4 Reasons Why PR Agencies Are Taking Over Social Media
PR agencies will inevitably own the social media space for big brands. They simply have the right skill set and the right billing model. They have the ability to buy the social media talent needed. And they have something that other social media agencies do not – bigger, more time tested resources for relationship building and research.
1. PR Does Story Telling
At the most basic of levels, writing and story telling is the heart of public relations. It is important to be able to spin an angle, develop a company’s story in a news worthy format, or simply compose a narrative through press releases and conversations.
2. PR Does Relationship Building
Maintaining connections with journalists is old PR (and still important). Today companies need to maintain relationships with influencers. This is a larger scale. These influencers are more numerous and more varied than their journalist counterparts. There are A, B, and C list bloggers, Twitterati, Youtube Stars and the list goes on. Other marketing segments have a lot to learn in this arena.
3. PR Does Crisis Management
The publicity game works both ways, for better or worse. They are out there to push the good, but even more importantly sometimes is having a team to react quickly when bad press hits. This is even more important within social media, where the bad can spread at a blistering pace. No other segment of the marketing community is built well to deal with this exact situation.
4. PR Has the Right Billing Model
All marketing companies share an hourly billing model, but PR bills for ongoing work, not an end product. PR agencies are prepared for a constant effort to get earned media to the right audience, to book event publicity, to leverage partnerships, to cultivate longer term relationships with stakeholders and media.
What PR agencies do you think are leading the way in taking over social media for big brands?
Image Credit ShutterStock.com
Epic Video Tin Foil Fight
A part of the Chevy SXSW Road Trip Challenge that I have been taking part in this past week at SXSW, we had a few random tasks to complete, in between the times when I was working on Social Fresh, including conducting a tin foil fight at a state welcome center. Enjoy some silliness as Ryan Boyles, Wayne Sutton and some great music add up to a great video Team NC.
The Foil War #NCchevySXSW from jason keath on Vimeo.
Love + Soccer = Beautiful Viral Video
Let’s look beyond the fact that I love soccer and the fact that I am filled with deep, deep anticipatory joy for this summer’s World Cup action. The juxtaposition in this Puma video of rough UK football hooligans singing some harmonizing a cappella is simply magnetic. It pulls you in from the first moment and holds you there until you beg them to show you their logo. Great stuff. I watched it a few times.
For those of you who hate soccer, move along, there is nothing for you here. You cannot be helped.
Cottonelle Almost Gets Social
I really enjoyed the Cottonelle “How do you roll?” commercial when I first saw it last week, asking people how they prefer to present their paper, over or under (apparently the answer is over).
But, for a campaign that can get people to the internet pretty easily, their integrated social media, if you can call it that, reminds me more of any empty roll that needs to be replaced.
Yes they have two of their commercial’s characters on Twitter, and a Facebook page, and the poll itself with a nice map of results. But these small efforts are social for social’s sake with very little thought toward tying it all together. They even went out and interviewed folks on the street to add to their actor interviews and put all of it on Youtube, but check out the views on those videos. There is obviously nothing being done to promote them.
It smacks of a brand or agency that thinks social media is suppose to be cheap and easy. I see a multi-million dollar traditional ad campaign and a dollar store social media effort.
There is no effort to engage the consumers, whose attention they are buying with some major TV spots, in a long term way. I am sure the media buys will produce a short bump in sales and if that is all Cottonelle wants, then fine, good show.
But in 2010, pointing people to a micro-site that does not extend the relationship beyond the length of a media buy, is traditional advertising and less effective. The opportunity is to build a community, to engage the consumer in a way that creates a longer term relationship (meaning more money), to ask questions of consumers, to answer questions, to get the people they are pulling in with a clever, simple question, and convert them into spending more time with their brand. Consumers want dialogue.
It is a cute campaign Cottonelle, but perhaps you should consider building consumer relationships with a longer shelf life than say, I don’t know, a roll of toilet paper?
Social Media is Just a Hobby
Jason Falls delivers a little Gary Vaynerchuk impersonation at Social Fresh Nashville, a social media conference for marketers.
A good portion of Social Fresh spoke to what social media can really do for business, including Jason’s talk on “Moving the Needle, Social Media for the Bottom Line”.
In the quick video above, taken at the Social Fresh photo opp zone, Jason recaps why the social media purists (dirty hippies and treehuggers) do not get that if social media is not making you money, it is just a hobby.
