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Is PR Getting Short Shrift in Social Media?

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Back in the day when I was a whippersnapper in Chicago’s PR agencies, the lament was “we weren’t getting a seat at the boardroom table.”

Fast Company landed on my desk several days ago; I devoured the cover story, “Social Media Is Sexy (kinda).” It features “38 ironclad rules (sorta); 18 (uncomfortable) truths); and 6 can’t lose secrets (you wish).”

From the tone of the headers on the cover, insert tongue squarely in cheek.

Turn to “Insider’s Secret No. 5 — You Hired The Wrong People.” (The strange thing about these pieces is I can’t tell who wrote them; no bylines at top or bottom of articles.

At any rate, this writer says “To be a good social media person at a brand, you have to have a background not just in digital or marketing, but also in your product. There are so few people with that blend of experience.

And…

“People are always shoving social into marketing, or they’re shoving it into digital. It’s actually all this stuff: It’s marketing, it’s digital, it’s creative.”

AHEM!

Dear Mr./Ms. Fast Company Insider Secret No 5 Author:

Public relations practitioners are highly qualified to manage social media. We know the product inside and out (that’s how we promote it); we are content marketers with better than decent writing skills; we’re creative; we are strategists; we are also business people; and, we have a keen interest in the bottom line — you know the ROI and analytics of it all?

Kindly include PR in the future when writing about social media wherever your tongue is.

#ThatIsAll,

 A Credible PR and Social Media Marketing Practitioner

So, PR, are you getting a seat at the social marketing table? Or, are our sisters in related disciplines getting all the glory?

The PR Benefit of Visionary Patagonia

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Fast Company never disappoints. There’s more blog fodder in a single magazine than reading Mashable every day. In a tiny blurb in the May issue, The Rules of Good Business, the founder of Patagonia is interviewed.

After yesterday’s blog post about the C-suite executive for Chick fil-A and how his views caused horrific PR, look at how cool the Patagonia PR team must feel to be working with a visionary CEO the likes of Yvon Chouinard.

After reading the Fast Company story and my observations:

        • Buy Patagonia
        • Become a sustainabililty consumer
        • Start the learning curve about saving our planet simply by purchasing the right article of clothing

Did you know Patagonia is one of the greenest/cleanest and environmentally savvy companies around? Its founder, Yvon Chouinard, is a green-living pioneer who has put green squarely on corporate and consumer maps.

Patagonia lives and breathes love of our planet. Among its product suite, there are about 40 items the company follows every step of the supply chain to monitor how natural resources are used. The company knows exactly the type of water (i.e. well, irrigated) being used and its effect on the environment.

Chouinard introduced the sustainability index; Patagonia is working with 40 clothing companies, such as Walmart, to put green buying directly into the hands of consumers.

In the near future, smartphones can be pointed at an article of clothing and the shopper can see a clothing item’s sustainability index grade. A pair of jeans may have a score of 10 or 2 based on a variety of factors. How flippin’ cool is that?

Why Buy Patagonia?

When you think of founders of companies, you want to believe each has the best interest of a cause, an issue, Earth, natural resources, children, or something else in mind. With the Patagonia founder, it’s true. His vision for the future of Earth depends on consumers participating and making choices not to buy fabrics made in sweat shops where children are employed or from sheep’s wool or cotton in lands without environmental regulations. He wants our natural resources protected during the manufacturing process, and he’s all about water preservation. (How many people you know swimming in our lakes getting infected with flesh-eating bacteria and staph? Tons.)

Marketing and PR Opportunity

  • Is your company leader a visionary? Can you put that vision into action and develop strategic campaigns to positively influence a global issue?
  • With the top-down strategy, how can PR influence audiences who consume your company’s products or services?
  • When you consider thought leadership programs putting your visionary CEO on the frontlines with impactful messaging and use owned media to push that message, you’ll get your results with so many more benefits, too.

What a difference reading about Mr. Chouinard and Patagonia versus Dan Cathy and Chick fil-A. The former’s efforts toward sustainable consumerism have yet to be trendy, but somewhere the pendulum has to swing to the side of consumers’ green education more than just recycling PETE.

Want to work with a cool company the likes of Patagonia with an even cooler visionary? Then do your research ahead of time; it just may make a difference.

 

(Photo Credit: Jayme Soulati, iPhone 4S)

 

In Social Media Chaos, Remember Traditional PR

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From www.honesttea.com

I never, ever thought I’d write a post about the value of traditional (I don’t put PR in my title much any more; I prefer the business-to-business social media marketing moniker.) I was all up in arms over a he got from a PR firm about a new buzz word its trying to create, called “PRkting.”

That threw me into a tailspin, and here’s why:

Public relations is its own discipline. Yes, now more than ever with marketing.

Ergo WE DO NOT NEED TO CALL OURSELVES A CUTESY B.S. DESCRIPTOR.

Maybe the ergo was supposed to swing the other way; in this instance it swung…directly into the quagmire of bad ideas.

Public relations practitioners have gotten, get and will always earn a bad rap; especially if they’re behind the . If you’ve been following any posts , at , at or at , then you’ll know how bad it’s been for we in PR.

Putting a stupid, trendy buzz word moniker on what public relations should be to disguise all the bad and to tap the good from marketing is not the answer. What is the answer is doing good, traditional PR to earn respect. That way people in marketing and business and the C-suite and corner office can understand the value of public relations.

Good Old Traditional PR

An , cofounder & TeaEO of Honest Tea, July 23, 2012 is a perfect example of traditional public relations at its finest.

Mr. Goldman, to be sure, did not pick up the phone and pitch the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal all by his lonesome. After all, he’s “TeaEO” and that’s his title, no lie.

The TeaEO of wouldn’t have thought of aligning a current business issue in an op-ed based on a proposal by NYC Mayor Bloomberg to ban sugar-sweetened drinks in containers larger than 16 oz. After all, Mr. Goldman is in a corner office running his business.

Mr. Goldman, TeaEO of , is likely not the brilliant writer depicted in the Wall Street Journal op-ed, although one cannot be sure. His smarts are more than likely attributed to solid business sense to “launch Honest Tea 14 years ago with five thermoses and a belief that consumers were thirsty for a lower-calorie natural and organic beverage.”

And, so, I bring you three solid reasons why traditional public relations is squarely behind 75 percent of op-eds you read in national newspapers (that stat is totally unsubstantiated).

Do you think the TeaEO (I bet you’re tired of hearing that title, eh?) of an entrepreneurial company knew innately how to land an op-ed in a national print daily business newspaper or did he perhaps rely upon professionally trained, strategic public relations practitioners who knew to:

  1. Seize Mayor Bloomberg’s timely proposal about anti-sugar drinks in large containers and make a case for Honest Tea which already has made a sizeable capital investment to conform to current New York City regulations?
  2. Challenge the NYC mayor to consider and reverse his expensive business proposition that would wreak havoc on a business that provides tea in 16.9 oz bottles to city restaurants.
  3. Write a coherent and thoughtful op-ed with action orientation that has readers siding with the TeaEO.
  4. Pitch the piece to a department in the Wall Street Journal typically so absolutely unapproachable AND get it accepted for publication.

Eh?

Perhaps you hadn’t thought of what goes on behind an op-ed until now. Trust me when I tell you, that public relations by strategic practitioners make these elements happen on a daily basis; it’s just that you don’t know it. And, trust me when I tell you this…when you see a PR person trying to appear on the frontlines and earn credit for this type of work, run the other way; fast.

Our role is to make our clients and company spokespeople look good on the frontlines; we’re never in the limelight ourselves.

 

 

Soulati Media On The Street: Davina Brewer of 3 Hats Comm

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I had the distinct pleasure of meeting Queen D, aka Davina Brewer of 3 Hats Communications fame, in April in Knoxville at Social Slam. In years past, she was the most prolific of commenters gracing our communities with rambunctious, text-driven jargon the likes of no one else. I was delighted and anticipatory of what her IRL self would be; she did not disappoint. As soon as she walked up the stairs I slammed her with a huge bear hug because I was so delighted to finally see her after all of our banter.

Now, let me assure you, she’s a consummate PR professional; founder of 3 Hats Communication (I’ve tried to inquire about that branding and she’s adamant it’s a true fit for what she delivers although I know it’s got to be like 6 hats.)

I snagged her after lunch and invited a spur-of-the-moment chat with Soulati Media (that’s moi) about small business and social media. Take a look; this woman knows her stuff. Watch for what she says about top-down buy-in; do you agree?

 

Content Marketing Requires Message Mapping

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In a high-level discussion with a colleague recently, we surmised there are three buckets in which we play in the social media world:

  • App developers
  • Big data masters
  • Content marketers

 

 

Although these three seem siloed; in fact, they’re not. The common thread is content marketing, where I play.

  • Everyone expecting to deliver a successful app to the space requires spot-on messaging to enhance content.
  • Anyone dissecting analytics and big data for marketers requires spot-on messaging to deliver the analysis for use in content marketing.
  • Anyone executing content marketing requires message mapping to deliver spot-on messaging.

What is Message Mapping?

There still seems to be great confusion about when to use a message map or if a mind map will suffice. I’d like to shed more light on this topic and help business owners understand the importance of each.

This is a core public relations tool used at the start of any strategic campaign and also prior to launch of a business. A message mapping exercise can be executed any time, actually. If a leadership team is interested in tweaking and perfecting messaging to launch new products or services, or complete a merger or acquisition, then a message map comes into play. Sales teams can even use message maps, as well.

When you develop a message map, a three-hour session with an integrated leadership team is drilled down to a messaging platform that becomes a creative suite of sound bites. Everyone likes to call it the elevator speech. It is and it’s so much more.

Message maps allow the encapsulation of a story about a company’s history, its products, its services, its people/founders, its competitors, its pricing, and industry all within one map that looks like a hub with quadrants and sub-sections.

When questions are asked of an executive, the message map provides all the prompts for the answer and then some. I’ve known executives to minimize the map and keep it in their wallet for easy reference. Nowadays, it’s easier to pull it up via mobile device.

As a content marketer, I recognize how critical a message map is to the success of any social media marketing campaign. I prefer to use a message map or messaging platform to draft social media posts for Twitter and Facebook. I prefer to reference a message map to ensure that approved language is added to corporate blog posts, too.

When there isn’t a message map, there is no unified voice. Think about that. Most of my clients that are smaller don’t want to invest in message mapping exercises. When they don’t, there is no approved corporate content to communicate externally. Messages become a tangled web and the team can become confused how to communicate and best portray the company.

For anyone starting or dabbling in social media marketing, I encourage this exercise. The outcome provides a foundation to build upon as your company grows. It is a critical component to the success of your positioning and the strength of your brand.

Lastly, a message map is NOT a mind map. From what I understand, mind maps allow for the tracking of tasks, actions and future programs via in-depth schematic like a roadway. Still confused? Ask me; ready to shed more light any time.