Keeping It Real: PR's Real-Time Web Challenge

You or someone in your company has to engage with social media constantly. Daily blog posts, relevant comments in articles like this with key words like my name Dan Cornish, CEO of Cosential and my website www.cosential.com. These will then show up in search results.

I think that social media requires a new kind of a professional more closely aligned with the company. Traditional PR required relationships with media since they were gate keepers. Today this person either should be employed by the company directly or someone who can engage everyday. The tasks are far different than PR.

I find that almost all of my interactions regarding social media on behalf of my clients is PR. Whether is it is more direct such as tweeting a link to a press release or posting information on Facebook. If PR professionals remember this fact, it makes the approach a bit different.

Dan makes a great point-- SEO is becoming more and more relevant to PR given that search engine results are consistently shifting due to the proliferation of online content. Regardless, perhaps it's not about a "large enough" real-time audience as it is about "targeted enough." For example, we've backed off of trying to secure speaking placements at large conferences for one particular client because they feel it makes more sense from an ROI perspective to host small events directly with their target audience, which we can then leverage from a press perspective. Additionally, I'm of the belief that it's tricky to fulfill both quality and quantity requirements... it tends to mean constantly churning out material without deep insight-- we're seeing the results of this issue with online publications filing shorter stories, now more focused on breaking news than indepth feature stories. If you can't rise above the noise, work on building relationships directly with your target audience (not necessarily the media) and delivering quality content that's relevant to them-- it's how you get your company/brand/client to be remembered even after the "real time" feed has drifted down the page.

I agree with Dan. I think it's extremely important to make sure that social media outreach is done by a company insider rather than a PR firm. The PR firm would do well to be willing to train and monitor that insider in communicating with the public, instead of trying to handle it on their side. Plus, you might the get the added benefit of spawning a company celebrity, a la Scoble or @ComcastCares.

Building a Twitter following or increasing the amount of your company's Facebook fans over time will not happen by sending out links to press releases or articles written about your company. In fact, just this morning I sent out a tweet with a link to a New York Times article that mentioned i.TV. Cricket chirps.

We get a lot more retweets and comments on our Facebook fan page when we go off topic, answer questions (even ugly customer support questions), and seek to entertain and engage instead of shower them with company news all the time.

When I posted a link to the WSJ post about Steve Jobs' liver transplant, that got people retweeting. It got our followers to engage. It doesn't matter that it wasn't our company's news, it just matters that they engaged with our brand.

The key to successful social media on behalf of your clients is really not much different than successful "traditional" media relations: you need to know your client and be able to speak on behalf of them because you are (if an agency)an extension of their internal staff. If you're truly immersed in their culture and understand their products, services, values, etc., there is no reason a PR person cannot be a successful online voice for a client.

When I was teaching PR, I used to remind my classes that PR does not stand for "press releases." It's how you relate to your public. In other words, it is everything you say and everything you do. And it's everything that other people say about you, too. Everybody thinks that PR is simply a skill for getting stories to the media... no matter what media. But the really smart companies also include employee relations, customer care, vendor relations, business policies, community involvement (however you define "community"), product quality, and myriad other facets both inside and outside the company. The question is not whether the media is digital or print or static or streaming. The question is whether the company has a holistic view of itself and its relationship with the business universe.

I really don't think there is one "black and white" answer on how to manage social media, as a PR person. It really depends upon what kind of company is the client or that the PR person is working at (ie. B2C, B2B, big brand, start-up) and, what the objectives are of that cilent or company. I've seen a mix of models in the social media / PR space, some which work and don't. Though, all which focused on business objectives, were off to a good start. Second, those who were the most creative, were also well positioned for success. I know we're all trying to figure social media out. But, think about it, this is not like riding an old fashioned bike. You don't just hop on and go, and go. Social media is more experiential, interactive, and conversational both for the client / company and audience(s).

Even with the proliferation of all of the real-time “tools” out there, for our clients, it is still about quality and not quantity. I can see how a large follower list on Twitter is important to some people/companies (e.g. social media gurus, maybe companies selling consumer products, etc.), but we work with tech startups in the storage, server, and networking markets, so not everybody would care about what they have to say and not everybody would understand what they say. Also, yes, it would be ideal to have one of the company’s employees do the social media outreach, but, unless they have somebody well-versed or very interested in social media, go and tell a startup with one or two marketing people to start tweeting. They really don’t have the resources to do so, and they may tell us to do it (and they have). So, we get involved.
Are we biased? I guess so.
Are we tempted to send out press release links? Yes, we are.
Do we think we are annoying our followers? Believe it or not, we don’t think so.
Here’s what we are trying to do in order to spread the word about our client without losing credibility in the eyes of our Twitter, Friendfeed, or Facebook communities:
1. We “follow”and are being followed by people in our industry (partners, potential and existing customers, analysts, editors, and I am sure competitors as well).
2. If we feel the urge to send out press release links, we don’t do it often, and, when we do, we choose the ones that are indeed major news (major product launches/upgrades, a big customer announcement, etc.). More than once, analysts or editors contacted us as the result of our posting, asking for an interview or more info about the company.
3. We read other people’s news (articles or press releases) if the topics/companies interest us. We reply, we reweet or we "like it." I am sure they do the same or simply ignore that specific post if they don’t care.
4. We tweet or retweet news related to our industry (even if it’s not specifically about our customers), because we think that it could be something our "friends" may like to read, and, in some cases, it validates our customers' technology.
5. We are here to help our customers, but we are also here to help the community, share what we know and learn what we don’t know.
I could probably add more, but I have an early start for Structure 09. Tom, I saw you at the reception last night, but didn’t have a chance to say "Hi," so I hope to see you today.

If you're a large company, once you commit to social media as a part of your marketing program you will need 24/7 monitoring and communication every day of the week -- not like the old days when everybody went home early on Friday and didn't come back until Monday to deal with the crisis du jour. In this new world of communications nothing can wait more than a few hours, or even minutes. I don't know if a lot of companies -- or their PR firms -- have realized just how labor intensive social media can be. They certainly haven't expanded their budgets all that much to accommodate it.

Why must it be one or the other--social or traditional PR? Clients want it all, and that's OK. Thing is, everything comes down to credibility and traditional media still has plenty of it, despite what disruption lies ahead. Who wouldn't prefer a WSJ story front page above-the-fold to a flash-in-the-pan pop on Twitter? When companies start publishing Facebook and Twitter results to their News pages I'll consider advising clients to stop investing in building relationships with old school media.