This frustrates me immensely as not only is it often true but I’ve always thought the PR industry has the most potential to rock social media strategy. PR is all about word-of-mouth right? [Reference great ad explaining the differences between PR, Advertising and co.]  So, why the bad rap?

I’m dedicating this week to a series of posts on where it went wrong and how to fix it. Starting with…

Campaign strategy vs. Brand strategy

Social media has tended to be funded on a campaign by campaign basis – short term activity.  Social media work by nature relies on building community and generating conversation – longer term commitment.

Traditional PRs cultivated their community, a.k.a. journalists, year round. A skilled PR could have a useful conversation any day of the week with a handful of key influencers they’d established a trusted relationship with.

Social media comes along and boom, the list of potential influencers suddenly grew by hundreds.  The tools needed to identify, sort, and categorise them are slow to appear

Slow and steady wins the race

On top of that,  categories fragmented further. Instead of being able to talk to people who broadly cover ‘Consumer Tech’, ‘B2B tech’, ‘Mobile tech’,  or ‘all of the above’, you need to be able to recall contacts with an interest in location-based service applications specifically for Symbian devices with a love of LOLCats and such like.  Sometimes there’s entire communities you’ve never heard of and it’s hard to define who, if anyone, would even be interested in a new Symbian LOLCat app.

It’s not possible to build trusted relations and have brand conversations in the short-term. Three months, the traditional quarterly budget or common campaign cycle, is not long enough.

If PR does succeed then what happens after the campaign has gone? Who looks after the abandoned profile or answers requests from a new blogger ‘friend’ who has suddenly moved down the list of importance?

The effort it takes to conceive and execute a social media campaign vs. investing in a longer-term brand strategy strikes me as a false economy.

I personally turn down a lot of short-term project work these days because I think it’s not possible to achieve much beyond securing a few blog posts. I also don’t like hearing from bloggers and community contacts that they weren’t looked after beyond the life-cycle of a specific campaign – I’m not in this industry for the short-term.

PR agencies with numerous mouths to feed don’t necessarily have that luxury but for their own sanity I hope they’re moving clients away from achieving short-term online objectives now. For in-house PR … what are you waiting for?!

Who could fix this?

1. Clients: Stop giving piecemeal social media projects to agencies
2. Agencies: Don’t let being competitive hold the industry back. Be brave and say ‘No’ sometimes

SOLUTION? Banish the term “can we get it out to some blogs?” from your vocabulary. Identify your most relevant communities [and not just blogs] from the start of your social media strategy and make that strategy brand-wide. Later you can build out to support campaign tactics.

Crib notes:

• Develop ongoing and long-term brand relationships
• Suspend traditional expectations like coverage
• Add value: Ask not what can my community do for me but what can I do for my community?

If your business needs to change direction and target varying communities manically throughout the year then your problems are probably bigger than social media.

Image: Rennett Stowe

Sharing is caring

Something I like about working  in this industry is that PR & Marketing agencies, who traditionally are a tad competitive and protective about IP, suddenly get great at sharing knowledge when it comes to social media.

The concept Wikinomics explains the business benefits of mass collaboration and if you’re one of the agencies still not open to the idea of sharing anything at all, then read it.  Here’s a round-up of some of my favourite resources on the web. In the spirit of sharing what’s your favourites?

• Nixon McInnes eBooks: Currently  7 chapters in their series “A marketers guide to Social Media”

• iCrossing eBooks: 2006′s “What is Social Media” is still relevant for newbies and they recently added “Brands in Networks”

• Fallon Brainfood: Planners from the award winning agency have a monthly lunch and the fruits of their thinking have been shared; from live tweeting, to video and slidecasts

• SEO Chicks’ “How to lists”: Not just Search tips

• PNeo introduction to Online PR: Every single post full of “how to” and “what is” explanatory goodness

• Immediate Future Social Media Glossary: Even if you know your “above the fold” to your “XML“  you might still want to point colleagues and clients here to brush up

• e-consultancy: Not an agency but my ultimate go-to destination for useful information

• TED: Again, not an agency, but worth mentioning. The inspiring talks covering technology, entertainment and design are of interest for anyone in business or education

I’d also like to include a couple of my clients who have created some useful resources themselves.

FRUKT, the music and branding experts, recently began a series of talks called the ‘FRUKT Sessions’. The slidecasts from their 2nd event are here and I’d love to hear your feedback.

Don’t forget Attentio’s free blog topic trend tool, Trendpedia, and they now have a series of whitepapers about social media and industry specific trends.

A new online agency is born

Welcome to Stephen Davies’ new consultancy 3WPR. To me Davies will always be the original PRBlogger so I have no doubt his own agency will pan out very nicely indeed -  if he just stays on his end of the Island that is (kidding).

There’s all together too much good will towards this new upstart of an agency so I thought I would uptake the challenge within his first quote as MD:

I don’t think anyone who works in the PR industry , or indeed the wider media industries, would disagree with me when I say that the momentum is moving online.

Stephen, this online nonsense is just a blip. We have only 30 years till the internet stops working. Good luck out there :-p

Some brands just aren’t ready, and may not have the corporate cultural, to really do something different. This particularly applies in the social media space where not every brand is ready to engage. The most important thing is to fit the strategy to the client’s need. Each campaign should be tailored.

And my top tip for clients? Treat your agency as an extension of your team – work with them in an open, positive and constructive way and they’ll go the extra mile.

[Via Shiny Red]