I have talked about the death of certain institutions and sacred cows of PR (see my PR Death Watch
series). I have also promised to counterbalance this morbid talk with positive recommendations and have already begun to do so.
Some in our field blithely continue until they are hit hard in the head with reality. "Where is our social media strategy?" the client asks one day, blindsiding the PR team. Or, "Gee, look what our Google Alert picked up – people are not being nice to us on some blog. What the heck do we do?" (or stronger words to that effect).
Or perhaps the client does not even ask questions and goes out and finds a separate shop to handle online marketing work, and the PR team finds out later that some of the "lunch" that they thought was rightfully theirs is being eaten by another.
The cold hard slap of reality could come when the PR team and/or its client or employer patrons see that old ways of doing business and PR work are just not as effective any more.
Many PR programs, especially those in tech PR, focused primarily on trade media. But do the trade press really hold that much clout these days, that is the ones that are left? Do many people take the time to fill out the bingo cards to qualify for subscriptions of the print publication?
No one cares much any more about bland writing on watered down industry topics that at least at one time typified trade media reporting.
Why should they when there are so many voices to choose from – when they can follow the Tweets, the minute by minute ruminations of the ones with social media mojo, the bright lights, those who really know their stuff and have proved that they can communicate about it in ways that rock the measures of online moxie? What we are seeing is nothing less than a realignment of the influencer firmament and a revolution in ways that people get their information.
Marketers and PR people need to stop thinking, relating and most of all communicating like marketers.
Studies have shown that people trust blogs more than traditional media. One of the great lies of our times has been that media are unbiased. Their biases, which pretty much everyone recognizes by now, may stem from the influence of business and advertising interests on coverage, or from personal opinions and points of view that color news stories.
People know that bloggers have biases but, correctly or incorrectly, they perceive blogs to be more genuine and not beholden to corporate interests. Looking beyond blogs to social media in general, people care about real stories and experiences from their peers. They care about the hard news, hot rumors and calling vendors and brands out on the carpet when justified.
So if you approach your story like a marketer and communicate in bland marketing and PR speak – the style that, if not loved, at least passed muster with the trade media at one time – and write buzzword and jargon laden press releases (social media or traditional, it doesn't much matter), no one will care.
You can put your neat new video on YouTube. But if your video looks too corporate or too much like a 50's era duck and cover drill, it will be mocked endlessly, or just ignored.
Get real, get in the conversation, relate, listen, engage and be genuine. There's no need to hide from it or apologize if you are in marketing or PR. There most certainly is a need to know your stuff, be intelligible and be interesting.
