14 comments

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  Shashib

  1 year ago

  It be a 3rd option - An ombudsman for the customer. I had this dilemms when I took my new position as the Social Media person at Network Solutions. Who shoudl I report to ? I would have not taken the position if it had a marketing goal attached to it. I am now part of the PR yet independent in bi directional conversations on feedback about the company and products plus handle any blogger relations.
  
  Andrew Wright (
  http://andrewwright.wordpress.com/2008/01/11/co...) and Connie Bensen (http://conniebensen.com/blog/2008/01/12/public-...) wrote posts on this that support my view point I think.
  
  Shashi
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  Chris Tackett

  1 year ago

  I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you.
  
  Chris Tackett
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  Ryan

  1 year ago

  Like the whole debate around whether or not the Tipping Point is dead (http://tinyurl.com/288roe), could it be that there is space for both marketing and PR to lay claim to their piece of the social media pie?
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  Charlie

  1 year ago

  You're both wrong. Social sites are, as facebook claims on its front page, utilities for helping people better connect with their friends, family and acquaintances.
  
  Marketing and PR types, being the vultures and parasites that they are, and sensed new opportunities on these sites and rushed in to try and make a quick buck. This has gummed up the works, hurt the signal/noise ratio and annoyed everyone else. You can see it in the comment spam that pervades myspace and the application spam that pervades facebook.
  
  I'll concede that the social networks themselves have been complicit. You can see that in the loud, annoying ads on every page myspace serves up and in beacon, facebook's foray into "social advertising".
  
  The rest of us would prefer applications that are useful and interesting first, and ad delivery vehicles only to the extent that the ads are tastefully presented and relevant to the user.
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  Tony Mannor

  1 year ago

  @Charlie
  
  You are right, social media is a communication medium. But so is marketing. In that way they are related.
  
  I run several blogs (technically considered social media). I also run several businesses. I rarely promote the businesses on the blogs. When I do it, it is usually because it is relevent to the discussion. I do it to illustrate the origin of a point of view or something like that.
  
  I think you are a bit hard on facebook and myspace. They provide a service that is free for the users. Someone has to pay for the bandwidth, upgrades, innovation and maintenance - big, evil, invasive advertisers do this. You could always write myspace a check every month. I am sure that they would be happy to charge everyone for the service and remove the ads from your page.
  
  If you dont want to write them a check, then deal with the ads. You may hate the parasites but they also create jobs and help to facilitate the creation of the sites you like to visit. You can consider them a necessary evil or a tolerable pest.
  
  As for me... I hate bees but I love honey. I guess I can put up with the stings to get the good stuff.
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  Mike Keliher

  1 year ago

  When your friend said, "PR is based on targeting experts in a field, typically journalist and editors, with a secondary focus on targeting the general public," did you tell him he was mistaken?
  
  That's not PR. That's media relations, one area within the broader discipline of public relations. This stuff we call social media might fit best under a description of an "online form of community relations." Of course, community relations is another area within PR.
  
  Of course, there's this point: What does it matter?
  
  Seriously. Does the distinction matter? If you find people who "know this stuff" and are successful at accomplishing what you want to accomplish with it, isn't that the important part?
  
  I don't intend to be condescending; lord knows I've been roped into discussions like this (example: see first half of my comment :). But really, does it matter if we consider this work marketing or PR? My (agency) boss doesn't care - he just wants to make clients happy. My clients don't care - they just want results.
  
  And I'm sure we all know classifying or labeling the work certainly doesn't constitute "results."
  
  Keep up the good work on the blog. I enjoy it. --Mike
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  Charlie

  1 year ago

  @Tony
  
  Facebook is cash-positive and has been pretty much from the beginning, and doesn't annoy the user with ads (the annoying ads on facebook have come from third parties). That shows that you don't need to be loud and annoying to run a site profitably.
  
  They succeeded because they started with a distinctly non-commercial, helpful, fun, and community-oriented feel. Same with Google, craigslist, and some of the other really successful internet sites.
  
  There is no reason people seeking to add value to a social network by writing new applications for it can't do the same.
  
  I'm not saying marketing is bad, but some of these marketing people just don't seem to get it. I like the kind of marketing that is strongly influenced by engineers, because engineers seem to have better than average BS detectors, and they like to stay away from being too blaringly self-promotional.
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  Richard Telofski

  1 year ago

  PR is a subset of marketing. Social media is a tool that can be used in all forms of marketing, including PR.
  
  Case closed. :-)
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  Geoff Livingston

  1 year ago

  Neither. Just guys like me keep using it for those reasons.
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  Albert_Maruggi

  1 year ago

  Most of the people that have bosses to answer to, 3 meetings a day in the corporate world, and especially those that have revenue to raise couldn't care less. Social media is a movement not a marketplace.
  
  It's just about communicating, those that do it with respect, sincerity, and the ability to contribute and learn will get value from it. Those that try to just take, or who come to just sell will skim low hanging fruit and be dismissed by others.
  
  I caution those that think social media is something to calculate in their sales pipeline or media blitz, it's not. It's about relationships and the misperception is that I can jump into social media and friend 1000 people. I then can call those people leads. Agh! that is light years away from reality.
  
  I believe social media is an aid to relationship building, but that still takes time. Anthony, if you want to really have a few more beers try this one on for size, social media is also a relationship with truth. Over time if you participate enough you build a wealth of ideas, positions, and statements on issues. It is a chronology of you to the world and this, over time is a captured legacy.
  
  Barkeep, one more for me and my friend.
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  John Johansen

  1 year ago

  I'm going to both agree and disagree with Charlie.
  
  I agree that much of the intention of social media channels are for user-to-user communications. The majority of people in any social media channel probably aren't using it to connect with companies.
  
  Where I disagree is that marketing has no value in social media. To Chris' point about advertising and spam on social networks, that is indicative of marketers still trying to use interruption marketing in a space that doesn't need it. Interruption marketing online is about CPMs. Getting the most people to move their eyeballs over your message.
  
  I listened to a relevant podcast this morning, Jaffe Juice (1/30/08 episode), that highlighted a this dichotomy. A room of marketers was asked if they would rather have 5 million impressions or 10 solid relationships. Only 1 person stood up for the relationships. (He admits the numbers may need tweaking.)
  
  The point he went on to make, is that those 10 relationships, through social media working as intended user-to-user, could end up generating just as many 'impressions' as the message spreads. But most marketers don't see it from that angle.
  
  In the end, I have to vote that social media is neither a marketing nor a PR tool. We are inviting customers to come talk to us, or we are requesting their permission to join their conversations. If you try to interrupt what they are doing, it won't generate the relationships you ultimately need to be successful.
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  Jason Peck

  1 year ago

  Social Media isn't a tool or a tactic. It is the "meeting room" in which real conversations take place. Businesses who want to take advantage of social media opportunities (dialogue, idea sharing, etc) should not think that it is their right to intrude on this space. They need to be invited to participate and/or provide something that is truly valuable and adds to the conversation. To start, they should just listen and see what people are really saying about them.
  
  PR is often calculated, formal, boring and not authentic, and it pushes the message. Blogs and social media should be the opposite and while someone might start the dialogue, it is open for discussion and can take many different turns based on who is participating.
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  Andrew

  1 year ago

  I'm agnostic - there are so many crossovers that I've almost given up. My general response is: PR isn't a subset of marketing, but both PR and marketing are a subset of communication.
  Marketing and PR cover reasonably similar strategic ground, have some similar tactical tools and some dissimilar ones.
  I'd rather talk about communication as the overal description and then talk about named tactics: direct mail to a specific target group, banner campaigns, blogger outreach, media campaign, advert, flyers, canvassing (of consumers or journalists.
  I still call myself a PR consultant, but that may be force of habit.
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  Tony Mannor

  1 year ago

  Wow, I was pretty grumpy the day I posted that.
  
  Facebook is trying to generate more income by courting sponsers and advertisers. Those third party applications do have ads and yes, they do irritate me.
  
  I am sure that there is a backend income model to facebook that we might not know about - so I doubt that their hands are clean. Much the way that Craigslist charges for certain kinds of posts (jobs and realestate in certain markets). Some people have to pay so that others may enjoy.
  
  As for the whole social media/marketing tool debate.
  
  Marketers will use any popular emerging trend as a way to promote their clients. It was marketers who created the X-Games because so many people were participating in skating and motorcross etc. Wherever people congregate, marketers will follow with pen and pad in hand.
  
  For the same reason men go to bars on "Ladies Noght". They are just going where they have the best odds of "Getting Lucky".
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