Note: The following is a repost from the Horn Group Blog.
So, what is the role of marketing and PR in a world where companies converse directly with the public? Is our profession headed for extinction? I don’t think so. But the rules are changing and the skills and tools required are changing too.
Traditionally marketing and PR have been about influence and persuasion, with PR focused on third party validation and marketing on brand and messaging. Marketing is about saying “we’re great (and we look good too)!” and PR is about getting someone else to say “they’re great!”
Marketing especially has been inherently static. You hoo and haw over messaging until it’s perfect then put it on the website where it stays for a while until you decide that actually it wasn’t perfect and make a few changes. Sure you get feedback from analysts and customers but mostly this is done in a vacuum. Corporate blogging on the other hand is real-time, iterative and conversational. It encourages a real dialog between consumer and company. It is amazing how simply responding to the comment of a frustrated customer can turn a critic into a champion over night. Can messaging, branding or an article in the mainstream press do that?
We’re an agency that does PR, branding and messaging, as well as web and interactive design and development, so for us it’s been a matter of learning a few new tools and applying our existing skills in new ways. Here are some of the ways we’re helping our clients navigate the social media landscape:
- We help identify the conversations worth participating in, and in some cases the conversations worth starting
- We design, develop and manage their corporate blog
- We provide tools to help with stats, metrics and syndication
- We help to forge authentic relationships with bloggers who would be genuinely interested in what our client is up to
- We understand the technology so that they don’t have to
For agencies like ours social media is an opportunity not a threat.