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What is PR?

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It’s come to my attention with the recent and ongoing anti-PR sentiment criss-crossing the country that people are confused about the . In fact, there are people who purposely define themselves as other than public relations when in fact they are in our discipline.

I’d like to begin to rectify this situation with the launch of a “What is PR?” blog series. I’m seeking public relations practitioners of any number of years in the profession and with all skill sets to help me sink in and define the very crux of what we do every day.

I was jolted into this idea based on the highly emotional blogs I’ve been reading about the , the debacle via blog , and numerous other rants against me and my peers indirectly and generally (many on blog).

To join me on this regular feature I’ll unfold over time, please watch for tweets, an email invite, or please send me a note right here, below. I’m highly accessible; it’s part of being in public relations.

Let me share my broad definition of public relations and begin to shed light. It’s not the only definition, I’m sure, and it can be enhanced with your help; here goes:

There are so many descriptions and titles of what people do in public relations it has become confusing. I’ve heard mass communications, marketing communications, corporate communications, marketing public relations, and other descriptors. In fact, a recent Ohio State University graduate insisted he was not in public relations, but everything down to the press release he was doing was exactly PR.

You can be an agency person (my background), work in a corporate setting, get a job at a not-for-profit, in the government sector, or with a non-governmental organization, for example.

Stepping in deeper, a public relations practitioner can become a specialist in a vertical market which defines expertise as health care, medical, pharmaceuticals, financial, publishing, fashion, food/hospitality, manufacturing, utilities, professional services, academia, and the like. Or, he or she can remain a generalist and tap many verticals and industries.

Within these specialties represented by boutique agencies or in-house teams, there are skill sets and competencies defined by editorial/publications, employee relations/ internal communications, financial/investor relations, media relations, industry analyst relations, special events, and more.

Not everyone in the profession has skill sets across the board. The biggest area for argument is media relations; people think just because they don’t know how to pitch media and don’t like it it means they’re not in public relations. I’ve heard folks tell me because they’re in a corporate setting working with internal communications they are not in public relations. This couldn’t be farther from the truth; on both accounts.

As said, public relations as a discipline (in addition to marketing and advertising as disciplines) is broad; many competencies exist within public relations, and I’ve just touched the tip of the berg for you. Where I wish to set the record straight is for the people who don’t realize they are smack in public relations, and for the people who are happy to label themselves something other than PR when in fact they’re delivering this service every day and thinking they’re not. (Why is that, by the way?)

Is anyone else game to help further define public relations and help educate just about everyone? I’ve been told we’re the best-kept secret and our sisters don’t even understand what we do or how we integrate with their disciplines. Heck, it took my parents 20 years to understand I wasn’t doing free advertising. It’s time to alter negative perception right now because there’s a professional crisis of education right now.

(Image: toughsledding.wordpress.com)

My Mini Cooper Mechanic Fail

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Sometimes you need to reveal personal blunders, admit ignorance (read stupidity), and share laughs with the world, and then move on. So, here’s how I wasted 60 minutes on Sunday afternoon:

My orange Mini Cooper needed wiper solution, and it was a beautiful day so I stuck my head under the steering wheel to figure out how to open the hood. After more than four years, I had never opened the hood of this car. Couldn’t find the pull, so hit the other side of the car to get out the owner’s manual and the dash was locked, but in the process I found the pull on passenger side and opened the hood.

What a lovely, empty plastic receptacle smack in the middle of the stuff under the hood; it looked so inviting. The icon on the front had a big X through what did look like a windshield with wipers; however, I chose to ignore that and poured half the gallon of solution into the receptacle.

Only after it was topped off did I begin to wonder if I had added the fluid in the right place. Went to find the keys to open the dash for the manual and learned that of course the icon I had chosen to ignore was  correct  — the clear plastic box was for something else like engine overflow something  or other?

Thinking…

Ran inside to rig up some straws in a long line; just like on TV I began to suck the solvent out and had to pull hard because there were about six bendy straws lined up. The first taste of the solvent was pretty nasty, so I spat that on the ground and exclaimed. Then, I did it some more to try and get the stream going but to no avail. After burning my mouth, I decided to read the label – “harmful if swallowed, poison, contains methanol.” Really? So, I ran inside to swish my mouth with water and was happy I had not swallowed any.

Next…

The shop vac! I sucked up 90 percent of the fluid and wasn’t sure how to get the rest. I ran back inside and grouped 15 straws into a bunch, taped them together, inserted them in the shop vac hose. It worked – almost; still fluid in bottom.

I had seen the little hex screw (or whatever) on the top of the container, and determined that it would do nothing to remove the little container. After this charade, that screw looked pretty intriguing. I ran back inside to open my handy-new-Christmas-present-from-a- neat-friend tool kit and tried a socket wrench (I had no idea how to use it, but I liked how it clicked around in circles making cool noises); but it was too large. I took an adjustable wrench (the one where you scroll the dial and it gets smaller?) and loosened the screw, bolt, nugget thingy.

That’s when the cute plastic box came right off and I could turn it upside down, empty the wiper solution, and put it back in place. I did find where the wiper solution was supposed to go; what I’m wondering about now is what should go in that empty box?

(I hate to admit what my friend, above, razzes me about; the moral to the story is to, uhmm, read the directions.)

Twitter Makes You Smarter

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Am doing a bit of cross pollination and promotion today with The SMB Collective blog where I wrote today’s article, “SMB Twitter Insights.” It’s relevant because there is where I culminate the incredible week with the two blog posts right here that got published on Social Media Today.

(If you’re unaware of this community bloggers’ portal for marketing, PR and social media pros, please register and engage.)

If you’re reading here, you’re aware I engaged with David Meerman Scott this week about his 50,000 Twitter followers and suggested why no one needs to reach those heights. In a nutshell, engagement becomes one-way — outbound versus two-way — back and forth.

A series of comments resulted in the second post here called How Do You Twitter Your Business which shares David’s response and Michelle Quillin’s approach as a small-to-medium business owner at New England Multimedia.

So, for the kicker and so you don’t really need to read all these links, Anthony Miyazaki, who is associate professor of marketing at Florida International University, provides some fabulous insight about why/how/when and what for about Twitter. I write about it in full on The SMB Collective blog, link above.

Where I’m so fascinated and delighted is how this interconnectivity in social media works. Those of us who engage have the opportunity to meet people in business and personally with rich perspective. While we’re often thrown into friendships we’d never form without benefit of Twitter, the result is always oriented to knowledge. I’m smarter today than I was two years ago; I can honestly say it’s because of Twitter.

How Do You Twitter Your Business?

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What fun yesterday’s post, Why Not to Reach 50,000 Twitter Followers, during which I engage David Meerman Scott, a power influencer and author of numerous social media, marketing and public relations books, who did earn 50,000 Twitter followers recently via persistence and diligence.

The post was re-published on Social Media Today which earned 1,000 views there and four comments. It was in this venue that David replied to my post, although I tweeted the blog yesterday to him several times and the pingbacks he got from my blog post were myriad (although likely not too influential on his radar).

What David shared with me on Twitter and in his comment on Social Media Today was that he uses Twitter differently with 50,000 followers. Here’s what he said (lifted directly from his reply):

Thanks for sharing my post. I appreciate it.

The truth is that with 50,000 followers, the way I use Twitter has changed from how I used it when I got started.

1. I look at every mention of my Twitter ID, my recent book titles, and hashtags of conferences I am at or about to travel to.

2. I cannot answer everyone who says something about or to me, but I do try to respond to some.

3. I look at all DMs. Most DMs I respond to. I’m cool with requests or ideas or subtle pitches, but spam me once, and I unfollow in a second.

4. I rarely dip into the full stream of 33k people I follow. But that’s okay. Nobody ever said that it is a requirement to read every tweet from everyone you follow.

5. I use Twitter to curate content — send people to things I think are interesting.

You can’t be at every party in this life, so don’t try!

David

What’s more interesting to me is how Michelle Quillin of New England Multimedia regards my post (and its underlying objective which I firmly discount), David’s status as an influencer, and how the little guy uses Twitter compared to the big gun.

Here’s Michelle (who owns one of my favorite Facebook pages, too, incidentally):

  • I remember when I first started using Twitter for New England Multimedia a little over a year ago, how enamored I was with the thought of having tens of thousands of followers! That was before I understood how Twitter worked for a business, though. For people like you and I, engagement/conversation/relationship with our market is very important, and a serious investment of our time each day. Without those relationships, our time on Twitter does us no good whatsoever. Time is money. We’d be wasting our time and driving ourselves into the poorhouse if we weren’t building relationships with businesses who may need our services, or with influencers of OUR target market who we hope will retweet us or engage with us and give us market credibility.
  • David Meerman Scott has reached a different place on Twitter — that of a “power influencer.” The value of his Twitter following is different from ours. His followers find value not in engagement with him necessarily, but in hearing what he has to say. That’s how he became an author who’s actually selling books, a keynote speaker who’s actually paid to teach at conferences, and now the subject of a blog post designed to engage him and bring traffic to your site. (The latter being perfectly legitimate, by the way!)

(Jayme: Here’s where I’m dumb; I had no ulterior motive to increase traffic by engaging David; it just happened as I was seeking something to write about!)

Everyone gets to draw their own conclusions about the comments above from two vastly different businesses (in size, scope, and engagement objectives). As for me, Twitter provides hidden gems and to lose those with too many followers would be seriously depressing.

What do you make of all this and your Twitter experiences?

Why Not To Reach 50,000 Twitter Followers

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David Meerman Scott is someone you should follow on Twitter. He’s author of one of my favorite books,  The New Rules of Marketing and PR (and, I can’t find my dog-eared copy, darn it), and he blogs over at Web Ink Now.

As I was trolling through Google Reader for some blog fodder, I came across his post today, The Secret to Getting 50,000 Followers on Twitter (and, if you read the blog, there is no secret). David says it takes blood, sweat and The Grateful Dead to hit 50K (well, not really).

(Just to share, I like having handsome men imaged on my blog; David’s mug came directly from his blog, link above).

Since 2008, here’s what David Meerman Scott has done to reach Twitter nirvana — 50,000 followers (extracted exactly from his blog):

Now, I’ll share my thoughts about why you should never wish to reach 50,000 followers on Twitter:

1. You’ll never make a connection with anyone because the stream will be flying at warp speed.

2. You’ll be considered a jerk because anyone who mentions you or asks you a question will need to get in line for your response.

3. You’ll never be able to discern a legitimate direct message from junk mail.

4. You cannot strike up a one-off convo about music  with just anyone because tweeps will get jealous you’re not paying attention to them, too.

5. Your in box will be loaded with tweets, and your smartphone will show more Twitter activity than emails.

6. There will not be enough columns on TweetDeck or HootSuite to deliver the numerous hashtag chats you’ll want to engage in. In fact, you’ll need quadruple monitors to manage Twitter apps.

7. Twitter will become a one-way, outbound channel for you to promote your blogs, books and banter; no two-way communication.

8. You’ll stop following anyone else because that means you’d need to spend a day returning the follow-me-I’ll-follow-you favor.

9.You’ll just start RT’ing tweets without any screening so you can stay on followers’ good sides.

10. And, in reference to the list above…uhm, is that humanly possible, David? You’re not jivin’ us, are you?