject matter experts highly visible nodes in social media that can be easily found by influencers and customers.
- Coaching. PR should help SMEs tell good stories in social media.
- Facilitation. Monitor social media to identify which conversations your SMEs should be engaging in.
Steven H. Parker – CEO Parker Communications
The idea that Social Media and PR are “enemies” is foolish and naïve. They are definitely friends–BFFs, actually. They are inseparable, and each makes the other better. In fact, don’t be surprised if they get married in 2011. Social Media and Mainstream Media are highly dependent on each other.
PR practice today must be competent in all forms of media, including especially social. But there’s no “replacement” or disruption going on. Social Media provides a way to “go around” mainstream media, but the idea that’s always more effective is ridiculous. Direct to consumer communications is more like direct marketing. Whether or not it’s the best strategy is highly situational. Often it’s not.
We’re adding new media forms all the time and subtracting none. The trend is never-ending expansion of options and micro-segmentation of audiences, communities and media.
Michael Brenner – Sr. Director, Global Integrated Marketing, SAP
Social and PR are BFFs (best friends forever).
Why? Social is a medium and PR is the machine around the message. A marriage made in heaven!
And like any good relationship, social is driving PR to become, well, better. The static press release will always serve to provide formal announcements of company news with regulatory liability coverage.
Social allows PR to meet customer needs for information about the company, the products and solutions we sell and the reasons our customers should care.
And PR can literally save our companies by driving crisis and disaster plans as social media provide an opportunity for bad news to travel faster than ever imagined. Also, PR people are trained in public, media and analyst relations. Our companies need them to help us refine our message and balance customer needs with corporate brand risk.
So what do you think? Has social media changed public relations for the better? Or has it simply made the B2B marketers job that much harder? Share your thoughts, join the discussion, and shape the future of b2b marketing.
