It had to happen, but the internet and the digital revolution has taken over PR. Fact. In 2009 clients were no longer after the inches in newspapers and magazines. They wanted a bigger bang for their buck. And this meant embracing the digital age.
Although digital 2.0, PR 2.0, social media PR or whatever you want to call it was already on the scene, last year the egg fertilised.
And today building a marketing campaign has to involve web PR. Clients expect a digital presence. Facebook and Twitter campaigns are a must for the marketing managers.
Last year many PR agencies hastily rearranged their service offering by including digital into the marketing mix for their clients - to good effect. The reason PR, and digital PR in particular, did so well last year in a recession was the acknowledgement by businesses that PR actually provides good value for money. In a nutshell it costs less and brings credibility to your business.
One of the unsolved mysteries, and will remain so for a while, is how you measure online PR during evaluation type. Traditonal media was easy. Get a ruler, measure the inches and multiply with the ad cost. Then, depending on what PR agency you are, multiply it by 3,5 or 7 times to get the equivalent ad value (eav). In the digital world, things are not quite so easy. There are so many factors that need to be taken into account that it is a real task to get the eav.
Twitter - definitely the website for marketeers in 2009. Whether it remains so is anyone's guess. The funny thing about digital is that the more connections you make via social media, the more alone you get. Sure, digital campaigns give you the big hits and quick growth but are you actually engaging with the end consumer? Are you? Indeed, we reach a critical mass very quickly, but do we really know the people who become followers or friends. It seems via the digital revolution, and in particular social media, we seem to have traded quality for quantity.
If reaching a certain number on the friends list is seen to be a measure of success for marketeers, we have real problems. We know the names of the people on the friend list, and we know their friends of their friends, but do we really know who they are? The intimacy of your end-user seems to be lost in the tech waves. The more people we reach, the less we know about them and from a consumer and branding perspective this defeats the object of marketing.
Twitter and Facebook are a great way to grow the numbers, but for a consumer it really is a soulless experience. And when you lose the soul, you forget what makes the consumer tick. Sure, they will click on the link for your great new viral, but their affinity to your business ends when the video finishes.
Expect more of the same in 2010. The digital revolution will continue to grow. PR will continue on the road of creating even crazier stunts for clients to get column inches (see earlier posts for some stunts of 2009 or click here or here). Flashmobbing will become more popular. Another Meerkat-inspired character will front the campaign for something-saving website.
In my opinion Twitter will carry on growing, but somewhere along the way we will have to start paying for its use. It's not making money so it has to claw back money somehow. Staying on the prediction vibe, we will see more and more newspapers charging for content use. So, those media websites we visit everyday for free will become monthly subscription service.
We can't leave the blog without mentioning what 79PR will be up to. One of the major things we are doing is a guest blog for various publications to help those targeting certain markets. The editor of the publication will speak, in no uncertain terms, about how they would like PR's to work with them and what works and what doesn't. If there are any publications, especially ethnic outlets, you require more information for, then please contact us on info@seventyninepr.co.uk and we will help you. After plenty of work towards the back end of last year in event consultation we are looking to set up 79Events sometime in the next few weeks. And finally, we want to make a change for the positive. As such, we are in the embryonic stages of a major campaign to help youngsters understand media with a series of courses and seminars with industry leaders.
No doubt, we will keep you posted.
Best.
The 79PR team.
http://seventyninepr.blogspot.com/
Posts
Before I started taking an interest in PR I thought of social networking sites as just a way for me to communicate with my freinds. After learning more about PR I realised how powerful social media and networking sites can be for businesses in communicating with the public.
ReplyDeleteBy using Twitter businesses can communicate their message quickly, easily and it doesn't cost them a penny. For example, a company such as Next announce the launch of their latest styles on Twitter and this reaches thousands of their followers. If they were to use advertising to communicate this message, although it would reach a lot more people, it would cost them a fortune. Although advertising is probably the best way for Next to communicate this message, Twitter can still be very effective alongside it and I suppose that's why Twitter is used so much in their communication tactics.