Online PR, Social Media, SEO: What’s in a Label?
I’ve had a bunch of interesting conversations this month about the relative merits of the labels that we apply to this all-new Social-Media-Online-PR-Optimisation game that we’re in.
In a nascent business, labels are important because they allow us to make a break from the past and they help us to describe the ‘newsness’ of what we’re doing.
A year or so ago ‘Social Media Agencies’ were ‘Digital Agencies,’ ‘Digital Agencies’ were ‘Search Marketing Agencies,’ and ‘Online PR Agencies‘ didn’t really exist. (PR Agencies, meantime, seem happy to stick with being PR Agencies, aside from a few brave souls who have the guts to strike out and rebrand themselves).
A year of so ago not many brands were getting overly excited about YouTube, and Social Networking was the preserve of nerds. Today all this has changed. (And we say thanks to folks like @StephenFry for kick starting the transition.) Social Media is without doubt the most important trend in marketing since the Interweb became broadly accessible. And it’s all new, new, new.
Right now, as I’ve written elsewhere, there is something of a land grab going on to establish the right kinds of models to deliver serious marketing and communications services to brands who are are sensible enough to be making steps in Social Media. As of today, the race is on to prove lasting commercial value in using Twitter for Traffic Acquisition, Blogging for Buzz, and User Generated Media channels for Brand and Reputation Monitoring. That this will happen there is no doubt. Everything in this domain is measureable, accessible and very, very direct and cost-effective.
As such, the Marketing 101 Handbook demands that those delivering services in this area position themselves in new ways. Agencies everywhere are looking for opportunities to shed their skins. SEO is old hat and rather boring. Web Consultancy even more so. Slower moving agencies are also shedding staff as bright young things see new opportunities to strike it alone and make a dedicated play in this space.
What we’re left with is a bit of a semantic soup as firms large and small tussle for different ways into the Social Media and Online PR story. Those with SEO backgrounds will tell you that Social Media breeds good link equity. They are right – it does. Web Consultancies and Digital Agencies will tell you that Social Media opens up new opportunites to deliver new services to customers. They’re also right – it does, in spades. Big Advertising Agencies will tell you that it creates great new opportunites for branding – and they’re right too. As are traditional PR Agencies who see Social Media as another outlet for Media Relations-type services with bloggers.
From a client’s perspective, however, this is a horrible muddle of terms, concepts, and roles and responsibilities. And it’s not going to improve any time soon. No doubt, the right solution for them is to single source all of this service capability from one supplier. The problem is that this Babelfish doesn’t exist in a mature form just yet, and won’t do so until we’re well and truly on the other side of this recession. Large agencies need to be either sat on a stock pile of cash or a little bit mad to be investing in new, hybrid things right now.
So we’re left with a bunch of very capable, very smart, and relatively small firms getting their knickers in a twist (and getting into heated debates) over labels and the like for the forseeable future. All of which doesn’t particularly help a brand when it comes to navigating new fields and getting on with the business of marketing.
From my perspective (and from a client’s perspective) this maelstrom is actually very important. It’s going to separate the wheat from the chaff. PR Agencies that promise digital but can’t deliver will be found out. Digital firms that claim to run PR-like services without proper teams behind them will also lose. The winners are likely to be the big boys with the guts and the wallets to match, and the specialist agencies (like ourselves) who bite the bullet and jump in at the deep end.
For the record, though, I’d like to say that most of the new breed of agencies are in the same game and anything and everything that gets labelled a ‘Social Media’ or ‘Online PR’ campaign or service is, essentially, the same thing…
Here’s why:
- SEO is no longer a technical discipline. It’s all about great on-site content and the ability to spin this and other interlinked content snippets across a (Social) network to valuable parts of the web. I’m not making this up, Google is. For this reason, SEO’s are now firmly in the business of PR and content marketing (ie, Online PR is a new SEO). Sound content strategies will drive organic traffic acquisition.
- Social Media Marketing isn’t about building Facebook pages. It’s all about using new Social platforms to listen, learn, participate in conversations, and serve customers in new ways. It’s also a tactical play to help gain content distribution. And this, ultimately, is a traffic acquisition thought. If done well, it (conversations and content distribution) will also have a very positive effect on a brand’s Google ranking. For this reason, Digital and Social Media Agencies need their practices to be rooted firmly in the realms of SEO. In other words, the best Social Media plays will be SEO plays by proxy (and PR principles will drive them).
- PR, for the bright sparks among us, is no longer about smile and dial and emailing a press release to a reporter. (No, that’s just media relations… year in year out.) It’s an opportunity to change the game and start offering services that combine all of the above into one, concise package. Doing content and relationships, and being ‘Public’ is, after all, part of PR’s heritage. Those agencies that are boiling down the best of it into a model that’s based on digital (SEO) smarts and progressive experimentation with Social Media and ‘Conversations’ are now capable of delivering some extremely exciting things.
In the meantime, one category will emerge out of all this as a winner. It might be Online PR, it might be Digital, it might be Social, or it might be something new (Social Public Digital Optimisation anyone? : )… but quite frankly that’s for the future.
For now, we need to get ahead and start delivering (and measuring, and proving). The labels we work under are important signals of change, but they are just a harbinger for 2010 and beyond. One thing’s for sure though: those who don’t step up and make the necessary changes – to their own branding, staff and skills – will be left on the sidelines as we others plough on.
Now, I know there’s a stack of smart people out there who feel strongly about this, so please do let me know your views… Labels: important or not?
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Seo Optimization
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Danny Whatmough
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Gianni Catalfamo
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Simon Sanders
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mike ashworth
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Roger Warner
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Robin Grant, We Are Social
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