Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

In Content Chemistry, there is a story of how a company hired a PR firm to launch their new website. The firm got the site blacklisted. Learn what happened....

Rather than write an original news release, though, the PR firm simply copied the text from the website’s home page and submitted it to the online newswires. Oh yes. They copied the text from the website’s home page as their “news release” (I seriously hate PR people sometimes; more on that here).

What is wrong with people? Can you imagine paying for a PR firm to do that? I’d be furious. But I’d be even more furious when I discovered what happened next. Because the wires automatically post to websites around the globe, within minutes there were more than 1,000 instances of that home page content on the web.

Duplicate content is a big no-no for the Google algorithms, So the site was flagged as likely spam and they blacklisted the domain. Suddenly the website dropped from search results, even when you typed in the exact company name....

Is your business as profitable as it could be? Here are top tips to help you thrive in the current climate and key ways to cut costs, based on research into today’s most successful agencies...

Chris Merrington, director of training consultancy Spring 80:20, who worked in conjuction with Kingston Smith W1 to conduct the report's research, comments: “A key recommendation that I often make to the PR agencies that I work with, whether during tough times or otherwise, is to focus on the four key business priorities of: sustainable profitable revenue, resource management, cash flow and delivering massive value to clients. Agencies can’t simply cut their way to growth; a trap that many seem to fall into.”...

Over the past year, I found my company, Thornley Fallis, repeatedly competing for assignments against non-traditional competitors. Ad agencies invading our turf. Digital boutiques. Marketing agencies. Management consultants.

An increasing proportion of the assignments we won from clients incorporated digital communications as a core element. Throughout 2012, we saw the budgets for these assignments shift away from traditional public relations activities to digital. The budgets didn’t shrink. The allocations against digital activities increased.

In a world like this, if you want to be a Public Relations Survivor, you must be willing to reinvent yourself constantly. That’s what the most successful firms in the communications marketplace are doing. And that’s what we’re doing at my firm.

And here’s the indicator that drives this home. Today, only about half of Thornley Fallis’ revenues are from what would have been considered traditional public relations services. The other half? Video production, public engagement, content marketing, design and development....

In most organizations where I worked, the digital strategy group responsible for Web functionality and content rolls up to marketing and works alongside customer support and marketing communications, which in turn often include brand and public relations teams.

The size of the first group depends on the volume and percent of Web commerce as compared to direct or channel retail. Introduce social media and the plot thickens. Especially when it comes to content, every group should get involved and contribute based upon experience and visibility into data and customer feedback.

It's early days, and companies are still figuring out where they need to be and which digital experiences to tackle first....

[3 key themes for content marketing in 2013 ~ Jeff]

Two huge public-relations firms are going into the advertising business -- focusing on areas that are natural extensions of PR....

In general, public-relations firms have been quicker to adapt to the changing social-media landscape. It's not just the big players like Edelman and Weber Shandwick. Independent firms such as Shift Communications and Digital Influence Group saw social media, and in turn content marketing, as a natural extension of their mission.

It's important to note that public-relations firms aren't banging down doors to break into the traditional advertising world of print and television, at least not yet. Rather, they're smartly taking advantage of opportunities that have come their way. For example, the concept of native advertising -- embedding paid content in an editorial environment so that it is barely distinguishable from the journalistic information around it -- is conceptually the same as placing press releases that look like independent journalism.

It's a natural fit for public-relations firms. These firms come to this new world with advantages. They understand the publishing business and have a long tradition of collaborating with publishers to create content. And they get that content marketing is not only about creating interesting material; it is equally about managing the distribution of content through all of the social channels. With the major social platforms like Facebook and Twitter introducing paid-media opportunities, the public-relations firms simply are climbing on board.

Coca-cola finds online buzz has no measurable short-term sales impact, but digital display ads work about as well as TV.

Study finds online buzz has no measurable impact on short-term sales, but online display ads work about as well as TV, said a company executive in a presentation at the Advertising Research Foundation's Re:think 2013 conference in New York today. It's a stunning admission for a company who's flagship brand has 61.5 million fans, more than any other brand on Facebook.

But Eric Schmidt, senior manager-marketing strategy and insights at Coca-Cola, isn't giving up on buzz just yet. And he cautioned against reading too much into the research, noting that it covers only buzz, not sharing, video views or other aspects of social media. But when Coca-Cola put buzz sentiment data into the same analytical framework it uses to evaluate other digital media, Mr. Schmidt said, "We didn't see any statistically significant relationship between our buzz and our short-term sales."...

I'm a big believer in lifelong learning and the importance of listening before crafting a communications strategy, much less a campaign. 

But, I recently learned a very painful lesson by violating my own code of listen first, last and always.

The setting was a new business presentation to a professional services firm. Because I'd done so much work in the field over the years, I just assumed I knew what the prospect's challenges would be. Even worse, I was so blinded by the brilliance of what we'd built at Peppercomm over the past 18 months or so that I didn't listen when the prospects began to explain why they were firing a global, holding company and looking for a smarter, nimbler and more creative partner....

Have you ever sat in on the board of director's meeting for your company? Ask if you could at some point if not. Or find a board member and talk to them about what they find important when hearing from the leaders of your organization. You know what they're going to talk about? Revenue. Costs. Year-over-year growth. You know what they won't talk about? Fan numbers, friend numbers, followers or "Likes." The typical board member, when hearing from a manager in the business, looks for things like projected revenue, growth opportunities, potential market weaknesses ... anything that will help the organization make more and spend less. ...

Hiring a public-relations firm for your small business can be a difficult decision. There's no guarantee that a PR campaign will produce the desired results, and the costs can be quite high. Yet, a successful campaign can help you expand your business in ways you never could on your own.

So how do you find a PR agency that is likely to benefit your business? "It comes down to a combination of your budget, expectations, their track record in delivering results, and your chemistry," says Dave Manzer, founder of PR Over Coffee, an Austin, Texas organization that educates small businesses on how to do PR.

Here are 10 questions to help you assess PR agencies...

Earnings per billable consultant in PR agencies have not changed since 2009, but salaries are putting the industry under considerable squeeze, according to the Public Relations Institute of Australia (PRIA).

Chairman of PRIA’s Registered Consultancies Group (RCG), Annabelle Warren, revealed findings of an industry study late last year showing salaries for senior account managers, account directors and group managers had increased, even though earnings per billable staff member had stagnated since the global financial crisis (GFC).

“The data shows that while staff are getting paid more, the revenue generated per consultant is not increasing. This is deeply concerning as additional profit is coming from managing overheads, which is short-term,” Warren says....