Everyone And Their Brother on PR
It’s that time again. The time when Scoble talks about PR in social media, and everyone weighs in, and we all circle round and round, and there you have it.
I usually refrain from jumping into these discussions anymore because the semantics are baffling. I am glad to let those more adept have at it. I prefer to discuss stuff in FriendFeed and (GASP!) on the phone. Yes. the. Phone. Some really smart people still use it. Louis Gray I’m comin’ for ya.
You see, what frustrates me about these “PR IS DEAD OR ALIVE AND WELL” discussions is that more and more PR is fragmented. That’s why the growing pains are being felt. There is no single entity that represents the discipline of public relations today. The profession, the roles, the goals, they overlap and intersect with many other crafts and professions that affect all kinds of decisions and conversations among all kinds of people in all kinds of places, from internal employees to global users to Bob down the street, the one with the dog that barks CONSTANTLY.
So while my very good friends and colleagues hit on some Very WISE PR Tenets - like good PR is good messaging –> we help companies figure out what they really do and how to tell their story –> many others wish to discuss the profession of public relations as the single entity of their disdain, the source of their online misery, simply because it’s easy to do. After all, if you rotate in a biscuit in a circle above a dog’s head long enough while he watches, he will fall over.
Speaking of falling over, I was surprised when Brian Solis gave away all his secrets for breaking news. Startups and companies in the tech space, you have to read this post. Brian can do this because he’s not afraid. He knows his stuff and is therefore confident enough to share it.What most bloggers are complaining about in reality when they talk about the sorry state of PR is the state of MEDIA RELATIONS. Media Relations is the branch of PR that handles the client’s relationships with the media, including bloggers, and that is where those old devices like press releases and news breaking is handled. Media Relations is undergoing HUGE growing pains as the question of what the media is and what news is continues to evolve.
HOWEVER: For Immediate Release: Media Relations is NOT all there is to PUBLIC RELATIONS. It’s a specialty within the field.
Some people are very very good at it. Some people are not. It is HARD to be very good at it. It takes YEARS of relationship building in specific verticals. And in the changing landscape of social media where PR people are often bloggers and entrepreneurs themselves, it gets even more tricky.Often the same people who are good at media relations suck at messaging. Those who are super at managing crises couldn’t pull an event together if their life depended on it, and wouldn’t want to. IR people are a breed apart, but are still PR people. So when you say PR people, you’ll rarely find one PR PERSON who is the same as the next. And what works in PR for privately-held Internet companies is very different from what works for public companies with regulatory scrutiny. The barn door doesn’t open and close on social media alone, farmers. THAT’S why these discussions drive me slightly crazy. THAT and, well, I get frustrated easily when I am on steroids, which I am, and see that once again the PUBLIC is being left out of definition of public relations, just as the social is too often left out of social media.
PR practitioners, help your clients support their public - we can call them customers, we can call them users, whatever - and the rest will follow. So, on that note, I’ll wrap it up and let the links do the talking. What do I know anywhoo.