Are PR Agencies a Dying Breed?

Karly Hand – Karly Hand @identitycrisis

Erin Portman – Erin Portman PR @erinportman

Brian Solis – PR 2.0@briansolis

Peter Shankman – HARO @skydiver

In a world riddled with ADD are PR agencies still relevant?

Solis – Twitter is changing everything – an opportunity as communicators / brand managers.  Real-time flow.  Is it distracting? Where do people go from Twitter – they click out and go to a load of new and different places – discovering information.  building a network around context.  Engage with people who are inteersted in you curating interesting. As a PR person you have to not share what you're having for lunch…..
you should curate information – you are the brand that you represent. information. 

Shankman – as  PR your job is no longer to do your own PR and is now to get others to do it for you.  Twitter is the ultimate example of how to do it. Send thank yous and freebies to people who write about your brands….. Hannibal Lecter – you covet what you know. 

Say something that's worth re-tweeting. 'informational yoghurt' not just plain yoghurt. 

Solis – FB is going after twitter aggressively – how you communicate with your social graph.  A new homepage on FB a timeline for conversations and updates "the statusphere".  Contextual followers.  don't forget Facebook.  The API is now open.

How are PR agencies redefining themselves for SM?

Shankman – Press releases will be dead within 24 months.  The smart agencies are realising that they have to play in this world tha anyone can now play in it….. 70k people are doing their own PR using these tools.   Dedicated people to read the blogosphere just like you used to read magazines.  The beauty if that young PRs have been doing it already search.twitter.com Find ways to get involved – not own the conversation, engage and listen.

 Is it worth putting something out on PR newswire?

If every releaee you put out becomes an irrelevance – some people want to get information on different ways. Journalists are doing searches.  Are you SEOing your releases?Write a release as a formality – social media release written not like a release (use keyword density at the start of the text) write it well – tell the story.  Channels of distributing informaiton.  Changing what you share.  You now have the ability to connect directly with your market don't market at them but find places they hang out.  I use releases on the wire as googlejuice and you can get this for free.  The Press Release is dying.  But this does not mean you don't know how to write.  You still need this key skill!  Writing the story that you want to read about is how you should look at your releases.  Give the background in this way. Putting it out on the wire and hoping for pick-up is just lucky.

What are the most influential digital trends / tools that are reshaping the PR industry?

Erin – the stonrgest are social networks like FB, Myspace and Twitter.  More people use these than use emaiil.  Anecdote about the Girl Scots organisation shutting down a girls cookie selling website because itwas illegal for their terms of service.  She was doing it to raise money to send her troupe to camp.

Start by listening to work out where you need to be. Just joining up won't do it – you create nothingness.  It all has to start by listening before talking.  What are they saying, how and about what? 

How can a PR firm engage a skeptical audience?

A firm should have familiarity with the tools and should work hand in hand with their clients.  Be upfront if you are writing a blog for your clients and you are an agency.  Be transparent.  If you are teaching the client how to use this stuff it 'damn well better be the CEO' because if you get caught you are sunk.

Twitter doesn't make sense for all brands to tweet – but you should use it as a search tool.  A focus group for free.  If you are a brand report back on jounalist work and the news out on the social mediasphere.  Ask your agency to report back on it.  Peoplbrowser tracks a range of conversations on different platforms – a dashboard that's free on the web. Each one has a different culture.  This will tell you how to engage in each one and the language they use.  Be a genuine participant in the communities.

The me-too syndrome is huge.  Everyone tracks useful information.  Agencies are not dying – but some will close.  YOu have to be traditional and also adapt these tools.  Mass-spamming emails of press releases is the wrong way to use these tools.  If you claim you are a SM expert I'll check how many twitter followers you have to see if you are saying interesting stuff that others want to read.  If you are an expert in your industry people should find your talk engaging.  Before we didn't have the ability to track.

Will firms move to managing a message rather than putting it out?

Businesses are constantly reacting – people use agencies because they don't have the in-house resources to deal with them.  Be proactive get the message out there.  

How to measure success of a SM campaign?

This is the wrong question.  Applying today's metrics to new ways of communicating doesn't work. Drive what you want to measure by your activities.  Design the campaign around what you learn by listening and measuring.  Use micro-sites and measure the hits and linkbacks – design around a destination which enabled us to measure by isolating it from the client's main site.  Listening will tell you everything.

Examples of companies that succeed and fail.

 McDonalds have a search base on their brand name.  They traced his tweet back to him and gave him a Arch Card with cash credited to it.  They were listening on aFriday afternoon and got a solution out by the next day.  Hardy's send gift cards and focus on what people say.  Florida Aquarium – tweets one interesting fact a day and get loads of followers because of it.  Embracing an audience who use the search feature to find this.  Fan pages – these may not be worth developing.  Some make the fan page on FB into a profile instead…. create a personality around the brand.  The Skittles campaign rather went about messaging in the wrong way.  Motrin magazine's Moms row blew up because they didn't listen first. 

Richard@dell is engaging on Twitter and the social web.  He doesn't only help celebrities.  

At what point does it make sense to outsource your PR?

 When you don't have the talent or resources to do it.  You need help.  Remember corp com teams need tocover HR, Finance as well as marketing.

Recommendations for companies not yet in SM

Start listening.  Own your name on every platform.Even if you don't use it straight away.  Listen.  Turn to an intern who knows the space and ask them what they think.  Let them teach you.  There's always more to learn.  Don't try to learn everything at once.  Just because college students play doesn't mean they can translate it into business. You need to continue to use your own business acumen. Curate your content carefully because it's all indexable from the social web.  Use"usernamecheck" to find what's available and to find squatters on your brand name.  You teach the intern what to say, they teach you how to use it.

Rules of engagement to follow for SM?

  the communities dictate the rules.  Pay attention to that.  Transparency and honesty is critical.

PR agencies thinking that they were the gatekeepers has died.  What's the business model that will thrive in future?

 
We thought we had control – what we really had was the ability to steer and shape perception.  We now have a greater ability to do this in the communities.  The business model – note competition from new places digital agencies, community management, blogger relations, and freelancers.  We need to adapt to bring in all these things.  Brian Solis has hired librarians to index the data so we can use it.  community managers to listen and tell the cleint to respond to situations.  We don't charge for email blasts any more.

 Agencies can add value through 'adult supervision' adding message and strategy for external publics. Metrics matter – agencies showing monthly reports on metrics not mentions.  Skillsets beyond Google Analytics – tools that can add value.  Work with blogger.  Trad industry analyst relations still work.  The trad method of engaging with journalists may take 6 months to get results.  You can get results within hours with this new media.  Know who you are trying to reach and where they consume media.  Not everyone is like you.

Part of the model is dead – from the ashes rises the phoenix of the future.  What will die? 

press releases, not engaging in conversation, broadcasting messages at audiences, the blast fax.

What's a proper reply to a tweet that is relevant?

 what's appropriate?  Advertising is when you're doing it and PR is when someone is doing it for you.  Your goal is to create raving fans who will tell the person posting on your behalf.  Yelp is a useful service for when someone mentions your company. Offer a great free service to the complainer convert them to your way.  Approach directly.  But there is a creepiness factor that people have to just work through. The individual conversation dictates the response.  Every conversation requires a unique response you can't cut and paste the same replies.  An age of customisation. 

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Tags: , Brian solis, erin portman, karly hand, peter shankman, pr agency, SXSW