my 2 cents

You can't always believe the headlines

 

"Social Falls Short on Customer Loyalty; Traditional Methods Encouraged"

That headline in a MediaPost story this week caught my eye.  It flies in the face of all the hype we've been hearing about the wonders of social media.

The study, which surveyed 5,000 people in the U.S. and western Europe, found that only 18 percent of the respondents felt that their interaction with a large company or its brands via social media would encourage them to buy from that company again.  The number slipped down to 15 percent for social media interaction with smaller businesses like local retailers. 

The report says social media appears to be one of the least effective means of encouraging customer loyalty and other techniques that are more likely to resonate with consumers should get priority attention and budgeting from marketers and retailers.  The other techniques mentioned include a home delivery option, control of channels and frequency of communications received from a company, and a choice of ways to contact the company with questions or problems.

With all the talk about how impactful social media can be when connecting consumers with a company or brand, the survey begs a few questions.  

First, could the survey simply be wrong?  Might the questions asked have been leading, tilting toward desired responses?  The other question is who commissioned the survey and what might they have to gain from a particular set of findings?

Aha!  That might be the problem with this survey.  It was done for Pitney Bowes, whose mailing equipment products like postage meters are threatened by a reduction in pieces going via the U.S, mail as more promotional pieces and even billing is done electronically via email and other digital platforms.

"Sophisticated social media and Web interaction can be time-consuming and expensive and outcomes are difficult to measure," says the report. 

So would our friends at Pitney Bowes have us stay locked into our old methods of interaction, and ignore or avoid new technology?  

I think many marketers and their agencies are getting it right as they experiment with social media and other forms of digital communication, while looking for ways to measure and determine the ROI on the new opportunities that the Web afford us.

We also need to show a healthy skepticism when we see surveys, asking who conducted or who paid for the research, and what might they have to lose or gain by its findings?

Happy Thanksgiving...

.. from New York City

 

Redefining Public Relations



 

Stuart Elliott's column in today's New York Times tells of an effort just announced by the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) to come up with a better definition of public relations.  The current definition, which dates back to 1982, is embarrassingly vague:  "Public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other."

What?  No wonder the PRSA has been so ineffective in boosting the image and the professional and ethical standards of our profession.  They can't even come up with a real definition of what we do.

I'll admit that putting into a sentence or two the scope of what we do in PR is no easy task.  Many people look at PR as simply media relations, but we know it is so much more than that narrow aspect of our work.  It involves, or can involve, counseling management at the highest levels on things that go beyond dealing with the media.  And these days, reaching out to various constituents goes far beyond working with and through traditional media.  The internet and social media have made PR a whole different world.

The need to recognize the changes that have come about due largely to social media are behind PRSA's effort, according to the article.

The new media we now work with call for a different method of reaching out.  But I still maintain that media is media, and key is that effective messages must still be crafted and written well.  Plans still must be thought out in advance for how to deal with accidents, crashes, mishaps, etc. so we don't have highly publicized PR blunders like the BP Gulf of Mexico disaster. 

And ethics still must be pushed -- by the PR people, if no one else in an organization will do it -- so we don't have lapses like the misleading contacts with the media by PR giant Burson Marsteller on behalf of its client Facebook.  PR should strive to be the conscience of an organization.

Another area where PR sometimes gets involved (or if not, certainly should be involved) is employee relations.  It shouldn't be simply about communicating the company line to workers, but also about treating employees (and would-be employees) with respect.  By looking at the hiring/interview process at many companies, including at many larger PR agencies, it's painfully clear no thinking PR person was involved in developing or monitoring it.  And when painful decisions are made, such as firing an individual or laying off a group of employees, what should be the humanity of a good PR person's hand is often overlooked or ignored.  These are times when sensitivity that should be a part of public relations thinking needs to come into play.

So what should be the updated definition of what we in PR do?  I had to laugh when I saw the quote in Stuart's column from Rosanna Fiske, the PRSA CEO.  "My parents," she said, "for the longest time have been trying to figure out what I do for a living."  I can relate, as can many of us in PR.  Maybe a better definition will help let our families and friends understand what we do every day.

Public relations is still about communicating... communicating with customers and potential customers; neighbors and communities impacted by an organization's business, operations and/or facilities; with vendors and suppliers; with the workforce, investors, partners; with government officials from the most local level up the federal and even international level in some cases; with families of customers and employees, especially in the wake of a disaster; and of course, with the various media who cover or want to cover what the organization does.  

The other part of communicating is the myriad venues through which we can or should communicate -- traditional media, employee newsletters and memos, shareholder materials, in-person forums with appropriate publics locally and beyond, and of course, the instantaneous and increasingly two-way dialogue that is cocial media.

It's a very complex world that PR inhabits, and there's so much that PR can and should do.  So I can understand what a real challenge it is to explain it in a sentence or two or three.  But you know what?  We in PR are supposed to be the experts in communicating and we are supposed to be the wordsmiths.

So I hope the PRSA's effort bears some good fruit.  More than helping us tell our parents what we do in the office, it can also help us gain the understanding and respect of other marketing functions and also of top management in the organizations we serve.

And once we get through this exercise, perhaps PRSA can show some real leadership in developing and enforcing some ethical standards, and in developing realistic teaching standards so students and others coming into our profession have some basic skills and an idea of what to do and what not to do as we reach out to communicate with our various publics through the many channels available to us.

It's no easy task, but getting a real and clear definition of our role is a very good start.

 

 

 

See Jack O'Dwyer's response, in the comments section below...

 

 

 

# 500

 

This is my 500th post at my 2 cents.  Who would've thought?

I remember when I began to blog, nearly five years ago.  My friend CK (Christina Kerley), who got me started, had been an active blogger for well over a year, even though I had told her at first that she was wasting her time.  I couldn't have been more wrong.

So here I am... 500 posts and nearly 2,000 comments later.  Comments have come from people I know, from many I don't know and from some who I've come to know online and in person.  Comments have been from people throughout the U.S. and Canada, and from Europe, Australia, Asia, India, the Middle East and South America.  None yet from Africa or Antarctica, but you never know.

What I had called a waste of time when CK began has turned out to be a rewarding activity, in so many ways.  Blogging has encouraged me to look at things a bit more closely.  It's brought me several new friends who I sometimes engage with offline or even in person.  It's brought me some business, although that was not the reason I began to blog.

About a year after I began my blog, I was fortunate to participate in the Blogger Social, which was held here in New York.  More than a hundred people I had been communicating with online gathered to meet face-to-face and get to know each other.  I met friends from as far away as Australia and Oman and as close as nearby towns in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.  It truly was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

A series of comments by Australian Gavin Heaton on a post by Des Moines' Drew McLellan led to a collaboration by 100 bloggers worldwide, and a book called Age of Conversation. I am proud to have been a part of that and the two succeeding volumes.  In addition to bringing together more than 200 of us who contributed chapters to the books, it also raised upwards of $15,000 for some worthwhile international charities.

Some of the bloggers who were active when I began have since stopped or migrated to other social media platforms.  I'm on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and a few others, but I still enjoy writing my blog most.  I'm not confined to 140 characters, first of all, and, OMG, I don't have to write in shorthand.

So I hope you'll stay with me here and maybe, with some luck, we can celebrate 1,000 posts together.

Thanks for all the comments and encouragement and, most of all, thanks for reading and letting me pass along my 2 cents.

David

 

 

 

 

 

Are PR Pros not being social about Social Media?

A survey recently reported in PR News shows that only 59 percent of corporate PR or Communications directors regularly review what is being said about their company or brand in various social media channels.  That figure is down from 2010, when the survey showed 73 percent monitored social media.

So that means that 41 percent of PR and Corporate Communications directors aren't fully doing their job. 

More consumers are tweeting and posting on Facebook and blogs, covering virtually every subject you can imagine -- including praise, complaints, suggestions about your products, your customer service and your employees.  For a PR pro not to have someone in his organization monitoring social media would be like not keeping an eye on what's being said about your company in the nation's newspapers and on TV and radio.  I'd call it a dereliction of duty.

Social media is a two-way street, providing organizations an opportunity unparalleled in the history of PR and advertising to hear and to be heard directly by the people you sell to or want to sell to.  But you can't be passive and jump in only when you have a sales message or when a crisis erupts.  Social media is an ongoing stream of information and conversation, and you won't be heard kindly if you're there only when you need the social media audience.

It's easy enough to monitor thanks to free tools like Google Alerts and others.   And it should not be difficult for companies to have a genuine presence on some social media platforms, offering information, advice, news and responding to what others are saying or asking about you.  You don't have to be tweeting 25 times a day or posting on Facebook or a blog constantly.  But try to set some sort of schedule for sharing information regularly so your social media presence is fairly fresh.

Social media is here to stay, even as various platforms evolve  and new ones come into favor.  It is simply too big for PR pros to ignore.

Investing in Local News is Good News

 

NBC announced yesterday that it will be making a major commitment to -- and a major investment in -- local news.  This should be good news for the news-consuming public, and NBC's new owner, Comcast Corp., thinks it will be good news for its bottom line, too.

Part of the commitment, says NBC, is that it will be hiring more than 130 staffers, mostly in the news department of the network's ten owned-and-operated stations, which include stations in the biggest U.S. markets.  More than 1,200 hours of local newscasts will be added, with some stations eventually adding 24-hour news on HD side channels.  Four stations including the New York flagship WNBC-TV (Channel 4 here) will also get funding to add investigative reporters.

It's ironic that this is happening as newspapers continue to lay off reporters and radio, with the exception of news/talk stations, have pretty much given up on local programming.  Clear Channel recently announced it is letting a bunch of local newscasters and air personalities go, to be replaced by automated and syndicated programming.

So maybe NBC's move to bolster local news is a wise move, as they fill a growing gap.  And from a financial point of view, news is cheaper to produce than other programming.

For local viewers, it should be a good thing.