Public Relations and this “Second Wave” of the Internet

8 Sep 2009

Ride it if you can...

In 2009 we’ve seen public relations agencies laying claim to social media as an organic extension of how they see their mission—influencing public perceptions.

They get help in this argument from other trends, for example the way bloggers are accommodated as journalists by political campaigns and companies launching new products. Another trend is the “public service” nature of social media—the messages that get passed along have valuable, accurate content. This probably aligns better with a corporate communications mission than a marketing function.

Another important reason for your PR agency rather than your ad agency to offer you social media strategy and advice is that at the end of the day social media isn’t going to sell many widgets—it’s not often that sales or marketing messages stick in social media. True, some people do pass along recommendations to friends, but that’s rarely at the prompting of a company’s social media messaging. People recommend cars and dentists to their friends most often when they’re asked, not when Ford or Park Creek Dental sends them a tweet.

Social media can build “relationship capital” for a company, especially if the people at the company keep in mind what I think of as the four “acid tests” of social media:

Focused—is the content developed for social media focused on a subject? If so it will attract users who are interested in that subject, and will get them to return because of that focus

Authentic—no marketing-speak, no weasel words. One reason that personal blogs have credibility is that the author doesn’t have to go through a committee or even an editor to publish. This is me. In the case of a company, campaign or organization it’s critical that there is no BS. Speak the truth clearly.

Selfless—Offer your content and commentary to benefit others and the larger community. A corporation can stake out a focused area of interest directly related to the products and services it sells. A great example is the Future of Banking blog (http://futurebanking.bankofamerica.com) run by Bank of America with help from MIT—it’s about news and ideas about the future of banking worldwide.

Trustworthy—People can rely on what you post and tweet, you become a reliable resource. The more reliable and trustworthy you become the more reputation equity you build. That reputation equity is a side product of providing focused content in an authentic and transparent way, selflessly.

(Okay, this does spell the word “fast,” but I’m not going to turn it into the FAST™ strategy. I’ll leave that sort of thing to our friends at Forrester)

The “fast” test could also apply to a reliable public relations executive, except for the “selfless” part. Whenever a public relations agency has worked to create “public interest” content, it’s usually been with a very specific axe to grind. Often times PR executives are the ones who form these committees you’ve never heard of who advertise about specific issues coming up for a vote in congress or on the ballot (“This message was paid for by Citizens Committee to Stop Health Care Reform At Any Cost,” etc.)

The Public Relations Department—or the Marketing Department—should be only a very short-term home for social media strategy. For one thing, social media requires cross-department coordination.

But a much bigger point is that social media isn’t a trend. Social media is only catch term for a much bigger and more comprehensive movement that is the second great wave of the Internet. (See “Web 2.0”) In this wave two technical evolutions have happened at the same time:

Bandwidth – often in the form of broadband—and connectivity to the Internet have exploded in the last ten years. We now use something like 15 times the telephone system capacity we did in 1995.
Publishing tools—often in form of social media sites and online tools—have been distributed to almost all Internet users at almost zero cost. Now everyone’s printing press can be found as easily as the New York Times.

Today this great second wave is manifested as social media sites and networks like Facebook and Twitter. But think about ten or even five years from now, how every single employee at IBM will be able to publish, search, read, mash-up and connect with every other employee at IBM. What we now call social media will be the second coming of the telephone system inside corporations and institutions. And just as pervasively, this “second wave” will inter-connect companies and customers as instinctively as the phone system does today.

While all this goes on the fine art and science of Public Relations will become both more widespread and more diffuse—widespread in how pervasively “free media” will truly become, and more diffuse in how it can be controlled centrally. Public relations executives will spend more and more of their time teaching and orienting clients about how to use these new communications tools and networks, and less time trying to get the business editor of the Star Tribune on the phone to pitch a story idea.

The business editor of the Star Tribune will still be getting pitch phone calls, as long as there still is a Star Tribune. There will still be mass media and the ability to broadcast messages, but event today people believe in reputation more and marketing messages less.

The “second wave” of the Internet will raise knowledge management to an entirely new level, and it’s going to do the same thing to reputation management.