We plan two-way communications between organisations and their publics to achieve mutual understanding. And these ‘conversations’ are held in an ever more transparent world. So companies are judged not just by what they do but also by what they say they will do and how the two compare. Actions really do have to match the words.
The beauty of the digital world for PR is that its gives us valuable tools to create these conversations. I see the digital world delivering three benefits to the PR sector.
- Firstly, the capacity to communicate with all of your target audiences at the same time. Online communications reach consumers and customers at the same time as they do the media.
- Secondly, the opportunity to create a real and recorded two-way conversation, which will highlight both the good and the bad in an organisation’s relationship with its customers, prospects, employees and stakeholders. This gives the communications process considerably more value as it allows companies to gain insights into customer behaviour and attitudes towards products and services – what they like and what they don’t like.
- Thirdly, the ability to truly measure the impact of your communications – quickly, simply and affordably – demonstrating once and for all that PR can directly support business development and sales.
This means that any PR campaign that treats offline and online as separate entities will deliver poorer results. All PR campaigns need to address the converged communications channels as one entity to be successful. Understanding the relationship between, and the nuances of, converged media will significantly increase your opportunity to generate positive coverage and great results.
But, what about the channels of communication in new media? At first glance there seems to be a bewildering array of digital communications channels: blogs, micro blogs, forums, social networks, websites, free newswires, photo sharing sites, bookmarking sites, podcasts, videocasts…. I could go on.
To a casual observer, all of these seem to be changing at an astounding rate and feeding off of each other. But upon closer inspection it is clear that while there are many connections between them, they have one main thing in common: they reach a huge range of audiences in a much more immediate way than traditional channels and create two-way communications.
Surely the identification of audiences and creation of communication campaigns to reach them, and ideally generate a response, is at the heart of PR. This really is a huge opportunity for all of us.
Beyond reach and speed of coverage, the online media world would seem to have other advantages for the PR specialist. London-based media evaluation company Metrica launched Metrica Numbers 2007 . One of the most interesting insights it provided was that online titles featured the highest level of message delivery of any media type. Half of all online coverage delivered key messages, with an average of three messages per article.
As to specific channels, social networking continues to grow, with Datamonitor reporting that usage will more than double from 41.7 million to 107.4 million across Europe by 2012. The commercialisation of social networks has started as new owners of the big sites start to look for a way to get a return on their record investments. For example, companies of all sizes can now set up a presence on Facebook and encourage their customers to become fans. What is not clear yet is the impact of having fans’ recommendations pushed to friends, especially if companies do not limit the number of their communications and their content.
Opening yourself up to negative comment on a social networking site such as Facebook is a bit frightening for most PR professionals who are traditionally used to trying to manage communications. But the benefits of letting your communications go and travel freely can be considerable. Customer, prospect and consumer feedback and comments can provide valuable insights and work as an early warning system for upcoming issues. Plus, if all feedback is positive consumers are much less likely to trust it.
The next highest profile channel after social networks is the blog. Blogs seem to be growing at an almost immeasurable rate. Importantly for the PR sector, they have a clear and simple role to play in campaigns. It is an accepted communications tactic for companies to use a blog to provide a human face to an organisation. Indeed, Microsoft are so committed to the channel that they have 4,500 bloggers aiming to transform its corporate image and change perceptions of the world’s biggest software company. As CEO Steve Balmer puts it: “It’s been a great way to communicate with our customers and for them, more importantly, to communicate with us. It touches people more.”
It is also worth mentioning micro-blogging, as it is grabbing more than its fair share of headlines at the moment.
Services such as Twitter, Tumblr and Pownce allow users to create blogs of up to approximately 150 characters along with pictures and video. They are displayed on the blogger’s page in real time. The key differentiator for these services is the ability to link to mobile networks so ‘followers’ of your blog can receive updates by SMS. People can also follow you on a Really Simple Syndication (RSS). While a constant flow of SMS updates may not seem a terribly valuable form of communication, Delta Airlines uses a Twitter account to keep customers up-to-date. And the short format and mobile input means that micro-blogs are proving to be the fastest growing form of communication on the planet.
A serious example is the tragic earthquake in China, which according to technology blogger Robert Scoble was reported faster on blogging service Twitter than it was by the United States Geological Survey, whose sole purpose is to provide early warnings of seismic events. Plus, Twitter reaches everyone at the same time – consumers, journalists, fellow bloggers and followers.
A rather less serious but equally informative example of the power of Twitter is the case of Ryan Kuder, a Yahoo! employee who sent 19 Tweets over 10 hours to his followers, updating them on his less than smooth redundancy discussions with his boss. By 9pm West Coast time it was on the Silicon Valley tech sites and blogs and had reached the UK
Instant, universal communication of news: the PR person’s dream or nightmare? I’ll leave it to you to decide.
Once information has been delivered through social media release, email, or via a website, blog or RSS feed, the role of the PR person isto facilitate the development of the story, not to tell it. The journalist is quite capable of testing the robustness of claims and past statements and actions of the organisation issuing the information. This role as facilitator ultimately means that the PR person has to hand over control of the story.
Once in the public domain, customers, competitors, prospects and even employees can join in the discussion and debate around your story. The key is to make sure that as wide a range of available information as possible is available so that your key audiences can make up their own minds.
In this free-form world of communications, building alliances and coalitions with supporters is crucial. So a big part of the facilitation process is for PR teams to stimulate supporters to provide content. Traditionally known as ‘word-of-mouth’, we all know that third-party endorsement carries considerable value… and the digital world is no different.
The travel industry has understood this for years, and sites such as Trip Advisor have become a must use information source for travellers around the world. You get to know which hotels in a resort have the best cleaners, sea views and restaurants. Conversely, we also discover who has the worst before we book. Trip Advisor was bought by online travel company Expedia, who saw the tremendous value of the community for its own marketing. Top-listed destinations and hotels can be emphasised to customers and lower-rated ones dropped from campaigns.
Taking this a stage further, a number of consumer brands have created sites where they can garner customer feedback into issues that impact the brand and its future – and so build supporters and hopefully advocates to drive positive word-of-mouth. Coca Cola and McDonald’s have both taken this route in the last 12 months with the launch of sites designed to tap into consumer opinion and build a consumer network for market research and communication.
As you may have guessed by now, I am very optimistic about the future of PR as the online world continues to develop and grow. The online world will become an ever more important source of information, news, opinion and comment as access speeds increase and the Internet becomes ever more mobile.
We are in the ideal position to take advantage of this opportunity. So if you are not using new media for your PR campaigns now, I urge you to start as soon as you can. It doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive.
If new media is already a part of your daily life, promote what you are doing, demonstrate the results that these campaigns deliver, and continue to innovate. As a result your organisations, clients and teams will all benefit, and the PR sector will be rightly seen as the natural champions of new media communications.
This thought piece is excerpted from the keynote speech of ICCO Executive Committee member Richard Houghton explores the wide – and uncontrollable – world of digital media and what it means for the practice of public relations at the ICCO Southeast European Summit in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
http://www.iccopr.com./
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