PR Studies

#commschat: the role of learning

I'm leading a #commschat Twitter discussion later on the theme of learning. What can academics learn from practitioners? What can practitioners learn from academics? How do we all keep up, let alone try to keep ahead?

Let's start by addressing two stereotypes.

Professor Ivor Y Tower

Professor Tower is intellectually impressive (a towering force?) and proud to be known on the international sociology circuit. Though he has made his name as a public relations scholar, he's disdainful of the practice because it's too compromised by money and by imbalanced power relationships. So he prefers to create perfect models of how public relations should be practised.

Though easy to mock, there is an argument in favour of pure academic research. If nothing else, academics should be free to 'think the unthinkable'. In this regard, they are similar to monks. Though their thoughts are impractical, it's better for us all that some people are dedicated to an otherworldly pursuit of perfection.

Alan Bluff-Practitioner

Alan has traded off his deputy editorship of the local newspaper and still has a good list of local clients for whom he provides media relations and crisis management services. He's recently become a fan of social media, but is proud to say that he's never had a day's training let alone pursued a qualification in public relations. Why would he need to when it's all just common sense? He has similar views of the CIPR and other professional bodies. And as for PR degrees, don't get him started. He left school at 16, began as a runner on the local newspaper and worked his way up from there.

Alan is a characteristic figure. He's not unintellectual, but rather anti-intellectual: one of life's perpetual outsiders. The challenge he faces is to update his twentieth-century business model, which he's trying to do by becoming a social media advocate. He certainly represents the past, but does he have a future?

Hopefully our discussion will go beyond stereotypes and reveal that curiosity and a desire to learn are a requirement of all successful PR practitioners.

It's not what we do, it's whether it works

Book review: Measure What Matters: Online Tools for Understanding Customers, Social Media, Engagement and Key Relationships by Katie Delahaye Paine. Wiley.

Let's start with one of the author's anecdotes from her own practice experience.

"I spent millions of dollars each year writing, designing, and producing pieces of paper that were supposed to make my sales force more effective," she writes. "Whether it ever worked was never questioned, it was what we did."

She's right. The emphasis in public relations practice has traditionally been on what we do, not on whether it works.

This is true of public relations practice. What doesn't or shouldn't change are the principles behind the practice. Now for another quotation from the author:

"The future of public relations lies in the development of relationships, and the future of measurement lies in the accurate analysis of those relationships. Counting impressions will become increasingly irrelevant while measuring relationships and reputation will become ever more important" (p 219).

This quotation is from the conclusion to the same author's 2007 book, Measuring Public Relationships. She cites it again in this new text to point out that what was true then remains true now. Four years ago is not a long time, of course, unless you live in Twitter time.

This book succeeds in reconciling two distinct challenges. On the one hand, it has to demonstrate mastery of the new tools available to the practitioner (web analytics, online surveys etc) and present this in an accessible format. On the other, it has to provide a narrative describing the fundamental principles behind public relations and communications.

It is most successful in the former: the chapters tackle key constituencies (customers, employees, communities etc) and the text provides lists, bullet points and step by step guides.

The latter is provided by frequent reference to the work of James Grunig and his Excellence study collaborators (Larissa Grunig and James Grunig wrote the foreword to this book). So the book is grounded in a substantial body of academic thinking. Given that most practitioners (certainly those focused on the 'what' rather than the 'whether') will have read no public relations academic texts, this is certainly helpful. Yet the reliance on one source, however widely cited, makes it less impressive as an academic contribution.

Yet the book does have a strong narrative, holding together the bullet points and checklists. We're told that 'the notion that a PR person is someone who has to deal only with the press is just .. antiquated. A good PR person is focused on his or her relationships - be they local media, national bloggers, employees, or community organizers' (p xviii).

We're reminded that 'the value of advertising is declining, and the value of friendships, contacts, and engagement is on the rise... The rise of social media makes the cultivation of relationships more important than ever' (p 73).

This narrative suggests that public relations is becoming a more valuable tool in the social media age. But things have to change: 'we must change from pitching to listening, and from measuring eyeballs to measuring engagement' (p 74).

As public relations is becoming more important, it's becoming more challenging.

'In the good old days, influencers were recognized leaders in business, media, Wall Street, or academia. Today, an influencer can be anyone who knows something about your product, your market, or your business. It can be someone with 10,000 followers on Twitter or 500 friends on Facebook... It used to be that a good communications program functioned like a food chain. You would educate key spokespeople and influencers on your message, and, assuming it was a credible message, it flowed down through the chain of media and ultimately reached your publics through a variety of credible sources. This top-down process of message control seemed reasonable, but was probably only a convenient illusion. Social media has proved it wrong and officially signed its death certificate' (p 123).

This book, I would say, is useful for the classroom and has its place in the university library. But it's essential for practitioners, and should have a place in every office where public relations is practised.

Let me end with another of the author's quotations, dating from some 40 years ago. "If we can put a man in orbit, why can't we determine the effectiveness of our communications?"

This question was posed by the author's father, Ralph Delahaye Paine, then editor of Fortune magazine. His answer to the question was people: 'unpredictable, cantankerous, capricious, motivated by innumerable conflicting interests and conflicting desires' (p 154).

Just because it's hard to measure the outcomes of communication campaigns doesn't mean it can't, or shouldn't, be done. Katie Delahaye's essential book shows us it's not rocket science.

 

Review: The Business of Influence

Philip Sheldrake's The Business of Influence is a useful contribution to the literature on PR, marketing and social media - but above all it adds to the literature on measurement and evaluation.

The account starts with two milestone texts from 1999: The Cluetrain Manifesto and Permission Marketing. So we know to expect a discussion of rapid change and blurring boundaries between marketing and PR.

The author covers some theory and definitions (drawing heavily on the work of James Grunig), but is equally keen to cite arguments on blogs and responses on Twitter.

There's original thinking too. The concept of influence flows is an extension to the more usual discussion of communications models. Influence, Shelrake notes, is different from popularity.

He's strong on measurement - and acknowledges that his book complements Katie Paine's Measure What Matters (see my review). Sheldrake's description of AVE reads like a sentence from Cluetrain:

AVE: "a specious sum based on false assumptions using an unfounded multiplier, only addressing a fraction of the PR domain."

So how can we measure influence? Sheldrake is broadly impressed with Klout's approach - except that it only works for Twitter and ignores email, blogs, Facebook and other social media engagement.

The point about complexity is well made when he contrasts the simplicity of media evaluation in 1991 with the challenge of media monitoring and evaluation in 2011:

"Where should I listen and how should I make sense of it, and what demands a response and what should I say and when should I say it, and to whom should I say it and where should I say it, and in which format should I say it? When you multiply these possibilities together it becomes immediately clear that you're trying to deal with massive complexity, at least relative to your colleague from 1991."

Influence measurement, he argues, is like weather forecasting. "Just because it's difficult, and because it turns out to me more accurate some times and entirely unpredictable at other times, doesn't mean that it does not have significant value."

Sheldrake's approach, developed from the Balanced Scorecard concept, is the Influence Scorecard. Here the author reaches towards valid metrics, or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), that can be used to gauge influence. These cannot be generic, since 'KPIs should fit the strategy, not the other way around'.

The concept of influence is so much broader than the concept of social media. As Sheldrake writes, "I do wonder when the emphasis on 'social' this and 'digital' that might finally die."

It's clearly a problem for marketing, for advertising and for public relations. Sheldrake's solution comes in the form of a Chief Influence Officer, 'the incumbent... charged with making the art and science of influencing and being influenced a core organizational discipline... Ideally, the Chief Influence Officer will have a varied background covering marketing, PR, customer service, HR, product development and operations.'

The author, unsurprisingly, has just such a hybrid background (engineering, marketing, management, public relations). This explains his desire to categorise and enumerate - a useful corrective perhaps to most public relations literature, but an approach that makes for a jerky read.

He's written an interesting book (maybe even an important book), and I do sense agreement around the need to redesign and repurpose public relations. Influence, like engagement, could be a new paradigm.

Search and reputation optimisation

One day on from my rant about Domain Renewal Group, and Google has ranked my post higher than the company's own website (for the admittedly rather odd search string 'pop domain renewal group'). I know this because someone found my blog having typed this search in Belgium.

Other recent visitors to PR Studies came here having entered 'meaning PR', 'dissertation public relations', 'why want to work in PR', 'emergence social media public relations'.

This is a fair overview of this blog's content over several years - and a hint of what I should write more about if I'm to attract more visitors through search.

Community conversations: a case study

We took a look at the conversations surrounding a brand in class today - but I did not get to choose the case study.

ASOS sounds to me like a Taiwanese laptop manufacturer - but it's a brand that means a lot to my students.

We started with the website, and took a look at news reports, then moved onto blogs.

With Twitter it became really interesting. An appeal for photos of customers wearing leather garments was responded to within minutes. These photos became potential content for the ASOS Life Community site.

Customers were raving about the brand and its offers - and so were doing the marketing for the company. I could barely find a critical voice on the social web.

People are clearly happy to share their love of fashion and I can envisage this being true of music or sports fans - but it's not so easy to see how other organisations can so easily recruit customers to become fans.

Brands, relationships and social capital

Today's Observer column by John Naughton contrasts the impatience of the market for immediate returns with the need for a long-term approach to social media engagement. He quotes blogger Michael Foley saying: 

"There are a lot of big brands dedicating resources to social media lately, because it is the new 'bright shiny thing'. I'm worried that these big brands may feel the need to shut down these social media business experiments if they don't see results - meaning big revenue - in time for the next quarterly earnings report.

"It takes time to build relationships and develop trust, especially if you've been neglecting your customers for a long time - and most brands have. They're already suspicious of you because you're selling something. Real relationships aren't built on the salesman's need to move product on deadline. They are built on a mutual exchange of value over time. Don't think of your social media presence as an experiment, but as an investment so that you can obtain social capital in the long term."

White space

Designers are conscious of the value of white space on a page. It seems to me that white space is a universal concept that goes beyond page layout - it's the concept often described as 'less is more'.

• Novice writers and bloggers often forget to break up long paragraphs. (Look at any newspaper to see how it should be done.) Nothing reveals an amateur more readily than too many words.
• The conventional two week summer vacation provides white space in busy working and domestic lives (so please turn off your phone and try to avoid the newspapers too).
• In a busy, noisy world, silence is sometimes the best way to make a loud statement. (Tip: don't raise your voice to quieten a roomful of schoolchildren or students: give them the silent treatment instead. It works.)
• Don't always assume that exposure is a good thing. Kate Moss doesn't appear in the newspapers any less because she refuses to give interviews. Less is more.
• How to avoid becoming overstretched by spreading yourself too thinly across social media spaces? Jim Horton recommends focusing on the relationships that matter in his latest white paper.

If Twitter's the key, what does it unlock?

I can't quibble with this (except over the capital letters, perhaps):

In the Social Media era, getting better at Public Relations means getting better at the Relationships, not the Publicity.

Todd Defren's conclusion is more challenging though: Get Into Twitter or Get Outta Public Relations?

But his point is well made. It's not about the tools (a few years ago it was blogging; then podcasting; last year it was Facebook; this year Twitter); it's about engaging in the conversations and gaining a licence to join in or to comment.

PR and the digital frontier

I'm looking forward to the next event arranged by the CIPR regional group. Called PR and the digital frontier, it's on Thursday 1 May at Leeds Metropolitan University.

There are some free places available for students, but you do need to register in advance by emailing Nicky Wake at Don't Panic Projects (follow the link in the paragraph above for the details).

Authentic marketing and PR

It's easy to get excited about the 'new new thing' and forget that principles don't change that quickly. So when Anna Farmery described her farming ancestor bringing cattle to market, she said that he would be judged on his reputation. You see, reputation and social networks have always existed.

After a century of mass production supported by mass advertising, we're returning to a more organic approach to marketing and promotion using social media tools like blogs and podcasts. (To keep the analogy going, some farmers are returning to organic principles in order to capture a more lucrative and sustainable niche. Remember that all farming was once organic so this approach is old, not new.)

One of these organic marketing promotional tools might be podcasting, but it is only a tool, not a strategy.

Most engaging of all, Anna spoke for over 90 minutes with little need for technology. Social media is often merely an attempt to replicate the authentic experience of people talking to people.