Comments on: Why the ‘Old PR’ Game is Broken. Spend Wisely – Online PR Rules…

By: Jenny@DownloadGames

Jenny@DownloadGames — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 10:28:41 +0000

You have posted a very nice argument.

By: Roger Warner

Roger Warner — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 15:56:32 +0000

Hi Andrew – thanks for your comment….

I was musing on this sort of thing this morning. I was framing it in a different, more basic way though. Essentially, the P in Online PR is all about Public – so, as you say… it’s all about lead gen – ie, driving people to a place on the web where you’re asking them to do stuff (sign up for a paper, buy, etc). Whereas the P in trad PR is often just Press – in your terms, a brand building exercise….

This is where I think trad PR has gone a little screwey. It’s become all about Press – whereas its original mission was all about Public (lead gen). Which is a roundabout way of saying, yes, clients are asking us to do lead gen over brand work… because they’re starting to shift spending away from the fluffy stuff and on to things that are either directly or indirectly responsible for a sale…. and are measurable….

Does that sound sensible, or have I completely mangled your comment and spewed out a bunch of nonsense!!?? : )

Cheers

Roger

By: Andrew Findlater

Andrew Findlater — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 13:35:36 +0000

Roger, really interesting stuff. To what extent are you seeing the purpose of online PR extending from branding to lead generation? It seems to me there that some aspects of online PR are coming together with Content Marketing and Lead Management. Are you finding your clients asking for lead generation before brand awareness?

Andrew Findlater
Reed Business Information

By: Stetcoige

Stetcoige — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 18:20:44 +0000

The good resource is informative and actual

By: Roger Warner

Roger Warner — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 08:45:03 +0000

thanks for all your comments on this one – all great stuff. i’ve written a follow up piece to boil all this down… had some really interesting client conversations this week about the merits of Online PR vs trad PR… You can check it out here: http://www.contentandmotion.com/blog/tradional-pr-is-broken-vol-2-the-online-pr-bullet-list/

By: Roger Warner

Roger Warner — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 08:29:27 +0000

Hi Robin. Not sure I follow you (although it is early on a Monday AM!!??!) My point is that the ‘Public’ in PR also use Google… and so an initial remit for PR ought to be Online as a more cost-effective and immediate means of making waves and driving interest – via SEO and any other Online PR…

By: Robin Grant

Robin Grant — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 19:47:44 +0000

Roger, although there’s nothing I’d disagree with in what you’ve said, your definition of online PR is an extremely narrow, search focused one. Remember that PR originally stood for “Public Relations”…

By: Roger Warner

Roger Warner — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 19:14:27 +0000

hey david. spot on… i couldn’t agree more. search (and being found) is one thing, validation and confidence is another – and this really needs the quality stamp of the WSJ…. my basic point is that securing the latter is expensive, and (per Ian’s comment) it’s risky. so, for a certain profile of company, money is better spent doing Online PR…. For Cisco, however, it’s a must-do.

By: David McCulloch - CIsco PR

David McCulloch - CIsco PR — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:30:08 +0000

You make an interesting argument, Roger, but you can’t afford to ignore that we’re in a social transition here. When and if that transition is ever completed (another 25 years until my generation gets to retire?) we might see the demise of ‘old’ PR everyone is so fond of predicting. Until then, making the assumptions that (a) mainstream media is dead (b) everybody knows exactly what they’re looking for, are risky. High Google rankings are great if customers are actively looking for you. If you’re the type of start-up you say are your clients, then often you’ll be selling something that people don’t event know exists yet. Similarly, Twitter might help secure some early-adopters or triallists, but research consistently shows us that buyers of technology products (my industry) want third party validation from the media – or a referral from a company who has used the product – before they make a purchase. 140 characters may get their attention, but it won’t convince them to buy. A story in the Wall Street Journal, on the other hand, delivers both credibility and awareness in one swoop. Yes….I know that trust in mainstream media is eroding, but it hasn’t eroded yet. Twitter may have had 5.7M unique visitors last month but the UK’s Sun newspaper and the New York Times get 3.5M and 1.5M every day. More importantly, those 5.7M Twitter visitors aren’t all following each other and getting the full purview of all Twitter feeds. Every Sun and NYT reader, on the other hand, gets the same newspaper/online experience. A mass audience still counts for a lot in my book.

Ultimately, Cisco, and I personally are huge believers in Web 2.0, but there’s a reason customers of ours like Procter and Gamble only spend 2% of its advertising budget on online advertising….an awful lot of people still watch TV and read the paper!

By: Doug Kessler

Doug Kessler — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 14:12:57 +0000

I’ve always felt there were major inefficiencies in traditional PR (at least in ‘Big PR’). Your thoughts on Online PR are a breath of fresh air.

By: Ian Delaney

Ian Delaney — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 07:24:13 +0000

It’s about ‘risks vs rewards’, isn’t it? Traditional PR hazards a larger amount of money against being picked up by Charles Arthur or someone. If they do pick you up, then that’s genuinely worth 1000s of hours noodling away at content and Google. But the chances are slim.

If your company has a real press-friendly story, then traditional PR is quite possibly the quickest way forward. However, many small companies believe they have such a story, but don’t – I delete 95% of the press releases I receive. Being very close to your business leads people to believe they are far more interesting than they are to other people.

For most companies, thinking carefully about really interesting subject areas that they can map onto and then creating useful, spreadable work around that subject – blogs, applications, widgets – will do them more good. The difficulty is that companies often believe they are far more newsworthy than they actually are. That’s when money is wasted in traditional PR.

There’s also the lasting value aspect. Great content on your own site yields rewards forever, but probably on a drip-drip basis. Hitting the front page of the Technology Guardian subsite lasts a few hours but can create massive traffic, and a promotion of your site from Google. Decide on the curve and expenditure you want.

Lastly, are you talented enough to create content that will attract readers and links on a long-term basis? Most of us aren’t, or are too busy, and that’s the reason PR firms exist in the first place. The answer might be a content and seo agency (or agencies).