Public Relations Strategery

This article originally appeared in MediaPost.

In 1999, Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger said the Internet would turn markets into conversations, audiences were actual human beings, and companies would come down from their ivory towers to create meaningful relationships. Eight years later, I read their book, “The Cluetrain Manifesto.” Social media was going to change the world, and I wanted to be at the tip of the spear.

I joined a rapidly growing cadre of change agents using social media to radically transform everything from fixing potholes and broken stoplights to managing city budgets. 

Social media wasn’t the realm of any one person, department or organization. It was owned by everyone and no one. The only thing early adopters of social media had in common was the desire to create change.

These conditions applied:

• People were people, not fictionalized digital personas.
• No one talked about social “content.” These platforms were for conversations with constituents in real time.
• The organizational hierarchy flattened dramatically. Corporate silos crumbled as people throughout the org chart could easily collaborate with other departments.
• Customers talked to one another about brands all over the Internet, and marketers were invited to join.
• Social media accounts were run by actual people, with real names and personalities.

We enforced these changes because this was an opportunity to do things differently, to do things better.  We could say, “No, senior director, you don’t get to approve every tweet we write. Do you follow me around and pre-approve my conversations, too?”

But social media became too popular, too fast. It didn’t take long for marketers to start measuring the ROI of every tweet, post, and photo. Eventually, they were able to overwhelm the change agents with processes and best practices.

Instead of recognizing social as an opportunity to fundamentally change how companies interact with employees and customers, companies did what they always do: blanketed people with ads, driving as many impressions as possible, as cheaply as possible, until they derived every last piece of revenue. “Social media” became less social. It became another place for brands to push out advertising.

Other things happened:

• Conversations gave way to content.
• Social media got integrated into IT, with complex usage permissions.
• Thriving unofficial fan sites were shut down in favor of sanitized (read: boring) official sites.
• Humans with personalities and names were replaced by corporate personas and branded voices.
• Success was measured in clicks and likes rather than relationships and loyalty.

Rather than fundamentally changing how marketing works, marketing fundamentally changed what social media was.

Today I see a world where social media has been weaponized to manipulate the public, and where everyone — brands, influencers, politicians, friends, and family members — is no longer interested in conversations, but in capturing the most likes, clicks, and views as efficiently as possible.

Still, there are signs the pendulum is starting to swing. Unilever recently said it will no longer work with influencers who buy followers or use bots. Mozilla and Sonos pulled Facebook ads after the Cambridge Analytica scandal. And many direct-to-consumer brands like AllBirds, Warby Parker, and Glossier have grown without losing their soul: their personality and relationships with their consumers. Maybe they’ll be the change agents that reverse the trend.

A version of this article originally appeared on PRDaily.

Content marketing has become one big M.C. Escher painting – people create content about how to create content, which creates more content, forcing more content about creating content that rises above the content everyone else is creating.

“8 Super-Simple Tools You Can Use to Create Better Content”

“How To Create More Content In Less Time: A Science-Backed Guide”

“13 Tools to Automate Your Content Marketing”

“15 Habits of Highly Effective Content Marketers”

Here’s what drives me nuts about this. Your priorities are backward. Brands are making the same mistake that newspapers and other media publishers have made. As Quartz put it in a recent article, “humans are losing the battle against Kardashian-loving algorithms for the soul of new media.”

“Analytics and algorithms have emerged as key weapons in capitalism’s brawl with journalism across the web. And the struggle has real consequences for all of us.”

This has led to media publishers cutting journalistic staff in favor of algorithms that optimize their web content based on clicks. The AP is using artificial intelligence to automate some of their stories. Facebook famously let go of the human editors curating their Trending Topics section in favor of the newsfeed algorithm. You see, when you’re only concerned with optimizing numbers on a spreadsheet, the machines will always win out. And while that approach may drive more clicks, that’s about all it does. It doesn’t build brands. It doesn’t drive customer loyalty. It doesn’t create advocacy. And it reduces content to its lowest common denominator.

Don’t let your brand make the same mistake. Don’t build a content strategy just to drive more clicks. Build one that will build your brand, help your customers, and increase your employee’s morale. Unfortunately, most brands get overwhelmed by all the content marketing best practices, tools, and gurus and totally miss the resources right under their noses.

• You are already creating the content your customers want most – you’re just not using it. In the rush to create more memes and GIFs that will drive more clicks, brands are forgetting about the content their customers actually want. Your best content doesn’t come from Photoshop, but from your own offices. Your customers want to hear about your brand’s history, how your products are being used, the “why” behind business decisions, your causes, your culture, etc. If you’re a tool brand, why are you trying to out-GIF your competition? Why aren’t you talking about how your tools are used? About what they can create? This content already exists. It just needs packaged for public consumption.
• You already have hired most of your content creators – you’re just not activating them. From R&D to customer service to operations, your brand is loaded with expert sources. These sources can give your customer insights into your brand, into your products, and into the category they literally cannot get anywhere else. You tell me what’s more “valuable” – another Valentine’s Day meme or a story about how your latest product was developed? You’re already paying these content creators. Why not leverage their expertise?

• You already have most of your assets – you’re just not using them. If you’re a car brand, share photos of cars. If you’re a tool brand, share pictures of your tools in action. If you’re a restaurant, share photos of your food. It’s why Honda’s Instagram strategy is all about sharing photos of cars. And why Stoli’s is about bottleshots. And why GE has created an entire magazine that dives into all the aspects of the company’s business. This isn’t rocket science, but it does require access, creativity, and storytelling.

So take a look at your content strategy. Are you creating and sharing content for your brand? For your customers? Or are you doing it for the clicks and likes? While you’re spending all your time and money on external experts, influencers, and content creators, you might be surprised to find out that the insights, products, and content your customers actually want have been hiding inside the walls of your company this whole time. You just need the right people who can tap into these sources and tell the right stories. You know what? I did hear that there may be some journalists out there looking for a new career now…

For more than 12 years now, I’ve worked at companies that have been committed to integrated marketing. That has given me the chance to work with a really diverse group of really smart people who are experts in their field. I’ve had the opportunity to collaborate on really big integrated marketing campaigns and to tap into industry-leading expertise and experience. I’ve always said that the actual integration is the best and worst thing about working in an integrated agency. The people in these agencies tend to be both simultaneously very competitive and very collaborative.

Most of the time, this works out just fine. There are mutual feelings of trust and respect and everyone’s pretty collaborative. There’s a lot of open dialogue, a lot of drop-by meetings, and a lot of “take a look at this and let me know what you think’s.” Sure, there may be some disagreements over the creative idea or budget allocations, but at the end of the day, everyone trusts each other to do what they do best and get the job done.

But any time there’s a new trend, tactic, or channel, this collaboration turns to competition. This happened with websites, with social media, and it’s happening again with content marketing. We continue to make the same mistakes we did before. Open dialogue gives way to back-channel alliance building. Drop-by meetings become scheduled status meetings. “Take a look and let me know what you think” turns into “here’s what we decided.” All of these really smart, really competitive people suddenly have all the answers and instead of collaborating, they compete against each other for ownership over the new toy.

• Who owns websites? IT? PR? Marketing? Agencies?
• Who owns social media? IT? Agencies? PR? Marketing? Legal?
• Who owns content marketing? Agencies? Brands? Publishers? Marketing? PR? Social Media? Creative? A dedicated content marketing team?

There’s an argument to be made for and against everyone. Creative has a claim because for decades, they were the ones responsible for creating things. Digital has a claim because hey, everything is digital! PR has a claim because they have the best pulse on the audience. Social Media has a claim because much of the content is created for social media channels. And so on and so on.

Why don’t we stop competing with each other to build a content marketing walled garden, only to realize that yes, successful content marketing isn’t done in a vacuum? Content can literally encompass everything a brand creates, from commercials to blog posts to online videos. And so if the creation of that content is expected to live in a single department, you’re creating a lot of duplication, inefficiency, and competition that doesn’t need to exist. Can’t we just accept that everyone should have a content creation mindset and skip ahead to the collaboration and mutual trust and respect part?

Brands are creating a LOT of content across a wide variety of media. This is a space we can and should all play in. If you’re in marketing, you’re now a content marketer in some capacity. Congratulations. Now, let’s start working together to create content that people actually want to see.

If you follow me on LinkedIn or Facebook or Twitter, you already know that I recently decided to become the Director of PR at Brunner in my hometown of Pittsburgh, PA. I was with Cramer-Krasselt for more than two years and can’t thank everyone there enough for the opportunities I was given and for everything I learned there. But having three kids under the age of 4 will force you to change your perspective on a few things, and for me, one of those things was the distance between my family in Chicago and the rest of my family back in Pittsburgh.

I’ve already started diving into our client accounts and new business pitches so before I get too busy to blog here (more on that in my next post), I wanted to give my new colleagues a quick primer on the new guy who won’t shut up in their meetings. And because I keep hearing that no one will read anything unless it’s a listicle and the headline piques your curiosity, here are 19 things you need to know about me:

1. I have three daughters – a four-year-old (Annabelle) and two 7 month old twins (Kendall and Callan)
2. Edward Snowden and I share the same former employer
3. I was once profiled as a “Corporate Rebel”
4. The only movies I’ve cried at are Rudy and Hoosiers
5. I started Booz Allen’s unofficial Yammer community and helped take it to more than 7,000 members before it became an official corporate tool
6. I listen to way too much 90s rap and R&B
7. My daughter Annabelle had a Twitter account and was featured on FedNewsRadio before she was even born
8. I used to have a Top Secret security clearance
9. I went to college in West Virginia, but am a Pitt fan
10. For the last 11 years, I’ve lived in DC and Chicago, but I’ve still made it to at least one Pirates, Penguins, and Steelers game every single year
11. I can’t stand onions, mayonnaise, or sour cream
12. You can almost always find some sort of gummy candy in my desk
13. My wife and I met when I was a freshman in college and she was a prospective student
14. I use sports analogies about as often as Pedro Alvarez commits an error
15. I’m a big proponent of asking for forgiveness rather than permission
16. I think we’ve forgotten that good PR is ultimately about relationships with people not likes, clicks, or shares
17. If I’m not saying these things enough to my team, call me on it
18. I ask a lot of my team, but one thing I insist on is honesty and candor
19. Someday, I’m going to try out for American Ninja Warrior

If you’re reading this and you’re one of my new colleagues at Brunner, drop me a line, follow me on Twitter, connect with me on LinkedIn, or stop by my desk and let me know a little about you too!