PR Firms don’t get social media
I came across this interesting article on Biz-community.com entitled “Divided by language, but not by blogosphere” which shares some results from a survey of 1100 PR executives from agencies and corporations in the US and UK.
“Originally, the purpose of this survey was to compare and contrast blogging communication practices in the US and the UK and identify best practices,” says Steve Cody, managing partner and co-founder of Peppercom.
Why are blogs important?
According to the survey “the top two responses given for the importance of blogs were the ability to share information quickly and broadly (US: 84%; UK: 74%), and the opportunity to influence public opinion and decision making (US: 74%; UK: 65%). “Despite these opinions, most respondents admit that they (or their clients) do not have an official company blogging policy (US: 87%, UK: 82%). And although a majority of respondents felt blogs were important, only 37% in the US and 36% in the UK are actually blogging on behalf of their company or client.”
So if PR firms offer crisis management as part of their overall service and blogs have proven to be a powerful communication vehicle. Wouldn’t it make sense to monitor them as well or is that just too much work? Well according to the survey “49% of respondents don’t even monitor blogs.” Blogs are just a part of the overall social media picture as there are still podcasts, user-based communities such as MySpace and Facebook. The survey also shows that 63% haven’t adjusted their communications strategies to include monitoring of these forms of digital platforms.
Which PR firms understand social media?
Now that’s tough to say, some companies are still keeping things very hush hush such as Environics who’ve apparently launched a monitoring service but keeping it under wraps. Across Canada there are a few who’ve jumped in “slowly” such as Hill & Knowlton or Thornley Fallis., it should be interesting to see what changes will be made in 2007.
Joseph Thornley wrote:
Hi Dave,
Thanks for noting that Thornley Fallis is one of the Canadian leaders in social media. However, I wouldn’t characterize our approach as “slow.” In fact, if you take a look at our Websites, www.thornleyfallis.com and www.76design.com, I believe that you will see that they are full-fledged social media sites in which visitors discover the companies primarily through the blog postings of our consultants. And virtually every one of our consultants contributes to at least one of our blogs.
Please take a look at our sites and our blogs. I’d welcome your comments on them.
Posted 15 Dec 2006 at 2:07 pm ¶