Public Relations Strategery

This article originally appeared in the April edition of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) magazine, Communication World. 

For years, marketing, advertising, and public relations folks fought over budgets, scopes of work, ownership, and talent. It was an inefficient, yet accepted dance at organizations of all shapes and sizes. There was paid media, and there was earned media — and for the most part, everyone understood their role.

If only things were still this easy. Today we have Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Managers, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) analysts, Digital Analysts, Community Managers, Content Marketing Specialists, and way too many social media ninjas, gurus, and rockstars. There’s paid media, earned media, owned media, shared media, and something called omni-channel media. The traditional buckets of marketing, advertising, and public relations seem so quaint now.

Customers don’t care about your org chart, your P&L, or which of their agencies are managing which channel. They just expect you to move seamlessly and consistently from channel to channel and device to device, whether that’s using paid, earned, or owned methods. And increasingly, the clients don’t care about these artificial lines of demarcation either. According to a recent Forbes survey, 68% of CMOs and marketing executives put integrated marketing communications ahead of “effective advertising” (65%), when they were asked what the most important thing is that they want from an agency.

Some of the biggest marketing and PR agencies are already adjusting their business models and organizational structures to better optimize their efforts in this new environment:

• Edelman has recently created a position – Global Director of Paid Media – responsible for defining their approach to paid media and for integrating it into their accounts.
• Earlier this year, FleishmanHillard restructured to be more channel-agnostic, integrating paid, owned, and earned media. In 2011, they placed $250 million worth of ads in paid media. In 2012, that number increased to more than $1.2 billion.
• Weber Shandwick created MediaCo, a new unit focused on content marketing, native advertising, and digital media buying.
• Cramer-Krasselt, my employer, while traditionally seen as an ad agency, actually uses an integrated structure that aligns PR, social media, advertising, paid media, CRM, search, and paid media under one P&L that allows us to create seamlessly integrated campaigns across all forms of media.

PR professionals know, of course, that their job is to build meaningful relationships with their stakeholders. However, doing so today means reaching them through paid, earned, owned, and shared media — understanding how all of these channels work, the content each requires, and how to piece it all together into an integrated plan. Clearly, PR is no longer about just getting “ink” in print or pixels. It’s about developing multi-channel relationships with a variety of stakeholders. It means learning more about paid media and how to incorporate those costs into budgets. It means integrating social ads, sponsored content, and syndicated content into strategies from the very beginning. It means the PR pros with experience in paid, owned AND earned media are going to become much more valuable.

If the traditional practitioner wants to remain relevant in this multi-channel environment, he or she is going to have to stop looking at only media hits and impressions, and  start thinking through the entire customer journey across all channels. For example –

• That reporter at the New York Times just called and said he’s doing a story on your brand! Will he blog about it too? Will he share it with his 100K Twitter followers and Facebook fans? Is your brand willing to retweet his story? How can you use your owned channels to drive more traffic to that story?
• The blog content you’re publishing is relevant, valuable, and engaging yet no one is reading it. What’s the right syndication partner to increase your audience size? Should you use paid search links to drive additional traffic? How will the increased traffic impact your bounce rate?
• What’s the hashtag for that event you’re planning? Should you even have one? How will you create shareable moments during the event? Who’s serving as the digital emcee?
• Your brand is doing a large paid media buy with one of your target publications. How does this impact your pitch to the editorial staff? How segregated are their advertising and editorial teams?

Building and maintaining stakeholder relationships today is very different than even a few years ago.  Thankfully, the tools used to manage them have evolved also. The reach and influence of some organizations’ owned channels rival that of some traditional publications. Some publications offer sponsored content hubs that mirror the look and feel of their editorial content. The social media newsfeed has become a mishmash of sponsored and organic content and they’re often indistinguishable from each other.

Image courtesy of Flickr user Rasta Taxi

Knowing when and how to pull these paid, earned, owned, and shared levers could make the PR pro a multi-channel quarterback because we best understand our stakeholders’ information needs, media consumption habits, and user journeys. As the lines between paid and earned media disappear, the PR pro has to be more proactive and get more involved across the entire marketing mix. Whether that’s being part of the creative team brainstorming the new commercial or working with paid media to create more effective media partnerships, one thing’s clear. The PR pro is going to have to figure out how to get more involved in other channels or risk being left out of the process entirely.

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?

Scott Smith, Nick Papagiannis and I had the opportunity to kick off Social Media Week Chicago with a presentation titled “Content Marketing That Wins: Making Brands, Readers, AND Google Happy” to a packed house at Morningstar in Chicago. If you missed it, we’ve created a Storify for the event hashtag and embedded the livestream and presentation below. Thank you to everyone who made it out and/or participated virtually – I’m really looking forward to continuing this conversation because content marketing has a lot of potential…if we don’t screw it up first.

Seemingly everywhere you look, there’s content marketing tips, tricks, and hacks. During Social Media Week Chicago alone, there are at least 16 sessions on the topic. But remember when content marketing consisted of publishing a blog post a week? Now, with consumers constantly bombarded with news and content via an ever-expanding array of media and social platforms, brands have been pressed into a “content arms race” that has them posting to blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Vine, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. every single day. They’re even using automated content creation and curation platforms to feed the beast and stay at the top of search rankings. But how much of this activity actually serves a brand’s business goals? Or truly engages consumers?

Just like the hammer in search of a nail, marketers are spending more and more of their time and energy reducing every conversation, article, and photo to a piece of data, all in an effort to maximize their ROI and deliver the most eyeballs at the lowest price. Instead of a world where brands are creating content that solves problems, adds value, or creates deeper relationships with customers, we are perilously close to a world where more simply equals better.

Here’s the thing though – we don’t have to do things this way. We have the data and the tools to scale actual conversations and relationships. We have the tools to talk with people directly now. We have the ability to precisely target only those customers who will care about the content. Content marketing gives us the opportunity to rethink marketing – let’s stop trying to game the system and optimize every piece of content and instead think about how to best optimize our relationships with our customers.

The big takeaway from our presentation is that content should be beneficial to your customer, reflective of your brand, and optimized for Google, in that order.

If you don’t want to watch the whole recording, you can check out the slides here.