PR Studies

Speed versus substance

Here's a confession: I've done no more than dip my toe into Twitter. I know it's where the conversation is, I know it's the latest toy loved by celebrities and social media mavens. I know it's where news breaks and gets discussed. I know it's a great example of the mobile internet.

I also recognise (and this is best of all) that it's easier to get into than blogging, so a new generation has skipped blogging and become enthused by real-time conversations on Twitter. (Consider the irony: blogging, like email, is considered 'too slow' by Generation Y whose members grew up on instant messaging and mobile phone text messages.)

But even so. I'm not fashion-conscious and I'm keen to keep the noise down and cut through the clutter. Besides, I don't currently have any clients so the need to be actively engaged is lessened. If anything, I've moved more of my reading in the direction of good old-fashioned books in the past year. There's a tension here and I'm pulling against the trend.

But there's something else, a concern about the trade off between speed and substance. Stuart Bruce points to a post by Robert Scoble (in turn quoting Forrest Research analyst Jeremiah Owyang):

"The other night Jeremiah Owyang told me that thought leaders should avoid spending a lot of time in Twitter or FriendFeed because that time will be mostly wasted. If you want to reach normal people, he argued, they know how to use Google. And if you want to get into Google the best device — by far — is a blog."

So it's OK for me to come out as a Twitter refusenik. See how I'm ahead of the curve?

How we learn: paddling pool or immersion?

Like many people involved in teaching, I like nothing more than learning something new myself. It's a pleasant bonus when the lesson comes from a student.

There's a lesson for me in the apparent contradiction in what one of our placement year students writes about how to learn about two areas of public relations practice.

On crisis communications, she writes: 'crisis is an area that you can only gain experience from when you are thrown in at the deep end'. Yet, on social media just a page later: 'I spoke to a lecturer regarding the lack of social media tuition at university and the opinion was that since we are of a younger generation ... we are assumed to already have this knowledge. This is not true and there is an academic gap that needs to be addressed.'

So, for one area of public relations it's 'learning by doing'; in another, it's 'back to the classroom'. This contradiction is the subject of a paper on 'teaching social media' I'm jointly presenting at the Stirling 21 conference in September, so this is a timely contribution.

Desperately seeking symmetry

Every student of public relations learns about the 'two-way symmetrical model', considered to be the only excellent approach to public discourse by organisations. Though published 25 years ago (by US academics James Grunig and Todd Hunt) this model stands up remarkably well in an internet and social media age that prizes conversations and transparency.

I've just read a batch of essays stating that blogging exemplifies the two-way symmetrical model. Let's agree that blogging is (or should be) a two-way process. Readers can comment, they can continue the discussions on their own blogs through trackbacks and hyperlinks. But how is this symmetrical? A blog post always has more prominence than the comments; comments (particularly on corporate blogs) can be moderated and deleted. This is no more symmetrical than a newspaper that has a page for readers' letters and which prints occasional corrections (though rarely with the prominence of the original story).

If not blogging, then are there better examples of two-way symmetrical forms of social media? Conceptually, wikis are the most democratic form - since anyone (or any member of the community) can have equal rights to create and correct content. In reality, though, this is idealistic. Wikipedia (the most celebrated wiki of them all) has increasingly strong editorial controls and an army of volunteers policing changes and new content. So there's asymmetry here too. Besides, participation inequality (the 90-9-1 rule in Groundswell) suggests that very few members of any community are willing to do more than passively lurk - so we're back to one-way communications. Forget the conversations.

As for podcasts and videos, it's hard to argue that they're even two-way channels since they are products of editorial control (though the ease of creation and the way they are shared makes them a form of social media).

What about twitter? This is close to the ideal of unmediated voices in the public sphere (within the contstraints of 140 characters). Conversations can be joined and followed and there's apparent equality of voices because of the lack of editorial control. Clutter means we need filters, though, so Shirky's power laws still apply. Those with more followers have unequal conversational power.

Where are the social media examples of two-way symmetrical communications?

Two new books about PR and web 2.0

At the turn of the millennium, I gave a talk for the then IPR on public relations and the internet.

I decided to simplify the message and describe a case study of how a small, volunteer-run community club had saved money and improved its publicity and relationships with members by turning to simple electronic means, namely a website and email communications. This was the web 1.0 world, remember.

One practitioner in the room was clearly unpersuaded. 'Yes, but is it strategic?' he asked.

I still regret not countering this by saying, 'it's only as strategic as communications and relationships'.

This is the key message from David Phillips's updated Online Public Relations, written with Philip Young. (You see, I'm probably ten years behind Phillips.) This book, the most ambitious in the PR in Practice Series, provides a framework for developing a corporate internet strategy. It also challenges us to rethink the role of public relations. I have reviewed it together with Rob Brown's Public Relations and the Social Web for Behind the Spin.

Vintage Cluetrain

So The Cluetrain Manifesto is ten years old.

Much has changed since 1999 (blogs and other forms of social media have made the web a much more conversational space). But it remains an important polemic against most marketing and PR practices. These haven't changed fast enough.

Take the standard computer-industry press release (the authors write). With few exceptions, it describes an "announcement" that was not made, for a product that was not available, quoting people who never said anything, for distribution to a list of people who mostly consider it trash.

Is there any hope for PR?

But, of course, the best of the people in PR ... understand that they aren’t censors, they’re the company’s best conversationalists. Their job -- their craft -- is to discern stories the market actually wants to hear, to help journalists write stories that tell the truth, to bring people into conversation rather than protect them from it. Indeed, already some companies are building sites that give journalists comprehensive, unfiltered information about the industry, including unedited material from their competitors. In the age of the Web where hype blows up in your face and spin gets taken as an insult, the real work of PR will be more important than ever.

It still needs saying, so The Cluetrain Manifesto still needs reading.

The Domino's effect

The video that caused the storm is no longer available at YouTube, but the New York Times reports the maelstrom the company now finds itself in. 'As Domino’s is realizing, social media has the reach and speed to turn tiny incidents into marketing crises.'

More links and analysis, as usual, from Neville Hobson.

The past and future of PR

With the exception of one brief era, all human communications can be characterised as social media. Epic poetry, fireside storytelling and conversations have dominated our collective history.

The exceptional era has been the industrial age, which introduced mass media (large circulation newspapers and broadcasting). We're now emerging into a post-industrial age in which mass media sits alongside new forms of web-enabled social media.

So to suggest that public relations is returning to a more conversational style involving community building and storytelling is not to predict something new, but rather to describe a return to something more traditional.

This was one of our discussion points from a guest lecture I gave for London Metropolitan University PR students yesterday.

Anti-social networks

Remember when Saturday was a day dedicated to crowd activities: shopping, football matches, big night out?

Well, I'm exhausted from the week (and not that gregarious at the best of times) and Gail has returned from the desert with a cold.

So the best I can do is catch up on virtual social networks:

• Facebook remains a good place for photo sharing; I agree with Bill Sledzik that it's primarily a social network, not a place for work (and not somewhere most students would want to meet their lecturers) 
• LinkedIn has gained some good new applications and has renewed purpose in a recession (it's the place for professional networking) - but I find few compelling reasons to return beyond accepting connection requests
• PROpenMic is the best place for a discussion of current public relations issues and has become a good aggregator of blog content; it's now approaching it's first anniversary - and 4,000 members 

There are many more networks too: blogs, online magazines, various email accounts, twitter, virtual learning environments, wikis, mobile phone and so on.  Unique among them, I still view my news reader as a time saver, not a time waster. I think it's time to turn off.

Social media guidelines

The CIPR has published its updated social media guidelines document following consultation. Simon and Stuart are the first to publish their reactions - and will probably be the best too.

What do we do?

Stuart Bruce pulled it all together: we're still doing public relations, but in new ways.

Society is changing: people want to be listened to, not talked at.

PR isn't dead, but we all need to change the way we work.

Stuart illustrated the immediacy of social media by showing chatter on Twitter from today's conference.