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?
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69 Responses
Rob Berman
The reasons articulated make sense but only if the PR firms can be fast followers to those in the vanguard of Social Media. They need to learn and then assume the leadership positions you espouse. Can the old dogs learn new tricks? We will see…
Rob
lisamercer
brpr group in Miami is doing fantastic work for Univision. Also Edleman Digital seems to have it right…but then they always do…..
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David
“Nerds are rarely good communicators”
If you'll pardon the cliche having a good grasp of a whole bunch of tech tools does not make a social media expert.
I really think that the term “Social Media Expert” is redundant. If you look at the sea of youngsters who are savvy self promoters creating the most successful viral content you will see that social media success falls back to the time old Hollywood syndrome, which is far beyond what most so called experts are capable. I would more likely be asking this capable group to come up with my social media strategy than a tech user who has been using the “tools” for many years, as most in the industry indeed have and you rarely see these types as social media glitterati.
As a current student in the Masters in Media Psychology these comments are not mere rhetoric, but after thoroughly reviewing the scientific data and communication paradigms, I've come back to square one, its all about popularity and if I need a lesson in that, I'll ask the popular kids.
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Palabra PR
I just started my own public relations company, and I made a point to include social media management as half of what I do. Perhaps social media management is something to be left for the newer firms to handle..some well-established PR firms are too set in their ways to take on the responsibility of social media. All in all, I completely agree that public relations is the responsibility of the PR professional. (http://www.palabrapr.com)
Ryan @ SmartBug Media
Great post. I think there are some PR firms that get, but there are many that do not, and have struggled to keep up. I smiled when you read your title, because we recently published an article entitled “3 Reasons Traditional PR Agencies Are Becoming Hard to Justify”. Should spur some interesting debate.
http://www.smartbugmedia.com/blog/bid/21978/3-Reasons-Traditional-PR-Agencies-are-Becoming-Hard-to-Justify
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Laurie Pehar Borsh
Jason, I just had to post this back up on Twitter this week (got a good handful of RTs too)… so tired of all the so-called “gurus” trying to take over the role veteran media/pr people play. Social media belongs to and MUST be handled by PR -sorry just does.
jakrose
Thanks Laurie. Took me a little while to come to that conclusion but I agree. Thanks for sharing. rnrnrnJason [http://socialfresh.com]
Taggio
I’m not sure I agree with this. My company did the exact opposite by creating new roles within the company and now have social media specialists in each country monitoring and engaging the social networks. It works so much better now in terms of working with marketing, internal staff and external contributors. (Not to mention the networks are being monitored 24-7 with the different time zones) nnAs long as that company is making an effort to ‘get it’ and put themselves out there by meeting their community offline as well, it can be quite successful.nnPR might work for some smaller businesses- but for the larger brands I really feel the opposite is happening going forward. They have the resources internally to build their own Facebook apps etc.
Laura Grant
Thanks for the awesome article. I really like reading it!Excellent post, thanks a lot for sharing.
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info
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