Global PR Blog Week 2.0

By Mark Rose, CommTech Inc. | PR Future
EDITORS’ CHOICE | PR Agencies & New Media

Q&A with Richard Edelman, Rob Key, and Jim Horton

Blogs Force Change In PR Agency Practices

Blogs have emerged as a major catalyst for change in traditional PR agency practices since Global PR Blog Week 1.0 14 months ago.

Not only are blogs now established as an important information generator, intelligence gatherer, reputation builder, crisis tool, networker, and free digital press, blogs are the delivery method of choice for a “smart mob� of global PR agency watchdogs who are demanding a new, transparent, and highly credible method of delivering PR services (many of those digital watchdogs are organizers and contributors to Global PR Blog Week 2.0). These watchdogs are mostly free agents, unburdened by agency constraints, eager to shatter myths and break through hype.

Traditional large public relations agencies are being forced to adapt and to step out from behind the curtain into the same sunlight we often force our clients to endure. Blogs have created a niche service that is highly valuable and leveraged, and integrates with other traditional public relations practices. Upstarts, boutiques and disenchanted agency vets are setting up shop and generating brilliant ideas that are focused on a new breed of public relations in the digital age.

Big PR agencies are like super tankers; they are set on their course and they take a super effort to navigate a new direction. Do they get the new digital tools that drive news delivery and reputation development? From my perspective companies and individuals are way ahead of PR agencies in understanding and using online communication. The PR industry is trailing way behind a communication revolution that is uniformly redefining how we administer and deliver PR services, and how we gauge and value our effectiveness.

In these three Q&A’s we get a real flavor of the broad revolution going on in public relations. We get various perspectives, effective approaches, trend analysis and success stories.

We catch up with Richard Edelman, CEO of Edelman Worldwide, the world’s largest independent PR fiirm while he is traveling Eastern Europe. Richard is celebrating the one year anniversary of his blog ‘6 AM’ (We have determined that we are powerless over blogging and turn our lives over to Word Press). Richard has learned that controversy increases blog readership and nobody really cares about your personal observations on cultural esoterica.

Rob Key, President of Converseon, is a refugee from big PR and ad agencies. He is an evangelist for a new breed of integrated communications. He gives valuable insight into how companies can be battered on the web and how to combat “flame sites.� Rob has formulated proprietary online communications tools, such as search engine reputation management, that can give a company an edge in the new digital PR battles. A useful case study is integrated into his answers.

Jim Horton, Senior Director at Robert Marston & Associates, balks at being called the “father of PR bloggers� (too PR?) but he is definitely a pioneer. Jim has been a steady blogger since before the term existed and his exhaustive, obsessively updated and annexed site of online PR resources is, well, exhaustive and obsessive. Jim digs deep into the motivation, source, and future for us obsessive bloggers.

The dialogue should not stop here. The New PR Wiki is not a stale repository of archived info, it is a self organizing and self edited intelligence bank for PR in the digital age. I will updating The New PR Wiki with news of PR agencies and blogs. All participants in this event have their own blog. Contact them, challenge them, enlighten them, praise or damn them. To a blogger any attention is positive.

Current PR agency & blog news: Edelman Worldwide is eliciting the input of bloggers in formulating its survey of bloggers – it is joint project between Edelman and Technorati… Hill & Knowlton is launching an ambitious blog program (reported by Niall Cook in “Building a business blogging community for Hill & Knowlton,� Global PR Blog Week 2.0) …

Participant biographies

Moderator

Mark Rose has written for traditional media such as The New York Times and Los Angles Times and is now a ‘citizen-journalist’ for Korean-based OhMyNews. He maintains a blog called PR Future. He has 15 years experience with New York City public relations firms and is currently President of CommTech Inc., specializing in online communications. Disclosure: I was a Senior Account Executive with Robert Marston & Associates 1986-87, and Senior Vice President at Edelman Worldwide in New York, 1998-99.

Panel

Richard Edelman is CEO of Edelman Worldwide, the world’s largest independent public relations firm, with annual billings of 250 million and nearly 2000 employees in 43 offices. He started his blog called ‘6 A.M.’ in September, 2004. He is based in Edelman’s New York City office although he travels extensively throughout the world.

Rob Key is CEO of Converseon. Formerly head of the Innovations Group at a division of Young & Rubicam and member of the WPP.com board, Rob has been involved in digital marketing since 1995. Converseon helps clients like Hilton Hotels, Mikasa, IDT, and Coldwell Banker capitalize on the changing ways consumers and businesses gather, synthesize, share and act on information.

Jim Horton, Senior Director at Robert Marston Associates in New York, is a pioneer PR blogger. His web site www.online-pr.com offers hundreds of public relations resources, receives thousands of page views per day, and ranks second in a Google search under “public relations.� Jim is the author of two books, Integrated Corporate Communications: The Cost-Effective Use of Message and Medium and Online Public Relations: A Handbook for Practitioners.

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

Richard Edelman

MR: How has your blog affected the culture and perception of the firm?
RE: I think that the blog has affected perception of Edelman–that we are serious about the blogosphere, that we are willing to stand up on important industry issues such as Armstrong Williams, that we are open to criticism even by our own employees.

Have any prospective or existing clients objected to views expressed on your blog?
Most clients have been supportive. I had some mentions about my hard line on front organizations and need for special transparency on government accounts especially on VNRs.

What has been the most controversial topics addressed on your blog in the first year?
Armstrong Williams pay for play, PR as the pinata for the media.

Do you encourage employees to blog? Are there firm-wide guidelines for bloggers?
We do encourage employees to blog–Christopher Hannegan on employee comms is good example. We do have blogging guidelines.

Has blogging altered the skill set that you seek in hiring an account executive?
I want an account exec who is at least fluent in new media–who follows those blogs that are shaping opinion in his/her sector.

Can you name recent successes that PR agencies have had in using blogs for clients or agency administration? Where are agencies falling short?
We have not used blogging in administration or in project development akin to Boeing yet.

Any reflections after one year of blogging?
My reflections after a year–I look forward to chatting with my new friends (like you Mark), I like the challenge of having to find a news angle every week or so, I think those blogs most read are those about the PR industry (people care less about my personal journey), I loved the central role I played in Armstrong Williams affair because it helped the industry.

Rob Key, Converseon

MR: How do you think blogs will change traditional PR agency practices?
RK: Right now there’s a Blog mania, and not enough strategy around how they are used strategically. We see new “blog practices” emerge at agencies. We have big brands asking us for “blog and RSS strategies” but are unclear about their objectives. One of our top global petrochemical clients told us that one of the PR agencies suggested a CEO blog, which they believed, and I concur, is probably one of the worst ideas

Blogs are incredibly powerful content syndication tools. They can help establish thought leadership and build community. hey can articulate points of view and better engage key constituents in conversation. There are myriad strategic uses, but in the end they are just another form of a website. The creative application of Blogs is where there is fertile ground for communications innovation.

Blogs can be much more efficient at syndicating content than traditional PR releases. But PR firms will need additional skill sets: RSS fluency, search engine optimization skills, tracking/monitoring and data-mining capabilities, along with sophisticated monitoring of consumer generated media to make this successful. I don’t believe the tactic, in isolation, will revolutionize the industry.

What are the important new skills necessary for the effective public relations account executive of the future?
We’re in a fast changing environment. A key skill for public relations will be to not see every problem as a nail and every solution as a hammer.

A critical skill will be embracing new concepts, approaches and technologies and fully understanding them. These can range from search engine algorithms to social networks. All are having significant impacts on brands and reputations. The PR executives we look for look on this new frontier as opportunity, not fear.

Truly, also, the best communications leaders will be those who can bring the best fusion of creativity skills from PR, with the discipline and metric driven approach of direct response, with the brand managing and building skills of advertising. It’s difficult to delineate where one marketing discipline leaves off and the other begins in the digital realm.

Our programs pull on elements of all the disciplines together with an aptitude for new technologies.

Of course, underlying all of this is still the power of the content and information that one must develop. You can utilize all the technologies in the world but if you’re not communicating authentically, creatively or effectively, you won’t be successful. The “big ideas” that the best of the public relations industry has produced over time is perhaps more important today than ever.

How do you define public relations today as opposed to five years ago?

We evolved out of the “Innovations Group” at a public relations division of Young & Rubicam but by 2001 had recognized that so much had changed in the communications world that we needed a new model and new definition to what we needed to achieve to be successful for our clients. So we sat down and asked ourselves, if we were to get rid of all preconceived notations about what a communications agency should look like in a digital environment where the way people gather and act on information has dramatically changed, what would the agency look like? We decided that it would look very little like many of the traditional PR firms we had grown up in.

As such, we brought together the best public relations/reputation minds together with the best technologists from search engine optimization, web development/RSS, datamining and more. The fusion of the two has given us much greater latitude and influence to achieve client communications goals.

We now define what we do as capitalizing on the changing ways consumers and businesses gather, synthesize, share and act on information. We influence all touch points as opposed to just a small portion of the spectrum. It can be an article, or a search engine result, or microsite, or blog or other form of digital content. We sometimes also describe what we do as helping our clients successfully engage in the digital conversation. Markets clearly are conversations. There are conversations occurring all the time about products and brands. Companies face a pretty stark choice to either ignore the conversation, or join it. But to join it, one has to embrace new technologies, and innovative communications approaches. Change is always challenging and even frightening to companies who had a pretty clear, but narrow, definition of what communications and public relations was. But we’re seeing more and more brands taking the plunge.

It’s an exciting time for the communications industry. Never has the industry had so many tools and technologies to influence target audiences. We’ve also never had the opportunity to “listen” to target audiences and track our effectiveness. Some agencies will evolve, and surely some will not. The PR industry certainly isn’t immune to Darwinism.

What is the most important recent technological breakthrough to aid the practice of public relations?
Conversation mining tools, without doubt, must become essential elements of any thoughtful and strategic public relations program.

With the proliferation of consumer generated media, companies’ have an unprecedented opportunity to capture, understand and act on the “conversation” that is occurring about their brand and products in the digital realm.

Converseon, for example, utilizes proprietary monitoring tools that scour public, online discussion areas to capture, understand and report the products, issues and opinions that consumers share between and among themselves. Understanding this unaided, unprompted and unstructured “conversation” that is occurring among and between key constituents is critically important to:

• Understanding brand/product perceptions
• Providing “early warning systems” regarding brand or product issues
• Gleaning intelligence for communication and product strategies
• Measuring effectiveness of communication and advertising efforts
• Mobilizing “allies” and “evangelists”
• Informing content, search engine optimization and public relations strategies

For far too long, companies have been talking past or over their target audiences. It’s analogous to walking into a cocktail party conversation and just begin talking without understanding the conversation. Who are the influencers? What do they care about? What are the critical issues? Not understanding the communications environment has far too often created a dissonance between PR messaging and the issues most important to their audiences.

These new Conversation Mining tools truly do provide that ability to listen by providing a window into what target audiences feel and desire, but also how effective your messaging is and who it is that you most need to influence. Only by listening first, can public relations programs be effective.

Can you name recent successes that PR agencies have had in using blogs for clients or agency administration? Where are agencies falling short?
We have built a series of blogs for clients for a variety of purposes, including search engine listings, acquisition (driving sales), and generating overall visibility and “POV.” I haven’t reviewed enough PR agency blogs to comment.

Examples of how you augment traditional PR practices with Converseon practices and how it benefited a client and the agency.
We approach the PR practice very differently than most agencies. We first utilize created a “conversation audit” using our proprietary tools to map the online consumer generated media conversation. In many cases, we identify about 10 percent of the population as advocates or potential allies/thought leaders; and 10 percent what we can determined. The 80% in the middle are influencible. We also understand what they key issues are which informs a communications strategy. Our strategy to engage in communications triage. We mobilize the potential allies and transform them into evangelists, and we minimize the visibility and effectiveness of detractors. And we then influence the persuadable.

We mobilize, minimize and influence through an array of strategies and technologies, including affiliate and word of mouth marketing, search engine optimization (which makes content visible), RSS/Blog strategies, viral promotions and more. Behind it all we have sophisticated tracking that enables us to understand with a good deal of preciseness how effective we are, and how we need to optimize and evolve the programs. We look at all touch points where are target audience gathers and shares information, and try to influence them across the continuum.

PROBLEM
To give you a flavor of the type of innovative approaches we take is how we deal at times with “detractors,� especially those “flame sites� that rank highly in search engine results for company brand names. As you probably have seen, many major companies brands have been targeted by protest websites intent on undermining their reputations, including America Online, Delta Airlines, Northwest Airlines, Citibank, General Motors, American Airlines, Merrill Lynch, Allstate, Home Depot, KFC, Microsoft, McDonald’s, Monsanto, Nike, Petco, Altria and Wal-Mart, among others.

Examples of the trend abound. An “Ihatestarbucks� site is number two in Google; the anti-retailer site, www.walmartwatch.com is number 4; www.killercoke.org (number 6) accuses Coca-Cola of supporting paramilitary death squads. www.Babymilkaction.org is organizing a boycott of Nestle; www.wnho.net/splenda.htm (number 4 ranking) compares Splenda to DDT.

SOLUTION: Search Engine Reputation Management
We handle this for our clients via our proprietary service, Search Engine Reputation Management (SERMAâ„¢), which, is designed to maximize the visibility of company and third-party content by reclaiming the “digital front page” of the top search engine results pages. As brand/company information moves to the top of search engine listings, protest sites move lower and become marginalized or easier to ignore.

Generating visibility with company-produced or -influenced content achieves two goals. One, it provides a highly visible forum to provide accurate information about a company and to counteract the negative and false information being disseminated. Second, and perhaps most importantly, dominating the top listings will accomplish what reputation management experts refer to as pushing detractors off the “visibility cliff.”

Companies are entitled to domination of top listings by publishing a diverse range of content that is relevant to the search keywords. Search engines are designed to provide the most relevant information to a user’s search, and company-generated information is certainly relevant information.

Companies must recognize, however, that the content must be diverse enough to meet Google’s terms of service (TOS), which frown upon spam-dexing, or the technique of optimizing essentially the same content over and over. To their credit, many companies already produce a large amount of relevant and diverse materials, including articles, website text, testimonials, press materials, mini-sites and other legitimate content. Unfortunately, this content is not always effectively leveraged. Companies must learn how best to gather, organize and publish this broad range of content in a highly optimized manner.

While the approach may sound simple enough, accomplishing it requires a nuanced understanding of search marketing and reputation management, as well as a sophisticated methodology to ensure it stays within the guidelines of Google (and other engines’) Terms of Service.

These are just a few examples of the innovative communication solutions we provide. Solutions that we believe are helping to transform the public relations industry.

Jim Horton, Robert Marston Associates

MR: Why did you start blogging (posting your thoughts online regularly) and what do you think of the explosive blogging trend?

JH: There was a practical reason and a pedagogical one. The practical reason addressed a need to keep online-pr.com up to date with information that practitioners need. The pedagogical reason was to open discussion about PR to a wider world that practitioners may or may not think about on a daily basis. It has been disappointing that much PR blogging to date has been about blogging. This is changing but it went on for too long. Blogging is best when it exposes the broad reach of communications issues. It opens doors and minds at the same time. The challenge is to understand how media and communications techniques radiate through society and the challenges they pose. In that regard, it is a way to generate intellectual capital for an industry that hasn’t done much of that in its history.

There are a large number of PR blogs now, far more than even a year ago. I have tried to track most of them on online-pr.com at this link.

It is interesting to note that practitioners are abandoning blogs already. In fact, I removed several yesterday that had not had entries for months. Blogging is work. One has to search for topics to write about, write consistently and frequently and develop a discipline of blogging. It is no different than the discipline of keeping a diary or journal. I couldn’t do that when I was young, but for some reason, I have been able to blog five days a week with little interruption. I sympathize with those who find it hard to do, and I understand that my entries are uneven in quality as most bloggers are.

Ultimately, the discipline of blogging will limit its growth. Anyone can start a blog. Few can keep them up day after day, year-in and year-out. This will also limit blogging as a communications tool for clients. Blogging demands processing of huge amounts of information constantly and publishing some of it regularly. It is no different than the work of a reporter.

What is the greatest resistance traditional PR agency management has in integrating blogs and other online PR practices in client service?

In my experience, most PR practitioners are technology averse and not interested in process. By that, I mean they don’t want to take the time to learn new technology tools. They want to get work done. This has been true since the beginning when new-fangled boxes called PCs appeared on the scene. I was involved in technology training during those years, and it was depressing. It hasn’t changed much. PR practitioners adapt more readily to tools that they can learn quickly and are intuitive, such as e-mail and now, blogging. Few are adept in such things as web site building or design and the concept of usability is foreign.

Of course, there are agencies where this isn’t the case. These are firms where principals are technology literate and insist on the same literacy among employees. But, they still appear to be a minority of firms.

Based on user feedback - what is the most useful section of online-pr.com. Why?

The most useful section of online-pr.com on the basis of clicks is the career page where executive search agencies are listed.

The second most used area is the media page with listings for hundreds of media. Other sections are accessed regularly from around the world. We know this because we get questions from Asia through England about material on the site, and we get requests for listing on the site from the same areas. It has been eye-opening for me to learn how active PR practitioners are in countries where one wouldn’t expect it.

I started online-pr.com in 1997 because there was a need for a free central link resource that helped PR practitioners get to data they need quickly. It has grown since then to more than 2000 links and today is frankly, too large. I view online-pr.com now as an online reference section for working PR practitioners who need to find the right quote, the elusive fact or the odd information that isn’t readily retrievable from Google or a database like MediaMap. The site is for practitioners who do homework before writing and strive for accuracy. The 56 papers on the site cover a broad array of issues that practitioners will encounter in their careers. Forms and templates are for common PR activities and course notes come from classes that I taught a few years ago at a local university. I have catalogued all of it in the hope that some of it will be useful to practitioners who are worried about a challenge they are facing and looking for advice.

What do you believe is the greatest benefit of blogs in the PR mix?

An early benefit and important use is for customer interaction and service. Corporate service technicians and engineers respond to queries and complaints directly to customers without going through bureaucratic chains.

An emerging use of blogging is as a fundamental corporate communications vehicle. The CEO talks to employees and the world as well. Richard Edelman is pioneering this in PR with his interesting blog.

Another use is for positioning a corporation and its people. It is a way of disseminating intellectual capital that an organization’s employees produce. It can also demonstrate how closely the organization follows the market and the needs of its customers.

While I think the greatest benefit is in crisis communications at this time, any of these other uses might be of greater value to a company in the future.

What impact do you believe blogging and other forms of online communication will have in PR agency practices 3 - 5 years from now?

This is an excellent question. I’m not sure there is an excellent answer. PR agencies do not act uniformly. Some are technology adopters and some are technology adverse. I would expect that technology adopters will have blogging as a mainstay of the agency’s marketing and client service. But to get to that point will require careful development of how and what to blog and promotion of a blog to target markets in order to build readership. There are millions of blogs but not millions of readers.

As for online communication in general, it has already taken over much of the information dissemination that was done on paper. This will continue.

The question that remains open is whether PR will be limited to niches or whether it can adopt online tools profitably in competition with marketing and advertising firms.

So far, it appears that PR has not done this well. Firms have used web pages for crisis work for well over eight years but other than large PR agencies, not many appear to be in web site building or integrated marketing other than as vendors of media relations services to traditional and new media.

Can you name recent successes that PR agencies have had in using blogs for clients or agency administration?

I haven’t come across any yet, but I am sure they are there. I’ve seen a few done for marketing, customer service and positioning purposes by companies themselves. Some are good. The risk is that a sales-oriented and hype-based mentality intrudes and turns readers off. Blogging is a conversation and pushy, in-your-face salesmanship doesn’t work. One must remember that no one has to read your blog. There are millions to choose from.