October 29, 2007
Kirk Hallahan is a former PR practitioner and now a professor at Colorado State University. In an insightful article for the Institute for Public Relations he summarizes his thoughts on the interaction between public relations and new communications technology. Here are some excerpts:
1. Public relations activities cannot be segregated from an organization’s other uses of technology. Communications technologies have altered PR’s structure and function. Customers and others are increasingly asked to interact with organizations through web- and wireless-based self-service technologies. As a result, technology-driven public relations activities are increasingly indistinguishable from routine organizational activities.
2. Public relations must redefine itself as a result of technology. The rise of new communications technologies makes even more irrelevant the traditional distinctions between communications activities. The critical question is whether practitioners are charged merely with producing, distributing and promoting messages that take advantage of new technologies (the traditional communication function of public relations); or should the real function of public relations be to advise managements at all levels (from chief executives to systems analysts) about maximizing organizational-user relationships regardless of who produces content?
3. New technologies are not the solution to all organizational communications problems. Organizations might be tempted to adopt every new medium that becomes available. But they must invest in new media selectively and strategically. New communications technologies must be combined into an integrated media mix that also takes full advantage of traditional media. The metrics for measuring many of the newest media are only in the developmental stage. More needs to be learned about new media’s impact on organizational relationships and reputation.
4. Technology poses new challenges to public relations and client organizations. New technologies can be incorporated into any of the four basic types of public relations programs involving promotion, relationship building and maintenance, crisis communications or issues management. The speed with which information can be shared with stakeholders during a crisis or controversy is obviously an ideal application of new media. Yet speed has placed new, unintended burdens on organizations as well. New media present new sources of crises that did not exist previously. These range from unfounded online rumors to malicious attacks by critics who enjoy unfettered access to a global audience.
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Posted by paul
April 7, 2007
Toward the end of his new book “Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder” (Times Books), David Weinberger, co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto,” discusses The Public Library of Science, a research resource started by editors at peer reviewed journals who wanted to put more research into the public domain. One of its project is PLoS ONE, which sends out research papers in advance of publication. Anyone interested can debate them and post their comments online. A peer review process has already determined that these papers are good science, no matter how “important” it’s deemed.
As Weinberger points out, “knowledge comes in gradations and varieties. Some knowledge is reliable and important, but just not interesting enough for the top journals, so it shows up elsewhere. Some knowledge is unpublished but worth reading and discussing.”
PLos ONE offers a dissemination model for other organizations to consider. What a refreshing and powerful difference in perspective from the binary choice offered in the phrase “What Works.”
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Posted by paul
March 22, 2007
Most people now get their news online. Yahoo! News and Google News have a larger audience than CNN or the BBC. If you create press releases and post them online, do some keyword research and optimize your online press releases to make it easier for people searching the Net to find you. Keyword research will tell you what Net searchers are looking for, what keyword they’re using, which keywords are most viable, and who else is optimized on these words.
As the media landscape changes, old marketing and PR planning methods are no longer enough to reach your audiences who search online. Media planning was traditionally based on demographic segmentation or psychographic profiling, but with the shift to online news and RSS news feeds and social bookmarking, your audiences can now “pull” and share data. If your information doesn’t show up in search engine results you’re missing some opportunities to communicate with your publics.
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Posted by paul
March 1, 2007
Amanda Chapel is an exacting and often harsh critic of the public relations profession and its practitioners. I’d heard some top-tier bloggers talk about getting ripped by her acid tongue, but in my humble corner of the blogosphere I felt insulated, below her radar screen, and I had forgotten about her.
Until today, when she commented on my most recent post.
Paul: Uh-oh. This is gonna hurt.
God of Blogging: Buck up, old boy. Consider her attention a kind of compliment.
Paul: Maybe it’s rite of passage into blogging adulthood.
I was pleasantly surprised. In her own sweetly venomous way, Amanda points us to a resource that I think a lot of people may find useful. It’s a document about legal considerations of setting corporate blogging guidelines, written by a couple of attorneys.
It’s worth a read.
Thanks, Amanda.
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Posted by paul
February 26, 2007
A recent survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project finds that 28 percent of internet users have tagged or categorized content online such as photos, news stories, or blog posts. Tagging is gaining popularity because it advances and personalizes online searching. Here’s the report
More than half (55 percent) of all online America youths ages 12-17 use online social networking sites. Older teens, particularly girls, are more likely to use these sites. Girls use social networking sites primarily to reinforce pre-existing friendships. Boys tend to use networks to flirt and to make new friends. Read the report
Some 12 percent of internet users say they have downloaded a podcast so they can listen to it or view it at a later time. This compares with the 7 percent who reported podcast downloading a year ago. Read the report
Internet-savvy students rely on the Internet to help them do their school work and they describe dozens of different education-related uses of the Internet. But they report a substantial disconnect between how they use the Internet for research and how they use it under teacher direction. Students say that more often than not, instructional uses of the Internet assigned by their teachers are poor and uninspiring. Read the report
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Posted by paul
September 11, 2006
School public relations professionals are the catalysts that can help the education system, community, nation, and the world create a better world, says author and educator Gary Marx. Rather than trying to maintain and defend the status quo, school PR professionals need to create the future that is needed, he says. His book, Sixteen Trends. . . Their Profound Impact on Our Future, suggests that because the world will continue to change, the strategic plans that guide out paths must become living strategic visions.
Because communicators are critical in creating successful schools and school districts the National School Public Relations Association (NSPRA) is developing a new communication accountability resource to be distributed at conventions of the AASA and the NSBA, reports NSPRA executive director Rich Bagin. NSPRA’s web site will offer a new educational portal in cooperation with the Educational Research Service (ERS) to offer educators free and fee-related resources.
(via NSPRA Network)
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Posted by paul
