“If everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough.”

Social media is the new popular kid at school.  The one whose dad just got a big promotion prompting his family to move in a couple houses down.  He has the coolest bike, the newest video games, the nicest clothes and a trampoline! All the girls love him and all the guys want to hang out with him.  Except brands.

When it comes to the world of social media, brands are the cool kids who have been dethroned by the new kid at school.  They used to run the show through means of traditional marketing and brand management, but have lost the spotlight to the internet and social media.

In his post, “A Control Freak’s Guide to Social Media Influence,” found on Mashable, Paul Worthington talks about the inability for brands to fully utilize social media as a means of influence because they are unable to relinquish their illusion of control.

Worthington explains that brands have always sought to control the thoughts of the perspective audiences when the key has always been influence.  This false belief is what has a lot of branding managers jealous of the new kid on the block and reluctant to embrace social media.

In these new times where social media is reigning supreme in the world of online influence, brands need to change their strategy and give up the ideal of control.  Worthington tries to help them by providing three principles that good influencers demonstrate:

1. Listen then respond- “Before engaging with the conversation it’s important to first listen to it, see what is being said and interpret what this means.”

2. Be comfortable with ambiguity- “Conversation is messy, real time, and often capricious. At first what you see will appear chaotic, unmanageable and intimidating. The reality is that it isn’t your job to manage or control it – but to respond to it.”

3. Filter through your purpose- ” Here, having a strong brand purpose is a crucial tool – it becomes the tangible filter through which you listen and respond.”

I think that all companies would be wise to apply these suggestions to any social media influence that they hope to attain.  I am an active user of social media and, to me, it seems like too many brands are trying to use social media for marketing and public relations means, but are doing so ineffectively.  They are too stuck in their old ways to fully embrace the new kid and try out his trampoline.  Times are changing quickly with new social media applications coming out daily and I think for any company to be successful they need to quickly change their attitudes about social media and dive in head first or they will be left behind.

What do you think?  Are brands not applying themselves enough when it comes to social media?  Is this trend going to be around enough for companies to invest a lot of attention into?  What are some successful branding techniques that companies have been using on social media?

Word of mouth marketing is a hit

Recently at my internship , I was asked to create a twitter account for the company and begin following as many people that fit our “target audience,” hoping in return they would follow us back.  In case you were interested, in just roughly 2 hours of following, we had over 200 followers in return.  This helps to better understand how many people are  tweeting all day.

We all can see how quickly social media marketing is increasing and how these wonderful tools are bringing us closer together.  Whether it be, twitter, youtube, facebook, blogs, digg or any other tool- there’s some social element out there for everyone that helps us connect with both familiar and unfamiliar faces.

However, it took awhile….

Although millions of users were rapidly flocking to social media sites, most marketers stayed away.  Marketers either didn’t know how to communicate effectively without overwhelming them with their product, or they were nervous about associating their brands with questionable content.  

In a recent blog post by Steve Rubel from Micro Persuasion, he stated, “things are changing.” Steve believes companies are beginning to learn how to leverage social media and successfully tap into the rising tide of social media consumers.  Word of mouth marketing is allowing small companies to succeed because they can actually accommodate us and our special needs we demand for every penny we spend.  

So what does this mean? It means marketers are moving to social media.

In a recent study conducted by the Aberdeen Group sponsored by Visible Technologies, the following was recorded……

Aberdeen found that 63% of the companies in their survey (defined as best-in-class) planned to increase their social media marketing budgets this year.

I’m sure the trend will continue to increase as more and more people become introduced and familiar with these social media sites. People will continue to trust the people they know rather than the ad’s they see on TV’s, websites or hear on the radio.  Since today’s consumers are getting smarter and more demanding, companies both small and big must also adapt to this change.

Marketing is Evil, and PR practioners are Spin Doctors

When people ask me my major, and I answer, “public relations”  some look at me like I just said, “I am majoring in shooting puppies.” I believe the image of public relations and marketing is getting better, but the history of negative feelings toward our field will be hard to change.

In Seth Godin’s Blog “Is Marketing Evil?” Godi, a marketing expert and a well-know author, explains how marketing can be used for evil, but is not evil. He  admits that marketing is powerful and can cause evil, but that is not marketing’s fault. The fault is at those using marketing for evil.  It is the craftsman not the tool, he states. Godin says that marketers should think about how their actions will impact society. He explains even though you may be doing your job, does not make what you are doing right. Just because you can market something does not mean you should.

Godin goes on explain how marketing can be a beautiful thing. How it can encourage people to do or purchase things that will make their lives better. Marketing can be used as positive infleunce for people to make informed decisions.

This article was written in response to a Time magazine blog, where the writer said you would probably never see Godin writing an article about marketing being evil.  Well, Godin wanted to prove him wrong.

Working the PR and marketing fields we will have great power. We will (hopefully) influence many people with our campaigns. OK, I have to quote Spiderman (sorry I know this is so cliche) “with power comes great responsibility.” Overused but true. Ethics in our field are important. It may be tempting to make a million by selling your ethical principals along with your soul, but be the bigger person. We may have clients that want us to pitch ideas. We have to think about the impact this decision would, and decided whether it is ethical or not. In the end we will impact the way people think, and we do not want to be evil spin doctors.

We are not “puppy killing practioners” so lets not have people looking at us like we are. As Godin explained marketing can be something beautiful, and I think that is what we should always strive for.

Advertising Spends Money, PR Makes Money

It is a common theme among the Fortune 500 companies to have large advertising budgets and small Public Relations budgets. Richard Laermer is quick to note in The Bad Pitch Blog that this is what makes Public Relations not only “more socially accepted among consumers”, but it also is much more beneficial than advertising. He points out that advertising only gives a glimpse of a product through a tiny frame, while public relations illustrates the “big picture” to the audience.

In Tech PR Nibbles*, Nicholas Ludlum’s points out that the recession has a great effect on companies using public relations instead of advertisements. He uses Apple as an example of a company that has continued to use marketing to maintain a constant rate of growth. Ludlum continues to give advice on what areas of marketing/public relations should best be used during the recession. He points out news optimization, thought leadership, content development, internal communication, analyst relationship and measurement as key tools to be used in these harsh times.

Honesty has been important to people for the past few years since companies like WorldCom and Enron lied to America and cost thousands of people their jobs and investments. As one of the bloggers at arisyulianta, Cetak Artikel believes that friendly communication through public relations is a way to counter-act the perceived and evident bias in advertising that is seen by consumers.

Public relations and marketing have been written about countless times as less intrusive, but a more beneficial way to reach a client’s target audience. Advertising still has a very important part in the way it effects consumers emotions, but it is not the trustworthy means of communication that it was several decades earlier. In this economic climate, it is only fitting to push costly advertising out the window in favor of the more efficient, rewarding and cost-effective method of public relations.

Marketing and Public Relations, are they interchangeable?

Like many of you I am going to be a college graduate in December. I will soon have to spread my wings and get a big kid job. Therefore I have been looking for jobs lately and I feel like many companies and job search sites lump Public Relations and Marketing into the same category. But they are not the same thing. Even a top PR professional, who spoke in one of my classes, lumped public relations into marketing. While researching this topic through google I found a site called topstory.ca that laid out the differences for us.  The main difference is that marketing focuses on the market, the consumers and the demand of products. While public relations main focus is building relationships and telling a story. What do you think? Could you move from public relations to marketing? Should the Cronkite public relations program include marketing and advertising because many companies want an integrated marketing agency?

Google — Your company’s new homepage?

By Sparkle Media

Through this class and others, most of us have learned that being successful in public relations goes beyond just being a good writer and verbal communicator. Nowadays, entry level practitioners will have to know the ins and outs of social media, marketing and search engine optimization.

Controlling our client’s image to its stakeholders and spreading its message are important. One of the most strategic ways of doing this is through search engine optimization. But now, many PR and marketing professionals argue that content is just as important, if not more, than key words used to determine your client’s Google ranking. One such person is Kami Huyse. She covers this issue in Six Game Changers: Why Content Will Once Again Be King in Search Engine Optimization.

Huyse points out that companies used to focus on using popular key phrases in their content and monitoring the number of visitors to their Web site to propel them to the number one spot on Google’s search engine. She says recent changes to how search engines organize information has changed these methods.

Search engines now focus on a site’s emphasis instead of just key words. They rank search engines’ results by how local (regional versus national) they are to the searcher. A site’s relevancy is determined by the credibility of the sources it has linked itself to. These are just some of the developments.

But why should we care?

Well, our jobs depend on how well we can publicize our clients. A huge part of that is our client’s online persona. Many people find out about an organization through the Internet. How well they can find our clients online is determined by our skills, which includes knowledge of search engine optimization.