PR and Media Relations

The real-time Web has opened an opportunity for anybody to inject ideas into a breaking news story and generate tons of media coverage. I’ve been a communicator for two decades now, and I have never seen a technique as powerful as newsjacking. But it has primarily come up under the radar because it relies on a new communication speed that most organizations reserve only for crisis communications. I’ve noticed corporate communicators in large organizations unwilling to understand and take advantage of real-time communications, often becoming prey to smaller more nimble players.

As journalists scramble to cover breaking news, the basic facts — who/what/when/where — are often fairly easy to find, either on a corporate website or in competitors’ copy. That’s what goes in the first paragraph of any news story.

The challenge for reporters is to get the “why” and the implications of the event (which often goes into the second and additional paragraphs). Why is the company closing its plant? The corporate website may offer some bogus excuse like “because it wants to spend more time with its family.” Competitors may quote some expert’s speculation on the real reason, but a reporter can’t cite that without adding something self-demeaning like “according to an expert quoted in the New York Times.” Journalists need original content — and fast.

If you are clever enough to react to breaking news very quickly, providing credible content in a blog post, tweet, or media alert that features the keyword of the moment, you may be rewarded with a bonanza of media attention.

Paris Hilton was arrested with her boyfriend in Las Vegas in August 2010, he on misdemeanor DUI charges, she on felony drug-possession charges.

In a tweet to fans on September 1, Hilton said: “These rumors going around are so ridiculous, untrue and cruel. I’m not going to even pay attention to them, because I know the truth.”

Whatever, Paris. I could not care less about the perils of being Paris, except for what happened soon after the story broke — which I absolutely love.

Wynn Resorts Ltd. spokeswoman Jennifer Dunne told the Associated Press that Hilton was to be barred from Wynn Resorts properties, Wynn Las Vegas and Encore.

Newsjacking.

Don’t have a holiday or awareness week to target with your news?  Why not just create your own!?!   Tell us what unusual steps you have taken to make your less-than-newsworthy-news moreso!   PR Discussion Board

PR Newswire carried this HOT story today: “Agency and Partners Kick-off Lightning Awareness Week“

WASHINGTON, June 16 /PRNewswire/ — Every crack of thunder that echoes from a storm is caused by lightning jetting across the sky or to the ground with a potentially lethal force.  along with its government, academic and private partners are educating Americans on the dangers of lightning and ways to stay safe during its annual Lightning Safety Awareness Week, June 19-25, 2005.

Cloud-to-ground lightning strikes within the United States an average of 25 million times every year.  A single bolt, with a length that can exceed five miles and a width of one to two inches, can generate 100 million electrical volts and a temperature near 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

“Lightning is a potential hazard to people outdoors and indoors and results in millions of dollars in economic losses,” said Brig. Gen. David L. Johnson, U.S. Air Force (Ret.), director of NOAA’s National Weather Service. “Lightning kills an average of 67 people in the United States each year and can result in property loss, damage to aircraft and electronics, and can be the spark that ignites devastating wildfires.”

Exceeding the number of fatalities are the estimated 600-700 lightning survivors that are left with debilitating health effects each year.  “While about 90 percent of those struck by lightning survive, they frequently have permanent after effects such as chronic pain, brain injury and thought processing problems,” said Dr. Mary Ann Cooper, professor, Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Illinois.

Reduce your chance of being struck by moving inside a substantial building or hard-topped metal vehicle when thunderstorms threaten.  Once inside, avoid contact with plumbing, corded phones, or anything plugged into electricity.

“Casualties are more likely to occur during the summer months and in open areas such as golf courses and playing fields, but lightning’s deadly strike can hit anytime during the year and in all segments of the nation,” said John Jensenius, a lightning safety expert at the National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office in Gray, Maine.

NOAA’s National Weather Service is the primary source of weather data, forecasts and warnings for the United States and its territories.  NOAA’s National Weather Service operates the most advanced weather and flood warning and forecast system in the world, helping to protect lives and property and enhance the n ational economy.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, an agency of the U.S. Commerce Department, is dedicated to enhancing economic security and national safety through the prediction and research of weather and climate-related events and providing environmental stewardship of the nation’s coastal and marine resources.”

By Barbara Puffer
6-16-05

… if I were hiring a “Universal PR professional” to guide strategic communications in 2013 and beyond, here are some of my best practice tips to shape that PR person’s role:

1. Be proactive and don’t wait to be asked. Today, we are looking for people who will raise their hands to get involved. For example, with the development of a social media policy, training initiatives and governance (new responsibilities that require PR to participate).  You should never wait for someone to give you the assignment, especially if you identify an area in your department or company that needs support. Propose new ideas, do the research, and offer your assistance. The initiative you take will make you stand out among all the rest.
2. Start with good communication on the inside. Take the time to discover how to be more efficient and productive with your teams. Make suggestions beyond simply using email communication on how to finish your projects on time and under budget. Use social collaboration tools on the inside of your company for better internal communications and then take the time to educate your peers on new ways to work together to increase overall productivity.
3. Test technology … always. Don’t be behind the curve, instead stay ahead for advancement. Be ready to answer those leadership questions asking “why” and “how” your brand should participate in new social communities. Take the time to “Tech Test” in different areas including collaborative platforms, applications, monitoring software, influence tools, etc., which will make you a more valuable asset to your organization.
4. Listen to be heard and to be relevant. Gathering customer intelligence is the best way to internalize information and then use it to communicate with meaning, through offline and new media channels.  Since I started in PR, I was always told to listen first to solve problems. This is much more apparent today, as a result of social media. By truly “listening,” we can help people and build stronger relationships with our constituents.
5. You are always on! Social media doesn’t sleep, so your organization’s readiness is key. Creating the social media crisis plan (integrated into an overall crisis plan) requires knowledge and skills. It’s imperative for you to build a system that catches negative sentiment early on before it escalates, and to put processes and people in place for different levels of escalation through new media

Read full article by Deirdre Breakenridge on PR 2.0 Strategies

Clearly, there are basic ‘hygiene’ factors that companies need from their comms people: strong written/verbal skills; excellent conversational and presentation skills; an eye for design; awareness of communication technology trends and corresponding audience reach strategies.

However, a good PRO will always stand out on a number of more complex, intuitive and leadership levels and I would proffer the following attributes:

1) Acts as strategic and trusted advisor to the leadership team (including the CEO, CFO and commercial and functional heads); contributes with authority to strategic corporate discussion and works on his/her track record to be viewed as a contributing equal;

2) Through accumulated insight and marketplace persceptiveness, may be in a truly unique position within any organisation to ‘Bring the Outside World’ in to corporate thinking, ensuring sound future governance and guiding strategies that help protect any company’s future ‘Licence to Operate’ in the open, global marketplace;

3) Is an astute and credible diplomat, able to navigate elegantly through all layers and across all organisational silos to inform, to encourage collaborative thinking and to galvanise operational solutions to any issues or opportunities faced by a company in its public and employee dealings;

4) Intuitively understands and bridges the interdependency between internal and external reputation and has astute command of the theory and tools/practice of its delivery;

I’ve quoted my friend and mentor, David Berlo, numerous times in this column. Here’s one of his more curious gems. “The key to being effective is sincerity,” he said, “and if you can learn how to fake that, you’ve really got it made.” He was joking, of course. But like the old saying goes, there’s a bit of truth in every joke.

Key to Leadership
I was reminded of David’s quip recently when I attended a presentation on a report entitled “The Authentic Enterprise.” It was published two years ago by the Arthur W. Page Society from a study that examined the role of senior communicators in the 21st century.

Based on comments from numerous CEOs and chief communications officers, the report summed up the study’s pivotal finding like this – “In a word, authenticity will be the coin of the realm for successful corporations and for those who lead them.” The report goes on to say, “Demands for transparency are at an all-time high, and give no sign of ebbing.”

Reality is Fabulous
Perhaps it’s not surprising that businesses have struggled with the elemental need to be straight shooters. It’s certainly not new – just look at what Henry David Thoreau wrote in Walden more than 150 years ago …

“Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, music and poetry would resound along the streets. Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks, which we can call reality.”

Despite the apparent yearning for greater authenticity … or sincerity … or reality, some skeptics think it’s mostly a hoax. They argue that when stakeholders – inside or out – say they want more authenticity, all they’re really looking for is consistency. I guess they haven’t run into as many consistently inauthentic “spinners” as I have.

A Choice and a Voice
Still, the remark made me examine what I mean when I use the word authentic. It was easier to grasp its significance by describing what I mean by IN-authentic. Here are some words and phrases that come to mind – doubletalk … misdirection … sanitizing bad news … glamorizing good news … manipulating the truth … distorting the facts … empty jargon … phony platitudes. It’s rarely an outright lie – just an artful shading of reality. Sound familiar? From where I stand, that’s a whole lot more sinister and unsavory than merely being inconsistent.

Professional communicators have a choice and a voice. We can play along and help our organizations engage in “shams and delusions” that strain credibility – or we can be champions of authenticity. Promoting the latter, the Page report says, “If we choose this path, we can transform our profession, open up new and meaningful responsibility and learning, and create exciting new career paths for communications professionals.” Now that’s something to look forward to – sincerely.

Les Landes, Landes & Associates

Buy Les’s webinar replay: Getting to the Heart of Employee Engagement

Words and phrases including “blog,” “wiki” and even “chat room” make some business leaders nervous. They’re not sure what to make of these new social media. The technology seems mysterious and a bit scary to people who are still trying to find their way around the Internet or figuring out how their BlackBerry works.

If the wild world of online media makes you hyperventilate, relax. Take a deep breath. Despite the hype around Skype, behind the stress caused by RSS, it all comes down to a fundamental process as old as humanity: communication.

What really matters is how well you communicate with employees, customers, shareholders, the community and other important people. The methods you use, while important, are secondary to the quality of communication.

A recent illustration of this principle involves computer maker Dell. Unhappy customers took their complaints about Dell’s products and service to the “blogosphere” – that online place where everyone with a laptop and an Internet connection can share their opinions with the world. Despite the outcry over problems with Dell, which quickly reached hundreds of thousands of people thanks to blogs with names like “Dell Hell,” the company resisted joining the virtual discussion.

Apparently, however, the pressure became too much. A few months ago, Dell created “Direct2Dell,” a blog intended to improve communication with customers about issues ranging from the company’s battery recall to new products. The company’s critics considered the action too little, too late and charged Dell with paying lip service to open communication with customers. On the surface, bloggers said, Dell seemed to be improving communication, but in reality “Direct2Dell” represented more of the company line.

Last week, Dell posted a new “Online Communication Policy” and held a news conference to announce it. The policy, aimed at Dell employees, recognizes the value of online communication tools, lays out expectations of employees who use them and states the company’s commitment to “transparent, ethical and accurate” communication. Translation: no more company PR disguised as real, direct dialogue.

Time will tell if Dell’s policy makes a difference, but for now the bloggers are skeptical. “Dell Hell” creator Jeff Jarvis wrote, “Isn’t it always a company’s policy, in any interaction – by blog, telephone, or letter – to be open and honest?” He wondered if Dell’s 500-word policy might have been boiled down to three words: “Tell the truth.”

What can your company learn from all of this? It doesn’t matter if you choose to communicate through blogs, chat rooms, e-mail or good ol’ face-to-face interaction. What matters is that you communicate honestly and as completely as possible. The latest technology won’t save you if your stakeholders feel you’re not being truthful with them.

It’s the quality of communication that ultimately matters.

Robert Holland

My second job was in a large corporate environment, and I had been given the responsibility to produce the employee magazine. I was writing a typical article about a committee’s planning efforts so that everyone in the organization had a feel for what was happening. I asked what the team was doing, who was on the team and when they expected to finish the work, and I got a blank stare from the manager who was my source. She said she didn’t want to put a date out there because the team might be held accountable to that date.

That’s when I first learned the truth about truth: it’s a moving target. And it’s why so many brands are so bland. When there’s no truth – no authenticity – there’s no focus, there’s no goal, there’s no accountability to the brand.

It’s happened time and time again since that day…a client, for example, will boldly make a claim that is different and relevant, only to back down when it’s put in writing for all to see. “I’m not comfortable with that” is the common response (usually during the second or third round of the approval process, just before the piece goes to print) because they realize they can’t guarantee the claim operationally.

As communicators – as brand warriors – we have only one choice: speak up, loudly and often, and demand our co-workers or clients be true to the brand. It’s the T in a D.I.R.T.Y. brand. And it’s what will help us move out of the tactical conversations and be part of the strategy conversations in our organizations.

A few years ago, I was facilitating a brand discernment process with a group of employees at a small bank client, when the receptionist asked if she’s supposed to hold the vice-president accountable to the brand. I said “absolutely” and the whole room went quiet. A smile slowly crept over the face of the vice-president, a quiet man who completely bought into the premise, and he said “yes, you should.”

It’s difficult to demand authenticity across an organization. If the brand is understood by everyone, positive brand management examples are shared with everyone, and there’s buy-in at the top of the organizational chart, however, it’s easy to be a brand warrior.

And there’s nobody more empowered to be the brand warrior than the communications professional. You can use your skills to:

• thoroughly explain the brand,

• demonstrate how others are living the brand,

• help the leadership craft a brand story and

• take it to the market.

And keep telling the story so others know how to tell the story, too.

By Mark True

Many executives and politicians spend so much time trying to figure out what reporters want in the form of answers to questions that the news makers lose sight of the primary goal: your message should be a reflection of good things you want to communicate about yourself and your organization. Of course you have to take into consideration what is of interest to the media and to your audiences, but don’t forget the most important constituency in the messaging process: yourself.

Whether you are facing a crisis in the media or the local society reporter wanting to write a puff piece on you, you should always be on the offensive, advancing positive things about yourself. Once you get in a reactive mode, you are stuck in a defensive mode. In this capacity you are forever trying to avoid getting hurt or to minimize pain.

Why be so pessimistic? No matter how cynical the reporter is or how negative the story may be, you always have a chance at getting some of your positive message points out. But not if you don’t even try.

Remember, if you know the media want to hear a certain message from you and your audience wants to hear a certain message from you, don’t give it to them unless it is also a message that you absolutely want communicated. If your message doesn’t appeal to all three constituencies, it is a failed message point, so scratch it.

When most people get an interview, the following goes through their heads:

-I’m just happy to get this interview.
-I’ll be happy to get THROUGH this interview.
-I’m most concerned with the questions.
-I’ll be happy if I don’t embarrass myself.
-Maybe this interview will help me, my company, or product. I’ll worry about that later.
-I guess this will just be good to have on my web site.

Don’t be like the masses. Successful people leverage media interviews.
As for the definitions of leverage, in the physical sense, leverage is an assisted advantage. As a verb, to leverage means to gain an advantage through the use of a tool. You are doing both with interviews. You have an advantage because you were just given a platform to speak to thousands or millions of people. If you were given a platform like that, would you just throw it away? If I told you that I’d give you a free 30 second ad on cable news, I bet you’d spend weeks trying to figure out how to make something great for that ad. Any time you are featured in the media, it is a potential ad for you or your company. I’m not saying you should sound like an ad, but understanding this concept is half the battle.

As a verb, we said that leverage means to gain a advantage through the use of a tool.
Can you guess the tool here?

The MEDIA!!!

TJ Walker, Media Training Worldwide

Deloitte LLP has posted its third annual chairman’s Ethics and Workplace Survey.  I say that there are serious implications for the PR professional.

The intro to their news release reads:

NEW YORK, May 18, 2009 — According to the third annual Deloitte LLP Ethics & Workplace survey, 60 percent of business executives believe they have a right to know how employees portray themselves and their organizations in online social networks. However, employees disagree, as more than half (53 percent) say their social networking pages are not an employer’s concern. This fact is especially true among younger workers, with 63 percent of 18–34 year old respondents stating employers have no business monitoring their online activity.

The release continues:

“With the explosive growth of online social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, rapidly blurring the lines between professional and private lives, these virtual communities have increased the potential of reputational risk for many organizations and their brands,” said Sharon Allen, chairman of the board, Deloitte LLP. “While the decision to post videos, pictures, thoughts, experiences and observations is personal, a single act can create far reaching ethical consequences for individuals as well as employers. Therefore, it is important for executives to be mindful of the implications of this connected world and to elevate the discussion about the risks associated with it to the highest levels of leadership.”

Well, okay… how does that apply to PR, you say?  I say plenty.  It’s about our reputations!

The release goes on to say, “employees appear to have a clear understanding of the risks involved in using online social networks, as 74 percent of respondents believe they make it easier to damage a company’s reputation.”

“One-third of employees surveyed never consider what their boss or customers might think before posting material online,” Allen continued. “This fact alone reinforces how vulnerable brands are as a result of the increased use of social networks. As business leaders, it is critical that we continue to foster solid values-based cultures that encourage employees to behave ethically regardless of the venue.”

How about these specifics from Deloitte’s survey?

• 74% of employees surveyed say it’s easy to damage a company’s reputation on social media. 34% said they rarely or never consider what their clients would think. 15% said that it their employer did something they didn’t agree with, they would comment about it on line. 
• 61% of employees say that even if employers are monitoring their social networking profiles or activities, they won’t change what they’re doing online. 

And finally, consider this from the study:

“Fifty-eight percent of executives agree that reputational risk and social networking should be a board room issue, but only 15% say it actually is. How are executives working to mitigate the risks of social networking media?”

1) “Our executive team regularly discusses how we can best leverage social networks to our advantage while mitigating risks.” 27%“
2) My company has formal policies that dictate how employees can use social networking tools.” 22%
3) “Our senior leadership team addresses issues related to companywide social networking.” 22%
4) “My company has a program dedicated to monitoring and mitigating risks related to social networks.” 17%

The Deloitte conclusions include this advice:  

“Therefore, attempts to mitigate reputational risk in these online communities should include an emphasis on culture, values, and ethics within an organization. By reinforcing these fundamental elements, business leaders will have the opportunity to encourage good decisionmaking in virtual social networking environments.”

What are you doing about educating your employees about their use of social media sites?

Barbara Puffer, Puffer Public Relations Strategies

In light of the current economic downturn, what new opportunities do you see for public relations professionals, either in agencies or working for corporations? Here are the answers from two of our Inner Circle leaders:

Answer by Jim Bowman, The PR Doc® “We now have an unprecedented opportunity to add quantifiable value to the businesses we serve.”

• A recent Advertising Age article [http://budurl.com/pvaf] assessed the human carnage in communications professions wrought by the current recession:
• 65,100 jobs lost in advertising and media in 2008, 18,700 of them in December alone
• Media companies (newspapers, magazines, broadcasters) eliminated 41,000 U.S. jobs, or 4.6% of staff, from the time the recession began in Dec. 2007
• Advertising agencies and marketing-services firms cut 24,100 jobs, or 3.1% of staff
• Across all professions nationwide, job loss stood at 2.6%

There were gains in related areas:  

• Marketing consulting added 2,200 jobs
• Public relations added 1,200 jobs
• Internet media companies added 5,400 jobs

Given the fragility of the global economy, it is not safe to extrapolate those numbers through the remainder of this year. In fact, there is growing evidence of cuts coming in PR. But at this point in time the numbers seem to say marketing consulting and public relations are more than holding their value.

Mash up the data some and the clear message is that traditional media are declining, while new, Web-based media are on the rise. For discerning public relations professionals, it should be clear our profession is changing simultaneously.

Agency and corporate PR people who cling to the old ways – i.e., see the Internet as simply a new channel for reaching journalists – are likely to be among the first casualties. Conversely, those who skill up for the new marketing and PR reality will be in demand.

Work with journalists, certainly, but take advantage of the opportunities online PR affords to reach customers directly and interact with them. When I write news releases for my clients, I write first for their customers; journalists are a secondary target. My favorite way of pitching journalists is a brief, but highly focused and personalized email with a link to a multimedia release.

I agree in principle with nearly everything David Meerman Scott set forth in The New Rules of Marketing and PR. Anyone serious about a public relations or corporate communications career today should own the book and refer to it often.

The emerging profile of public relations professionals includes working as nimbly in the online world as among the bricks and mortar; writing search-engine-optimized copy as well as print and broadcast styles; learning to do key word research and writing for search engines as well as human readers (hint: there’s a lot more to it than peppering a release with anchor text links).

Traditional PR will not go away, but it is being irrevocably altered. Incredibly, many traditional PR people I talk with in agency and corporate jobs still don’t get it when dealing with the realities of online PR. Some dismiss it (big mistake) and some fear it (equally big mistake).  

Embrace it. We now have an unprecedented opportunity to add quantifiable value to the businesses we serve. Instead of boxes of clippings we can generate traffic to Websites and measure the results in terms CEOs and CFOs understand – sales leads, new customers, and reputation indices, to name a few.

Answer by Barbara Puffer, Puffer Public Relations Strategies: Lifelong learning is essential.  If you have kept up with the profession, the people who need you — who want to pay you for your services — will find you.

“Very unpredictable and changing times” has been the mantra during many periods in my long career.  At those times, public relations professionals have been relied upon to manage critical information and to strategically use research and words to turn the tides of crises.

Today’s economic downturn and related turmoil is an exciting opportunity for communications professionals that have kept abreast of and adept at the latest trends of the profession. It’s a time when all of one’s networking relationships, education, and experience can be maximized for the most effective approaches.

I remember a now-retired colleague from Union Carbide telling me as a young professional that a prepared communicator doesn’t need to worry about “crisis communications” as a singly-defined area of expertise.  He emphasized that all crisis communications is best tackled with a base of solid communications research, planning and practice that effective communicators should have been using all along.

To tap a familiar cliche, lifelong learning is essential.  If you have kept up with the profession, the people who need you — who want to pay you for your services — will find you.    Continue learning and using all technology available to you, read and stay informed, and know your colleagues in the profession.  It’s a small world out there.

Deloitte LLP has posted its third annual chairman’s Ethics and Workplace Survey.  I say that there are serious implications for the PR professional.

The intro to their news release reads:

NEW YORK, May 18, 2009 — According to the third annual Deloitte LLP Ethics & Workplace survey, 60 percent of business executives believe they have a right to know how employees portray themselves and their organizations in online social networks. However, employees disagree, as more than half (53 percent) say their social networking pages are not an employer’s concern. This fact is especially true among younger workers, with 63 percent of 18–34 year old respondents stating employers have no business monitoring their online activity.

The release continues:

“With the explosive growth of online social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, rapidly blurring the lines between professional and private lives, these virtual communities have increased the potential of reputational risk for many organizations and their brands,” said Sharon Allen, chairman of the board, Deloitte LLP. “While the decision to post videos, pictures, thoughts, experiences and observations is personal, a single act can create far reaching ethical consequences for individuals as well as employers. Therefore, it is important for executives to be mindful of the implications of this connected world and to elevate the discussion about the risks associated with it to the highest levels of leadership.”

Well, okay… how does that apply to PR, you say?  I say plenty.  It’s about our reputations!

The release goes on to say, “employees appear to have a clear understanding of the risks involved in using online social networks, as 74 percent of respondents believe they make it easier to damage a company’s reputation.”

“One-third of employees surveyed never consider what their boss or customers might think before posting material online,” Allen continued. “This fact alone reinforces how vulnerable brands are as a result of the increased use of social networks. As business leaders, it is critical that we continue to foster solid values-based cultures that encourage employees to behave ethically regardless of the venue.”

How about these specifics from Deloitte’s survey?

• 74% of employees surveyed say it’s easy to damage a company’s reputation on social media. 34% said they rarely or never consider what their clients would think. 15% said that it their employer did something they didn’t agree with, they would comment about it on line. 
• 61% of employees say that even if employers are monitoring their social networking profiles or activities, they won’t change what they’re doing online. 

And finally, consider this from the study:

“Fifty-eight percent of executives agree that reputational risk and social networking should be a board room issue, but only 15% say it actually is. How are executives working to mitigate the risks of social networking media?”

1) “Our executive team regularly discusses how we can best leverage social networks to our advantage while mitigating risks.” 27%“
2) My company has formal policies that dictate how employees can use social networking tools.” 22%
3) “Our senior leadership team addresses issues related to companywide social networking.” 22%
4) “My company has a program dedicated to monitoring and mitigating risks related to social networks.” 17%

The Deloitte conclusions include this advice:  

“Therefore, attempts to mitigate reputational risk in these online communities should include an emphasis on culture, values, and ethics within an organization. By reinforcing these fundamental elements, business leaders will have the opportunity to encourage good decisionmaking in virtual social networking environments.”

What are you doing about educating your employees about their use of social media sites?

In essence, the social Web, and all the tools and services it continues to spawn, has forever changed the game. There are PR firms that will adapt to meet the growing mass-market demand for Internet-based expertise and service, and there are many that will not.

So here’s an updated look at 10 PR trends driving the revolution, from PR 20/20 Blog. 

The major news release distribution services have done a great job of creating “feeds” into the websites of major news organizations.  These feeds provide the illusion that the news websites have “published” or covered a news release because it was newsworthy.  For better or worse, that’s not the case.  Thanks to agreements the newswires have with these sites, just pay your money and your mediocre story can live happily on msnbc.com where, for a few days anyway, you can show-off your brilliant media relations triumph to unsuspecting superiors and clients alike.  These “hits” provide you with some great “clips” for your electronic or printed collection of media relations “results.”  Now just sit back as the kudos come pouring in.  And all of this can be yours for ten clicks of your mouse and a few hundred dollars.  What a deal!

Full list on Daniel Durazo’s Blog

The University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication has released their fifth Public Relations/Communications Generally Accepted Practices (GAP) Study.  GAP is one of the most, if not the most, comprehensive studies of key issues impacting PR practitioners.  It provides data addressing such key questions as, how much companies spend on PR and their PR agencies, how the PR organization fits within the overall organizational structure, and respondents’ attitudes about, and budgeting for, PR measurement and evaluation.

The report shows there is a sharp correlation between where the PR function reports within organizations and its adherence to best practices. The higher up the organizational chart the PR function reported, the better that organization and its PR performed against the 13 best practices the study’s authors identified.

View the 2007 PR GAP V Study: http://www.annenberg.usc.edu/CentersandPrograms/ResearchCenters/SPRC/PrevGAP.aspx

What can I say?  I’ve always advised and taught my journalism and PR students that successful and effective media relations is about mutually beneficial relationships… so an e-mail news release push isn’t always going to be effective if there is no relationship in the first place.

See what Media Daily News commentator George Simpson has to share on the subject on November 16th.  I’d love to hear your comments as I’m sure Mr. Simpson would, as well.  He’s only the messenger, remember.  This is a great topic for a media relations debate.

Barbara Puffer, Puffer Public Relations Strategies