Hal A
Management Consultant - Business Process Improvement - Electronic Medical Records - Writer
What is the role for Public Relations in Social Marketing?
Social Marketing is about new ways of relating to customers and other stakeholders in your markets and other communities. Is this purely a marketing issue or is there a role for Public Relations, either or both in-house staff and PR firms? What is that role? Are there examples on the Internet?
Good Answers (6)
Sandra L
Manager, Corporate Communications at Mazda Canada Inc.
Best Answers in: Public Relations (1)
I believe it's critical for PR to embrace Social Technologies – not for marketing, but as a communications, brand management and crisis management tool.
The traditional method of "pushing" news and brand messaging to consumers via news outlets (magazines, newspapers, etc.) is still important, but companies have to be aware of the growing trend of consumers seeking product opinions and reviews from peers through the internet. For example, if someone wants a review of a movie, instead of opening a newspaper to read what a film critic has to say, they can go to a social media website like Rotten Tomatoes.com to get reviews from regular people just like them.
PR staff/firms need to understand these new Social mediums and communicate directly to consumers in ways that they want to be communicated with. It’s also important to monitor a company’s brand on Social Media sites, as consumer can now control the messaging more so than a company can.
Public Relations plays a critical role. Marketing is designed to put your message out to consumers, but publications, especially the social variety, will allow for 3rd party endorsement and two-way conversations between the media and your brand. You still need a communicator who can network (on or offline) and utilizing social media is not as easy as posting a banner ad. I think any PR firm using social media is an example. There are several in our network PitchEngine.
Links:
Social media is more than a marketing tool for companies. It allows a company to not only begin a conversation with their current and potential users, but also listen to their likes and dislikes and needs and wants.
The answer to this question is definitely bigger than a single comment on LinkedIn. Several blogs help to dissect the role of social media in the PR/Marketing fields. Todd Defren's PR Squared and Jeremy Pepper's Pop PR are blogs worth reading.
Links:
Fred H
Former Marketing and Operations Executive Mattel, McDonald's and Burger King
Best Answers in: Internet Marketing (6), Planning (3), Small Business (3), Software Development (2), Job Search (1), Staffing and Recruiting (1), Internationalization and Localization (1), Advertising (1), Business Development (1), Change Management (1), Organizational Development (1), Branding (1), Market Research and Definition (1), Starting Up (1), Blogging (1), Enterprise Software (1), Using LinkedIn (1)
Social Marketing is a total company branding issue that effect how business is done. Let's take the most visible issue today the greening of the corporate world. Depending on if a company is product and sales oriented or marketing led the answer changes little. Starting with products and services they need to become recyclable, reusable, and sustainable. Marketing creates the branding positioning and the rest of the company executes the strategy. PR either inside or out notifies all stakeholders about the actions that are being taken to support the new branding positioning.
fred
Andromeda E
CEO Internet Image Management (online reputation management company)
Best Answers in: Internet Marketing (1), Customer Relationship Management (1), Web Development (1)
There are definitely areas where it makes more sense for the PR team to get involved in social networks more than the Marketing team.
A celebrities publicist should definitely be involved in social networking to get their celebrity's name out and to protect it from false rumors. Unfortunately many publicists have no idea how to do this and have to turn to the marketing people who are familiar with the area.
I have found myself in this position often due to the fact that myself and other Internet marketers have been a big part of the early adopters of social networks (that or kids in some cases, like Myspace and Facebook). So the marketers understand how to use it, however there is the problem of other people saying incorrect things and you having to address this - a PR function.
PR and Marketing have always had to work together in some aspect, it is urgently important that they work out how to do this for social networking.
Mark O
PR/Marketing at The Castle Group (PR, events management and incentive programs); and TravMedia, a travel news service
Best Answers in: Internet Marketing (1)
And the lines blur even more.
Public relations exists to deliver messages to audiences. Too often PR is considered as a medium to reach only the traditional media. Social media is another form of engagement, one increasingly critical to a public relations campaign. Would a client still prefer coverage in USA Today or the Wall Street Journal? Most likely, yes. But social media is fertile marketing ground that is yet unowned by the "normal" marketing channels of ad and PR agencies. I expect new entities will emerge and evolve to deliver a more comprehensive publicity and marketing platform that addresses all forms of media. And things will hopefully be clearer then.
More Answers (1)
Glenn H
Strategic Communicator, Persuasive Writer, and Creative Content Manager
Best Answers in: Public Relations (1), Blogging (1)
A difficult question to answer, because we most often think of Public Relations in the terms in which it was created so many years ago, while Social Marketing and Networking is this crazy new thing that is developing as we're all trying to understand how to use it. PR absolutely has a role in the new social media, and it can only succeed when the users benefit from our pushing of messages into this new media.
