I've has so many conversations recentlyabout the intersection of public relations and social marketing, ranging from official presentations to casual chats over lunch, I've begun losing count. They have been as helpful for me in helping me crystallize a point of view as I hope they have been for friends and clients who we are either working with, working for, or hopefully will be working with and for in the near future.
The ultimate bottom line for me in all of this is that to make this work in the long run, CONTENT will be king.
In the late 90's the great race was to develop a website. Everyone had to have one. So when you finally got one it was like the Grizwolds in the original "Vacation" movie when they finally made it to the Grand Canyon. The stood there, put their arms around each other, took a deep breath, looked at it natural beauty....and then quickly got back in the car and moved onto the next thing. In the case of the website, it was having that same scene in front of the monitor and then beginning to design the second website.
I'm sensing the same "flavor of the month" fervor that we need to try to avoid.
Social marketing is for the long haul. It is about building meaningful relationships. Just building your Facebook fan page, creating a Twitter persona, firing up Flickr and YouTube channels are great but they are not the end as is the case with the average website, they are just the beginning.
So content and the planning, writing, editing and executing of it in a planned, measured but at the same time adjustable and dynamic way will be the long haul play and where the ultimate opportunity lies. I've been experimenting with this approach on the THP Facebook fan page (please become a fan) and it is still a work in progress.
I'm sensing partnerships between clients and their social marketing counselors instead of the "we can do it all for you approach."
Can we write blog posts for clients, yes. Should we do that, I'm thinking no because of a lack of authenticity. Can we "tweet" for them, yes...but we need a mixture of the interesting facts that Peter Shankman talked about in his Richmond talk and the authority that only someone close to the information can provide.
On Facebook, can we plan out well thought out information campaigns like media relations campaigns with information including pictures and video that changes on a regular basis, yes. But only if we are disciplined enough to commit to changing that content regularly, making it informative and valuable to the audience and then encourage that audience to share in the content and conversation.
This will take a partnership and consulting approach from the social marketing counselors who will work as content managers and collectors but also an understanding from the client that they to have to make this commitment as well. They will need to identify folks to will help provide the content and meet their counselors in the middle.
This will help both sides. The investment of time and money on the client side while important will not be overwhelming and overly expensive, and for the counselor it will mean while they might not be able to buy the new condo at the beach, they will be able to have a sustainable business model.
The final challenge for both sides will be to find the cost-effective way to produce that content. High-end audio and video costs a lot of money and in some cases Flip cameras won't cut it. The middle ground may be the best place to play and ability to produce at least some of that content in house is something I know we're seriously considering.
It's a bit of a gamble and the ultimate question about social marketing and ROI is still to be answered. But if content is king then it may be a gamble worth taking.
I welcome your thoughts on this matter as it helps us more than you will ever know. Thanks.
Jon,
Thanks for your post. I agree with the rest that Facebook, and its 175,000,000 people, are a great distribution outlet for your PR and marketing activities at Hodges.
In today's economic environment, everyone can appreciate the need to reduce costs and use your PR and marketing dollars wisely; however, below are some reasons that you may want to consider sticking with your Online Newsroom and leveraging it to help expand your social media initiatives.
Branding
With Facebook you really have no control over the look and feel and corporate imaging of your site. It is all very templatized (by design) and mixed together so that you are really unable to group and categorize your content into clear and easy to find sections – such as PR Contacts, Executive Bios, Featured Stories. You have very little control over the design of your site, the layout and placement of certain items, and the overall color. This is important and while Facebook has certainly come a long way over the years, the lack of control over your image is a big reason to still recommend a web presence.
Access
As mentioned in some of the above responses, with Facebook, people have to be members to fully engage with your Fan Page. Not everyone is on Facebook, and some reporters on deadline might not want to wait for the confirmation to gain full access to your site. Likewise, you are unable to password-protect any areas within your Facebook Fan Page. You are unable to embargo releases or photos, or create special areas for your “A list” journalists to have access prior to releasing to mainstream. Further, there are no publishing controls, such as providing the ability for one administrator to publish only to certain areas of the site, or to lock down certain areas from other administrators. These are all important aspects of your Online Newsroom, allowing you to provide all of your content to as many people as possible in an open way.
In going to your Facebook Fan Page, I noticed some photos. I saw one with “Caroline and Governor Kaine” but I only had access to the thumbnail image. If a journalist on deadline wanted to get a high-resolution version of that photo to place in their magazine, or wanted a larger image to use as the lead story in their blog, they would be unable to do so using the Facebook Fan Page photo gallery as it currently stands.
Distribution
This is one of the most critical aspects of your Online Newsroom. You are able to send emails to your media contact database directly from your Online Newsroom. You can not easily just email your video or audio or image or press release to a built-in list of journalists or influencers on Facebook. There is very limited distribution out to Google Search, Yahoo Search, Google News, Yahoo News, and several of the top social media outlets such as Digg and Delicious. There is very little Search Engine Optimization for your content since you are in a closed network with little control over the URL, Title pages, and META keyword tags. You are also unable to maintain distribution lists from within Facebook of targeted key influencers – analysts, editors, government relations, bloggers, consumers, employees – whereas with your Online Newsroom you have the full ability to maintain your media contact database.
Monitoring and Tracking
Probably the single most important reason to maintain an Online Newsroom is the ability to report on your activity. How many press releases are being downloaded and by whom? How many press kits were downloaded last month? How many times were videos downloaded? There are no site metrics showing Time Spent on Site, User Sessions, Page Views, and there is also no tracking of how many email distributions were sent out. Facebook really offers little, if any, tracking and site metrics reporting which is critical in determining the success (or failure) of your campaigns.
Related Assets
With Facebook’s publishing facility you are not really able to incorporate all aspects of a social media press release. Each asset in Facebook is part of its own area – photos, videos, notes, etc. – and can not easily be combined to create an actual press kit or informational page that would contain text, links, photos, and video all in one place, all related to a particular event or show. With Facebook, you can create a photo gallery and a video gallery, but you can not easily integrate and embed photos and videos into a press release. This is important as journalists and the general public want to see everything about a particular topic all in one place.
These are just some quick examples that I thought of off the top of my head. There are certainly others that center around credibility, stability, and security that are also important, but I don’t want to take up too much of everyone’s time.
In closing, while I think that Facebook (and LinkedIn and Twitter) are extremely important and help you meet some of your objectives, utilizing your Online Newsroom as a communications portal to manage all of your press materials, media contacts, and social media outlets gives you the flexibility, branding control, and security that you need.