Admittedly, I’m a Social Media guy, not a Public Relations guy. I have about 10 months worth of experience at a PR agency working exclusively on Social Media engagements. During that time however, I learned an awful lot, and since then I’ve found myself having conversations with the “new breed” of upcoming PR pros.
There is a distinct difference between the old school and the new school.
Old School
Try to remember the time before Twitter. It may be difficult but close your eyes and think back; think back before blogs were mainstream.
Public Relations was all about print, radio and television. These traditional channels had rules that developed over nearly a century, or at least the last 50-60 years, in the case of television. Relationships with journalists and news organizations were paramount to the PR firm. Journalists and Reporters were the pathway to influencing public perception; newspapers and the nightly news were the primary source of news for a majority of Americans. So unless you were a journalist, reporter or a published editorialist, you didn’t have much of a say in the public sphere.
PR pros made a living through their relationships and ability to get past the gatekeepers.
New “Skool”
The rise of social technologies has removed the Gatekeeper. All of a sudden it wasn’t just big name journalists with influence. Instead, an army of bloggers, amateur filmmakers and a growing fleet of smartphone users equipped with opinions and access to the Internet quickly displaced the firm grip that traditional media has had over the public opinion. Now everyone has a megaphone.
This new participatory web changed public relations…most firms did not get the memo. The new breed of public relations is coming out of school already well-versed in social media. They see it as a necessary tool to effectively work in PR. Most are as comfortable with PitchEngine as they are with a traditional press release. Many have no recollection of a time prior to HARO. Blogger outreach is widely accepted as equally important as journalist outreach. The new breed of PR pro is different from their predecessors.
Social media belongs to…
Every department is fighting over social media. PR wants to believe that social media “belongs” in a PR agency. Marketing firms feel that they are entitled. The truth? No single department “owns” social media in the same way that no single department “owns” the telephone. social permeates every aspect of a company in some way.
Of the PR firms that have embraced the social web, only a small number have created an entire department to address it. Of those that have created an entire department, only a fraction truly understand the impact that social media currently has, and will continue to have in the future. The evidence of this is in how they talk about it, and how they propose to deal with social media.
“We’ll tweet for you.”
“We’ll run your Facebook page for you.”
This is the value-proposition of the traditional PR firm looking to offer social media.
Control vs Influence | Push vs Pull
Public relations has always dealt with a very special idea: control. Media training, canned quotes and other tactics are used to control the message. Prior to Social Media there was an official story and that was THE story.
Control was tangible. Information was pushed. People were simply consumers of content.
People are content creators now. Control is no longer an option.
The only remaining option is influence. Influence is a product of trust. Trust is a product of authenticity and transparency. This is precisely what most PR firms don’t grasp and why they continue to push the idea of outsourcing to them.
If you really want to influence your audience, stop paying someone else to listen to them. Instead, hire a coach to tell you and show you where to listen.
Stop paying someone else to respond to them. Instead hire a coach to help you fight off that ingrained business instinct to avoid truly connecting. It may be difficult at first to go that extra mile but once you understand the implications, both positive and negative, of directly connecting with your audience, it will become as natural as answering an email.
PR has already changed. Most firms are fighting that. It will be really interesting to watch the next 5 years.