According to a survey cited on Big Mouth Media 79% of Britain’s leading PR agencies have yet to develop online PR and social media services. Indeed 89% do not publish a blog!
Naturally, this is a travesty to my mind, but how is this impacting PR agencies in the commercial sense? Adam Parker, Chief Executive of online news distribution company webitpr said that “those failing to do so run the long-term risk of losing out in the inevitable battle for the online communications market”.
This is both in the sense that social media tools can increase the PR distribution network but also that it improves consumer psychological brand impressing and improves SEO.
Whilst it may be argued that social media fits within PR, I see it fitting in between PR and Marketing quite neatly: the PR element is persuasive and marketing element in that it is trackable and there can be tangible ROIs. Jason Falls would go as far as to say that social media was created because people were ‘running away from marketing.
I agree. I ran away from marketing as i realised that the marketing channels on which I was working were the same marketing and PR channels that I ignored or avoided in my spare time. I am much more likely to make a purchase or act on a call if i am recommended it by a trustworthy source. Even if i know that that source is working for a brand, if they speak to me in ‘my language’ then I will listen.
So to message something within the PR remit through a network of trusted, grass-roots brand ambassadors is going to spread the message much farther and wider than throwing out a release and, not unlike traditional marketing, seeing what sticks.
PR will be more effective if PR firms fully embrace social media. Both in the communications sense and the business sense…
