Public Relations Strategery

This article originally appeared on PRDaily and also on Entrepreneur.com.

For a long time, there was a perception that social media marketing was free, or at least very inexpensive. Starting a Facebook or Twitter account was free, and hiring a part-time intern to manage them didn’t cost much.

In reality, social media marketing has never been free. Sure, there aren’t usually any hard costs required to set up social media accounts, but someone is still had to create the content, engage in the conversation, monitor and manage those conversations, etc. As we’ve seen time and time again, turning over your brand’s reputation to an intern isn’t always the wisest choice. Most brands now know the real costs of social media marketing are not as great as the opportunity costs of bad social media strategy.

Fast-forward a few years, and we’re seeing more and more organizations hire entire teams to create content for Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, and whatever hot new social media startup launched last week. Content marketing, the creation and distribution of content to attract leads and generate sales, has become a $118.4 billion industry. According to data from DOMO and Column Five Media, every minute of every day sees over 2 million Google searches, 571 new websites, and 48 hours of new YouTube video. It’s become overwhelming.

The social media arms race benefits no one

Unfortunately, it’s only going to get more difficult as brands compete in a social media arms race. Rather than creating a slow and steady stream of high-quality content, most brands believe they’re better off creating a ton of low-quality content in the hope that one or two pieces will have real results. Yet a recent study by InboundWriter shows only 10 to 20 percent of a company’s website content drives 90 percent of its online traffic.

Meanwhile, social networks realize that brands will pay big money for access to the millions of users in their online communities, and they’re going to charge more and more for that privilege. According to a recent Advertising Age article, Facebook reports: “Content that is eligible to be shown in news feed is increasing at a faster rate than people’s ability to consume it.”

This means the organic reach of any one particular piece of content is going to decline even more from the 16 percent rate it’s at now. Some may see it drop all the way to 2 percent.

Increasingly, to compete effectively in social media, brands realize that to play, they must pay.

To keep up with social networks’ efforts to monetize their massive online audiences, companies are allocating more resources to keep up. Simply creating valuable content and then authentically engaging with your audiences often is no longer enough, especially when you have to spend more to reach those audiences. Brands know they now must create distribution strategies for that content, sometimes at a substantial cost.

Here are seven ways brands will spend more money on social media and content marketing in 2014:

1. Creating content. If brands wish to rise above the glut of content that’s being created, they’re going to have to improve the quality of content they create. That viral video that looks like it was shot on a family member’s smartphone was actually just a bit created by the “traditional” media.
2. Promoting content. Expect social platforms to reward brands that spend a lot of money in ads on those platforms. It’s a vicious cycle. Paid ads and sponsored content will help drive the “organic” reach of your other content. In addition, brands with more Facebook likes are going to see a lower cost for paid distribution because paid social ads will show greater social context. If more “likes” and followers = cheaper ads, guess who’s going to start to investing in more contests, giveaways, and other tactics to reach more eyeballs and then subsequently buy more ads and sponsored content.
3. Increasing reach. As brands acquire more and more fans, followers, and “likes,” and as these social networks get larger and larger, the cost to reach them will continue to increase. When a brand makes an investment in creating high-quality content, you can bet they’ll ensure it reaches the largest number of people.
4. Syndicating content. Likewise, expect more dollars to go companies such as Taboola andOutbrain that specialize in placing content where it’s most likely to be discovered. In a sea of content, these companies help more people find yours.
5. Monitoring, filtering, and analyzing conversations. Social media monitoring platforms have been around for years, but their hefty price tags often relegated them to a wish list for many organizations. However, as more people and brands create even more content, it’s going to become more difficult to identify and act on what’s relevant to you. As a result, pricey monitoring and analytics tools will be migrating from the wish list to the approved budget.
6. Paid sponsorships. Those “influencers” you’re always trying to reach? They’re realizing their influence is in demand and that it’s not cheap. According to a recent IZEA survey, 61 percent of marketers have paid someone to mention their product, and that number is only going to rise in 2014. It’s not just celebrities and athletes, either. Everyday people are also asking for more money and more product, because they can and because brands will meet those demands.
7. More full-time employees. As more content is created and more money is spent promoting and distributing that content, more people will be needed to create, moderate, measure, and analyze it. Demand for data scientists, SEO specialists, media buyers, and creatives will increase as brands try to optimize the money they’re investing.

If you thought the days of trying to persuade your bosses to invest in social media were over, get ready to go back, hat in hand, and ask for even more money. With bigger budgets come bigger expectations and more pressure. Are your social media, content generation, and content distribution strategies ready?

I've grown increasingly frustrated when I hear my PR colleagues tell me they're going to "pitch the media." Maybe it's because my non-PR friends look at the term so pejoratively. Maybe it's because it implies a certain level of salesmanship. Maybe it's because it erodes my own idealistic view of the media as the fourth estate and that I hate seeing so much of it be controlled by pitchmen who take advantage of lazy journalists. Maybe it's all of the above. For me, it's almost as bad as our industry's most hated word – "spin." Then I read Amber Mac's excellent piece on Fast Company about how social media can help save the PR industry from bad pitches as well as Gini Dietrich's follow-up post on Spin Sucks, and I got all riled up again how PR people rely on blind pitching instead of focusing on the "relations" part of public relations.

When someone tells me that they're pitching something to the media, the default image in my head has sadly become this –

From spamming thousands of reporters and bloggers at a time in the hopes of getting 1% of them to cover your "news," to copying and pasting entire pitches and only changing the name, to using outdated information, PR people have become used car salesmen, interested more in making the sale than on building an honest relationship. At some point, it became acceptable to send an awful pitch out to 10,000 people and hope that 1% would cover it instead of crafting customized pitches that go to 200 people with the expectation that 50% would cover it. Wonderful. Glad to see that we're modeling our pitching approach after Nigerian email scams. Aren't we better than this? PR people have to stop trying to take the easy way out. Stop being lazy and start taking pride in each and every pitch you make. It is YOUR name after all that will be tied to that pitch. It's YOUR agency's name that may end up on a blog somewhere as an example of a bad pitch.  Act like every pitch you make is a reflection of you and your agency…because it is.

One of the things I've told my teams over the years is that the best media pitch is usually pretty simple. It's usually something along the lines of "hey man – just read your latest post and wanted to clue in on a client of mine who's got a cool new product that I think you'd like. Check it out and let me know what you think." While the "pitch" is surprisingly simple, the reason it works is because of all the work that's required to get to that point. For it to work, it assumes that you've established a relationship with this person, that they trust you, that you only share things like this that they are truly be interested in, that you've interacted with them before when you weren't pitching him on something, and that the link they click will give them everything they need to know – photos, videos, quotes, contact information, research, etc. In other words, there's no need to worry about crafting a perfect pitch if you've already laid the groundwork – at that point, it's just two people talking with one another.

Let's all work together to change the connotation of the word pitch and agree that we should aspire to be better than used car salesmen and spammers.  Let's make pitching less about trying to sell the media on something and focusing on providing them with what they need – good stories to tell that will be interesting to their readers. Let's pledge to:

• Get to know the people covering our clients before we start pitching them
• Read at least three different stories/articles/posts they've written before reaching out to them
• Know if my contact prefers to be contacted via Twitter, email, Facebook, phone, or carrier pigeon
• Avoid making our first contact with the blogger/reporter our pitch email – Retweet them, comment on a blog post, answer a question they have
• Help the media do their job even if there's no direct benefit for me
• Pitch fewer people but aim for a higher success rate
• Stop blindly "trying to create more buzz" and instead be more of a PR consultant to my client
• Write my pitches in actual English like I'm talking to a person instead of my client's key messages
• Refrain from spamming dozens of reporters with the same email
• Never ever send an email with any form of the words – "just checking to see if you got my email" (because they did, and then they deleted it)
• Validate everything that I find out about a reporter/blogger from a PR database
• Clearly identify the "what's in it for me?" for everyone I contact
• Include my name, contact information, and links to more information
• Stop overselling our pitches – when everything is ground-breaking, innovative, and the first-of-its-kind, nothing is
• Coordinate our pitches with our clients so that they aren't surprised by questions from the media
• Realize that no one likes to feel like they're being pitched, but they do enjoy hearing a good story
• Read and proofread and read and proofread everything before I hit send

These are just off the top of my head – I'm sure there are plenty of others. If you're a PR pro, what other tips would you add here? If you're a reporter/blogger, what do you wish PR people would do better when pitching you? 

There’s big news in the PR industry as the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) recently announced that they are embarking on an international effort to modernize the definition of public relations. Chartered in 1947, PRSA is the world’s largest and foremost organization of public relations professionals and boasts a community of more than 21,000 members across the U.S. Their current definition of PR – “public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other” was last updated in 1982, before Twitter, before Facebook, hell, even before you had a computer at your desk. Technology has changed a lot over the last 30 years. So to have the ways in which organizations and their publics relate to one another. It’s definitely time for a change.

Adam Lavelle, a member of the board of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association and chief strategic officer at the iCrossing unit of Hearst, agrees. In the New York Times article linked above, he says:

“Before the rise of social media, public relations was about trying to manage the message an entity was sharing with its different audiences.” Now, P.R. has to be more about facilitating the ongoing conversation in an always-on world.”

Unfortunately,  ever since the days of Edward Bernays, PR has had its roots in “managing the message.” PR grew out of propaganda, spin, and manipulation – no wonder we’ve had an image problem for the last 100 years! Too many PR practitioners have become so focused on the message that they have totally forgotten the relations part of public relations. As The Cluetrain Manifesto taught us way back in 1999 (also before social media), “public relations does not relate to the public, companies are deeply afraid of their markets.” From press releases that sound like this and media pitches like this, PR practitioners have gotten lazy, hiding behind words and messages instead of building an actual relationships.

PRSA (disclaimer: I’ve been a member of PRSA or PRSSA since 2000) should take this same advice while redefining the definition of PR. The words might end up being totally accurate and insightful, but if PR practitioners don’t also change their actions, the perception of the industry will never change. I hope that all PRSA members would realize the perception of public relations is about more than words – it’s about actions. And with that, here are ten actions that I’d like to become part of the new definition of public relations:

1. Instead of spamming my email pitches to massive distribution lists, I will put in more than ten seconds of effort and personalize it to the reporter/blogger/writer/anchor/editor I’m contacting
2. I will stop being a yes-man for my clients and actually provide the expert communications counsel I’m (hopefully) being paid to provide
3. I will learn how to speak with an actual human voice instead of the voice of mission statements, brochures, and marketing pitches
4. I will not forget the relations in public relations and will try to develop real relationships with the members of the media I work with instead of treating them like pawns that can be manipulated
5. I will stop snowing my clients and inflating my value through the use of ambiguous outputs like hits, impressions, and ad equivalency and instead focus on the outcomes that public relations has helped accomplish
6. I can no longer be the man behind the curtain, ghostwriting messages and press releases while I hide behind my brand or organization. I will take responsibility for my strategies and tactics.
7. Regardless of my age, I will recognize that keeping up with and understanding technology is now a job requirement
8. Likewise, I will stop assuming that social media IS public relations and vice versa. Social media is becoming a much larger aspect of PR and present practitioners with new tools to use, but they are not one in the same.
9. PR cannot exist in a vacuum – I realize that my PR efforts will be more effective if I collaborate and communicate regularly with marketing, advertising, strategy, operations and other groups throughout the organization.
10. And finally, I will recognize that good public relations isn’t about manipulating media coverage – it’s about helping an organization create and maintain stronger relationships with all of its stakeholders.

Redefining “public relations” is a crucial first step, but changing the perception of public relations will require more than than words – it will require a shift in the thinking and the actions of thousands of PR professionals. Let’s start modeling the behaviors we hope to instill in all PR practitioners and start taking PR from messages to actions.

From entire conferences to unconferences to new government appointees to full-scale social networks, there’s no doubt that “Government 2.0” has become the latest and greatest buzzword.  Agencies and departments from across the government are jumping on board, starting their own blogs, creating YouTube channels, and tweeting their days away.  It’s also been grabbing all the headlines – in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Wired,  and myriad others. But is all this talk about the next generation of government really all that new?  I found these headlines from the ’90s in doing a brief Google search this evening:

“Talking to Clinton, Via Computer”

The Bergen County Record, July 29, 1993

“White House Correspondence is Shifting to Electronic Mail”

The Dallas Morning News, April 18, 1993

“Government Expands its Claim on the Web”

Washington Post, March 18, 1997

“Servicing Citizens with the Internet”

Washington Post, April 21, 1997

“Understanding the IT Revolution”

Washington Technology, May 7, 1997

In reading through these and other articles from the deep archives of the media, I was immediately reminded that the challenges the government is facing in implementing social media are the same challenges they’ve faced before in implementing email, in using the Internet, and I would guess even in integrating the use of the telephone.  While the tools and the technology can and always will change, the fundamental challenges of changing the culture of the government remain eerily similar.

It’s easy to get so caught up in the world of President Obama’s Government 2.0 that we forget the mistakes (and successes) of the past.  It would do all of us #gov20 practitioners some good to look back every once in a while at the experiences of our innovation predecessors and try to avoid the same pitfalls, take advantage of opportunities they may have missed, and set some realistic expectations for ourselves.

I say this not to discourage the people doing Government 2.0 nor scare away those who haven’t yet started down that road, but to make sure that everyone realizes that Government 2.0 isn’t a sprint, but a marathon.  It will take time, just as government adoption of email and the Internet took time.

Keep this mind the next time your boss shoots down a social media proposal of yours and the next time you make a major breakthrough with your organization.  We’ve all still got a long way to go.