Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Imagine you work for the Central Intelligence Agency?

Checking your voicemail two months ago via your satellite smartphone, you hear this new assignment:

Agent Smith. Your mission today, should you decide to accept, is to plan and launch our new CIA Twitter account....

Most brands, by now, recognize the power of social media and understand it's not just a passing fad. In fact, if Facebook were a country, it would have the third-highest population, behind China and India. And more people these days own a mobile device than a toothbrush.

Erik Qualman, author of "Socialnomics" and the creator of the popular video series of the same name, has released a new clip filled with fascinating social media stats and how marketers are using this to reach out to consumers....

...PR needs to figure out how to automate some of its capabilities and keep up with the changing trends affecting their clients. The major trend is in helping companies become media companies simply because there are fewer reporters around to help tell the stories of clients.

I’ve worked with Intel on its Intel Free Press and other media projects, for example. And PR firms need to do the same, help every company to be a media company and how best to use the media technologies available....

But the publishing, etc, is not enough. There needs to be a large technology component inside the future successful PR firm. It needs technologies of promotion that can scale the work of its practitioners in the service of its clients....

Dominick's is (or was) a chain of food stores in the Chicago area that dates back to 1918.  The outfit has gone through several changes of ownership and in 1998 it was bought by Safeway.  Apparently things haven't been going that well because Safeway announced a couple months ago that they would be closing 72 Dominick's stores and laying off more than 6000 people on December 28th.

One of the employees about to get canned -- a young fellow named Steve Yamato --  made a humorous SciFi video which showed dragons, monsters, asteroids etc squashing Dominick's employees and he titled the mini flick: "Thanks Safeway."  Then he posted it on YouTube.

When Yamamoto arrived for his last day of work -- he was told that he was suspended.  Huh?  He (and 6600 other people) were going to be cashiered anyway - but Safeway decided to mop the floor with him as an example for remaining employees perhaps...

PR tale of woe......Do you know how many pitches I responded to? One. It was one of the shortest pitches of the hundreds I received, but it got straight to the point. The PR person addressed me by name (and even spelled it correctly!) Far more importantly,

She had tied the idea she was presenting into not one but two of the articles I’d recently written to suggest how the spokesperson and topic she was presenting would tie into a great next story for me that would build well upon the things I had already done.

She quickly highlighted the high points of the company’s recent achievements and news. And she suggested a reasonable and convenient way we could follow up together. No pushiness. No form letter. No guile. But it was clear she had done her homework to provide a meaningful idea that was intended entirely for me.

I wrote back that she had won the jackpot.....

...So we thought it was time to create a blog post that could serve as an inbound marketing glossary.

Now, I'm no math whiz, but when you try to make a glossary based on a topic with sub-categories that could be their own glossaries, well -- that’s a lot of gloss. So instead of throwing hundreds of terms at you from all those other glossaries, I narrowed this one down to the top 45 terms that are imperative to anyone learning inbound marketing. Yes, there will be debate on the imperative-ness of these terms. Yes, I did volunteer to write this seemingly daunting post. Yes, let’s start this darn glossary already....

Public relations was born in the days when train travel was still a novel and exciting thing.

Things have changed since then – businesses, consumers, and the entire public relations industry. It’s gone through many ups and downs and opinions from the general public, both good and bad. But like all business models, is the use of PR obsolete in this tech day and age?  

Definitely not, and it’s potentially much more important than ever before. This is because traditional means of reaching the public are going away and PR is stepping in to fill the cracks.

On top of that, roles traditionally performed by other departments are starting to fall to public relations pros. All this just means PR is practically vital to every business out there right now....

What is PR today? Depending on who you talk to, it's either stuck in the prehistoric era of the dinosaurs or trapped in the social media Twilight Zone.

Smart PR pros recognize a foundation of traditional PR integrated with a new social media toolbox, content marketing and new digital channels is the recipe for success.

Will “Old PR” go extinct?

Brian Kilgore doesn’t think so though, if you read his recent The Huffington Post article Don’t Insult PR People by Calling Them Marketers...

...If you have been in public relations for any amount of time — be it agency or corporate — you have come to the fanciful realization that we have not selected a 9-to-5 gig. In fact, it can be more of a 6-to-midnight gig given any number of ancillary deadlines.

Well, fret no more fellow flacks, it seems that we have a life preserver in the raging waves of PR — social media. Simon Fraser University(in O’ Canada) released a study to prove it. While the study group is not that impressive spanning 100 communications, marketing and PR professionals, the results are telling.

And among those surveyed, 84 percent say their job satisfaction has either increased or remained the same with more social media responsibilities. “What we found surprised us,” says Peter Walton, who directs the PR program and oversaw the research project and report. “We figured people would be frustrated by the increased demand they’re facing because of technology. We were wrong.”...

Do people quoted in newspapers review the stories before they run? Can advertisers legally lie? Are PR people the biggest liars of all? How much does it cost to get a story into The Globe and Mail or the Toronto Star?

Just a few questions that show people do not understand public relations.

...showcase–those who are doing the hard work to integrate social media into some of America’s bigger companies. And then I got to thinking–there really is no list of these people anywhere.

Oh sure, there are Twitter lists here and there. Jeremiah Owyang has his list of social media new hires (and the last time he posted it was April 7). But, I really haven’t seen a good list of corporate social media leaders anywhere.

Probably with good reason. These folks are in high demand. Any such list would be pretty valuable to recruiters and agencies/companies (insert Arik evil laugh here). So, I thought, why not create one? Or, at least START to create one.