If you’ve been relying on traditional public relations tactics, it’s time to breathe new life into your efforts. By focusing on a social approach, you’ll be able to communicate your messages directly with your stakeholders.

1. The New Age of Public Relations
Prepared by Kevin Huang
August, 2015

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What is Public Relations?

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What is Public Relations?
The PRSA defines public
relations as “a strategic
communication process that
builds mutually beneficial
relationships between
organizations and their
publics.”
Some people think Public
Relations is about sending out
press releases, strictly managing
matters regarding media for
business, simply making people
or businesses look good, or
spend 95% of their time writing.
PR is a lot of things.

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I think a Public Relations professional is one who assists clients
identify points of distinction and strategically deliver key
messages through custom campaigns. They generally have
expertise in crisis communications/reputation
management, media relations, media training, event
planning & facilitation, corporate social
responsibility/community relations, internet and social
media marketing and other related tasks.
So here's my answer, as brief as I can get:
What does a Public Relations Professional do?

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Due to economic and technological
changes, Public Relations (PR) has lost its
meaning. Are you looking for press/media
relations, blog relations, or consumer relations?

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The PR/marketing industry has undergone a
dynamic shift that requires a new set of skills and
a deeper understanding of the power of the
Connected World.

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Today, we are experiencing new opportunities as social
technology has uncovered expanded roles and
responsibilities for professionals. It’s critical that we, as a
PR professional, develop a deep understanding of the
importance of social media and its overall role in
bridging connections between online audiences.

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PR 1.0 PR 2.0 PR 3.0
PR is now a cross-platform
communications action
reliant upon traditional and
digital PR strategies, as well
as social engagement,
content marketing, brand
publishing, media relations,
inbound content, SEO
strategies and limitless
creativity.
Public Relations has evolved
PR has been all about
earned media – utilize
reporters, as third party
endorsers, to
communicate a
product’s or service’s
message to potential
customers.
PR 2.0 actually began with
Web 1.0. The early internet
had elements of social
networking and limited
consumer power. The
consumer was now able to
view company websites and in
some instances contact them
through e-mail, but this was
still nothing like today.

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Public Relations goes more into depth

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Social media’s role in PR
 to reach, collaborate and better communicate with
bloggers/new influencers, media and consumer audiences
directly.
 to raise awareness, build relationships, create and maintain a
positive image, and increase overall brand exposure.
 focus on customized and more targeted communication to
build stronger mutually beneficial relationships that lead to
deeper engagement, resulting in loyalty and advocacy.
Social media changes the way we plan,
work and develop communication, with a
different mix of media, and ultimately
how we deliver meaningful content and
engage with the public to drive valuable
outcomes for a business.

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Four reasons why you should be combining SEO,
Social and PR strategies
1. High quality content helps you earn links.
2. PR relationships can help attract authority links.
3. Authority brand mentions or "implied links"
will become more important as SEO advances.
4. Using PR outreach can amplify a social media campaign.
When creating a PR campaign the piece of content that you are sending out to
media contacts has to be amazing. The title needs to instantly grab their
attention and the body needs to suck the reader in.
Theses relationships with journalists, reporters, and editors can help you earn
links from authoritative websites that Google loves. A few links from large
authority websites hold far more weight than hundreds of spammy links that
were built solely to attempt to manipulate the search rankings.
As mentions become more popular PR is going to come more into play. The
more media outlets and websites that mention your brand, the more of an
authority you will be viewed as by the search engines.
Sharing your content on social media helps to expose it to more people, which can
also result in earning links, but using a PR approach can amplify your social reach
significantly. Get industry partners and other influencers to also share your content on
social media - when done right it can result in exponential social growth.

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4 Ways to use social media in Public Relations
1. Include Social Sharing With Press Releases
If you need to write a press release, find a way to support and extend the message via
social sharing.
Keep in mind that journalists rely heavily on Twitter, Facebook and other platforms to
source and research stories. When you share your story socially, you are meeting them
where they are instead of interrupting them in their inbox.
For example, a story about a charitable
contribution would translate very well to video
(building up your YouTube channel). Or you can
share data via an infographic that fans can pin,
tweet and share from your blog or Facebook.
The marketing team at Halogen Software tries
to make every story visual and social. The
company released an industry report in June
2014 and added social components with
a Twitter campaign, an infographic and a blog
post.

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2. Create Social Campaigns Around Customer Case Studies
Most PR teams create customer case studies to highlight successes and build credibility.
While some customer stories make a good write-up, most people aren’t willing to invest
the time to read long-form articles. Instead of sharing the full case study on social
media, pick out the key facts from the client’s success story and highlight those across
the board.
Many stories are actually more powerful when told through the right social channel. For
example, Microsoft used video to share a story about how their technology is making a
difference in people’s lives.
Thanks to Microsoft
technology, Sarah Churman was
able to hear for the first time.
The company knew showing
instead of telling would elicit a
stronger emotional response.
They gave the story life by
sharing a video of Sarah hearing
her first sounds.

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3. Ask Executives to Publish on LinkedIn
When CEOs or other executives actively engage with professional colleagues and customers,
they’re playing an important role in building trust with key stakeholders. Yet only a handful of
CEOs are active on social platforms. It’s time to change that.
LinkedIn is a good place to start because it’s the leading social platform for professional
networking. Since it now offers a publishing platform, you or your executives can share content
quickly and know you’re reaching the right audience.
Instead of writing an op-ed for a newspaper or an article for an industry publication, use that
content on LinkedIn. Sharing your company updates on LinkedIn is a much faster way to reach
your audience than waiting for traditional media to publish your contribution.
You can either create content specifically for LinkedIn or republish from an existing blog or
other source.

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4. Offer Expert Opinions in Real Time
As industry-related stories break, social media offers the prime way for you to offer expert
commentary and make an immediate impact on your audience. If you wait for a press release
to make the rounds, you’ll likely miss your opportunity.
For example, when a government database is hacked or a major story about stolen credit card
numbers breaks, security companies react swiftly on all social fronts. By helping others
understand the situation and offering advice, they’re positioning themselves as experts, as well
as drawing attention to their product or service.
Before you connect yourself with specific
events in your industry, assess each
opportunity as it arises and have a plan in
place for when and how you will
respond to certain situations.
In the case of breaking news, proceed with
caution to ensure that you are adding value to
the conversation and not being completely
self-serving or trying to capitalize on a tragedy.

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If you’ve been relying on traditional public relations tactics, it’s
time to breathe new life into your efforts. By focusing on a social
approach, you’ll be able to communicate your messages
directly with your stakeholders.
Plus, you’ll be better able to connect with the media and bloggers
where they’re proactively looking for news and resources instead
of spamming them with information (like press releases) they
simply don’t want or can’t share immediately.
Time to embrace the new PR age

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More Success Stories

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Summer of sharing: share a coke
This is a campaign that only a brand like Coca Cola
could even think about doing … It was
globally applauded, everyone was talking about it,
and among soft drink consumers, mainly Coke folks,
there was a real feeling of excitement about getting
a bottle with their own names on it (and/or their
life partner’s in many cases!).
“This summer, Coke is swapping out three of its
iconic logos on 20-oz. bottles for the 250 most
popular first names among American teens and
Millennials”
With this call, that was played worldwide, Coca Cola
shared this experience with their consumers in one
of the broadest communication campaigns ever to
be launched . They got PR hits worldwide, millions of
mentions and pictures shared in social media, etc.
Hey , did you get your own bottle too? (I did and I
still have it on top of my fireplace!)

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Google fights against Ebola
While governments around the world were unsuccessfully trying to make up their minds about the
best approach, sitting around and debating and discussing about the most valid ways to combat
Ebola …Google came up to the plate in November and its CEO announced it would pledge $2 for
every dollar donated through its website. They set up a specific URL
onetoday.google.com/fightebola to explain this original social action and invite people worldwide
to contribute to this worthwhile, timely cause. When you plug “Google ebola campaign” into a
search engine, you’ll get over 22 million results with posts, news, articles and mentions to this
initiative that smacked squarely in the face of those governments from all over the world who
seemed to be taking forever and even then still couldn’t make any decsion about how to best face
this challenge. CSR campaigns are always great , but if they are launched at the perfect moment
and with the most flattering circumstances — as was this case for Google —, they will become a
huge boost for your brand.

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Burger King Proud Whopper
“We are all the same inside” was Burger King’s
message during San Francisco’s Gay Pride Week
in 2014. This ‘experience marketing’ action held
in one of the main Bay Area Burger King’s invited
people to try their “proud Whopper”. “What’s
that?” lots of them quizzed… So when
customers opened the rainbow color wrapper
there was the message: “We are all the same
inside”.
Due to its shocking message, this communication
campaign ended up generating any number of
impacts in the press and thousands and
thousands of mentions in social networks. The
goal was far surpassed: achieving a better
reputation for their brand!

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Monty the Penguin
John Lewis has managed to make us all remember our childhood with: “Monty the penguin”.
This campaign is not just about a cute video of a kid playing with his best friend, but it also has
a wide range of elements which have combined to make it both so successful and viral: you
can buy the music of the advert’s music and thanks to that gesture you will be helping WWF in
protecting the home of 1,000’s ofAdéline penguins, you can buy the book that tells Monty and
Sam’s story, you can have a 360º view of both friends’ life, and many other actions linked to
this campaign that you can find in the web page specially created for the action.

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World’s toughest job
In 2012, we were witnesses to one of the most beautiful and touching campaigns of all
times: The Best Job, a Procter & Gamble campaign, related with the London Olympic
games in which they thanked the effort of the mothers from all over the world and their
contribution to the success of our lives. They repeated a similar action this year with
their video named : Thank you mom. This time it was American Greetings who wanted
to highlight the importance of mothers’ jobs in our lives. 24 people applied for a very
unattractive job ad (with what was a seemingly never-ending list of requirements ,
much longer than normal working hours, and being available to be called at any time by
your boss, even at nights…). At the end, the interviewer unveils that what was
supposed to be an “Operations Manager” job, is in fact motherhood. In a mere two
days the video was viewed more than 2.8 million of times!!

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The ultimate goal of PR is to build
“People Relations” and “Perfect
Relation(ship)s” with your target
consumers!