Valley PR Blog

Marketing Sociologist Says:
July 22nd, 2009 at 3:41 pm

Need to disagree, Len. Again, it is business not understanding the ramifications of 21st Century communications. Would you seek an auto mechanic who works in a Pep Boy parking lot – I’ve seen this. He charges $55 per hour compared to $100 for a licensed mechanic. If mechanics can get $100, why aren’t your clients willing to pay for experienced, educated social media practitioners? Many who have educated themselves in HTML and Flash.

Maybe they rather pay $200 to have someone send a press release and want to pay $15 or an intern to build their online presence. Good luck. We’ll say “remember when X used to be in business.”

Abbie S. Fink Says:
July 22nd, 2009 at 4:44 pm

I have to disagree. Social media must be considered a strategy, with a plan in place to ensure long-term success. It is not a tactic that can be passed along. Our up and comers are certainly on the cutting edge of this technology and understand how to harness the power of it, but to be a good counselor to our clients, we must create a team approach with a solid strategy behind it.

As for pricing, why is it any different that how you would price any strategic counseling and planning for your clients. Determine how much time is appropriate and charge accordingly.

Pat Elliott Says:
July 23rd, 2009 at 9:32 am

The professional who truly “gets it” is not a tactician or a minimum wage employee. Yes, there are local companies that have run ads offering $12 an hour to push out sales messages via social media but that’s certainly not the norm or a practice that should be advocated.

Amanda Blum Says:
July 23rd, 2009 at 10:00 am

Len, I actually agree wholeheartedly with you in theory, if not in methodology.

There are ideals, and there’s reality. Reality is that a number of small businesses simply don’t have the bandwidth to deal with social media, knowing full well they should. A good example is restaurant clients, who, at the height of service, when they SHOULD be tweeting and taking twitpics, etc, are busy.. you know… running a restaurant.

Non profits are another example. While it would be ideal for them to be updating social media and interacting themselves, if they simply can’t, a spokesperson is used.

That said, that person must be fully engaged with the brand, and their engagement must be part of an overall plan. We can’t all be Southwest.

Tyler Hurst Says:
July 23rd, 2009 at 5:15 pm

Absolutely not. Ghost writing goes against authenticity, transparency and honest, which is what social media has allowed us to do on a daily basis.

If clients can’t find the time or money to promote themselves, perhaps they need to rethink their budgeting.

There are ways around this, but ghost tweeting or blogging is not the answer. This is a fundamental difference between PR and SM.

Sales Cooke Says:
July 23rd, 2009 at 7:10 pm

The points are clear:
1. “Social media must be considered a strategy, with a plan in place to ensure long-term success. It is not a tactic that can be passed along.” (Abbie Fink)
2. “There are ways around this, but ghost tweeting or blogging is not the answer. This is a fundamental difference between PR and SM.” (Tyler Hurst)

The companies that effectively run a social media program educate and utilize their in-house resources. If you do not have 30-45 minutes a day to implement your social media strategy, don’t do it. Problem with most of these “complainers” is they do not have a strategy and do not know what they need to do to effectively engage in a social media program.

LKinoshita Says:
July 23rd, 2009 at 7:17 pm

I’ve seen a successful pizza restaurant turn over **SOME** of the social media responsibilities to the restaurant’s manager. The manager is well-versed enough in the business to respond and dialogue with people, and it’s appropriate to have them budget time for this purpose. As with anything, you get what you pay for, and high-quality brands must not trust inexperienced tacticians. If George Stephanopolous and the CEO of Sun Microsystems can do it, then your clients can, too.

Dan Wool Says:
July 23rd, 2009 at 9:22 pm

Tyler is right (again), Len – it’s completely inauthentic to “ghost”. It’s obvious and will backfire. Always.

He is also right about budget. Your clients are either the type of people who should do SM or they’re not. It’s black and white.

If they are, they need to allocate some $ to that part of their marketing portfolio, the same way they do for PR or other disciplines. They should pay you to direct strategy but not to execute the tactics. That’s on them.

If you feel SM is not your baliwick (or that the relative ease of the work exceeds your guilty conscience), you should refer them to someone else. In the end, you’ll make more money off the good karma from those relationships.

Len Gutman Says:
July 23rd, 2009 at 10:07 pm

I guess I disagree with most all of the comments above. Ya’ll are blinded by your own sense of the propriety of what we do as PR professionals — there’s virtually nothing “authentic” about it. On the rare occasion when we actually have real news to pitch, maybe it’s true. But the rest of the time we’re doing everything in our power to turn mole hills into mountains in order to keep our clients happy and paying.

When was the last time a senior executive actually wrote a quote you attributed to him or her in a press release? When was the last time you worked to convince a journalist that your story was worth telling even when deep down in your heart you knew it was weak at best? When was the last time you reported “ad equivalency” as a metric to a client?

Please. I talk to many of you out there on a regular basis and tons of you are “guest-socializing” for your clients. It’s what we do. We handle the PR tactics so your clients can run their businesses and sell their products — the things that they know well. We do the stuff we know well — telling stories.

And don’t tell me I’m jaded or disillusioned with PR. It’s always been this way. Yes, sometimes we have real news to tell the media — but most of it’s pure sales and marketing fluff.

Linda VandeVrede Says:
July 24th, 2009 at 8:04 am

Now wait a minute. I was lucky enough to get to a point where I only chose clients whose products/services I truly believed in. If they had something to offer that I didn’t feel had true value, I didn’t take them on. Or if I was working for a company that tried to push me into that awful gray area of spinning crapola, I walked away.
Now I don’t have kids or pets, and I have a working spouse – that may have bolstered my ability to choose freely. But they say a clean conscience is the softest pillow. I’ll that that anytime over trying to bamboozle editors and making my heart heavy.

Jim Veihdeffer Says:
July 24th, 2009 at 9:56 am

I don’t believe Len is talking about bamboozling or heavy-hearted dissemblances on behalf of questionable clients. What he (if I may presume)is saying is simply that those who practice writing- PR- twitting- blogging-for- hire are essentially portraying the voice of the company. If you’re writing the Great American Novel you may (or may not) be speaking in your own unconstrained true voice. But there’s nothing dishonorable in listening to the company, understanding their vision and mission and presenting that information or branding in lively, persuasive, grammatical and spell-checked English — and, not incidentally, removing all the quirky capitalization that the managers would otherwise use.

The only difficulty comes when a particular message relies for its effect on having the personal earmark and style of a particular person. No one…no one expects the President’s Message in an annual report to be the personal handcrafted prose of the President. We just want to know that it expresses his or her thoughts. However, we would be greatly dismayed if a funeral speech was phoned in by a copywriter to the exec. So too, some ridiculous people have “accused” Mr. Obama of…get this…relying on a teleprompter for his speeches! — as though every president for the past 20 (or more) years hasn’t done so. But we would be put off if he used the teleprompter to respond to questions at a press conference. (Assuming the machine didn’t go crashing to the floor.)

Does a blog need to be the personally keyed-in words of Le Grande Fromage? I don’t know…but I believe it depends on how tuned in the copywriter is to the cheese being purveyed.

Marketing Sociologist Says:
July 24th, 2009 at 10:05 am

Len:

Agree with Ms. VandeVrede. Sure there are “public relations” firms throughout the nation – even the biggest ones – who don’t give a damn about business ethics. That’s why most agencies service their clients with interns or people who haven’t been in the business world long enough to know what SWOT is in a strategic plan or have no clue what the RACE communications formula or the 4Ps of marketing are. That’s why credentialing, or as Dan Wool points out, an MBA is so important.

Companies are stuck in 20th Century mindsets. On the eve of the world entering the SECOND DECADE of the 21st Century, there’s still a debate whether Twitter, MySpace and similar communications tools should be serviced by the equivalent of someone who clears tables in a restaurant or washes dishes.

Twitter went from the #400 visited Web site to #10 in the world in six months. More visits than CNN, MSNBC and AZCentral or any local television news program combined. Yet a LinkedIn question had PR “pros” saying it is a fad and not to use it.

As I’ve ranted over and over, more than 2 years ago I was thrown out of offices for telling clients they needed a YouTube and MySpace presence. Instead, they went with agencies who are no better than prostitutes – telling the client what they wanted to hear – “PRESS RELEASES” getting you in the newspaper, rather than promising to deliver measurable results – and I don’t mean clippings. I mean true R.O.I. – money coming in. You know what you call those companies now that went with the agencies that act as prostitutes? Out of business.

Those press clippings REALLY paid off for those companies. Now you can see their press clippings daily as you read about this or that restaurant or other business closing. Just look around. Businesses are shutting their doors left and right because they won’t wake up to 21st Century thinking and they aren’t getting wizened public relations consultants to tell them how to reach various publics for profits.

There’s getting the lame agency who only knows how to send out press releases via a mass media like PR News Wire. The same agency whose interns call news media over and over, “Did you get my press release? When do you plan to run the story?”Real professionalism!

Marketing Sociologist Richard Kelleher
MediaRelationsExpert.com
@PhoenixRichard
MarketingSociologist.blogspot.com

Brent Diggins Says:
July 24th, 2009 at 3:05 pm

Does anyone have a survey or study that shows the effectiveness of social media for businesses?

No, not just success stories, but an actual study on businesses that have started social media programs and the success of those programs.

@bdiggs
bdiggins@mindspace.net

Linda VandeVrede Says:
July 24th, 2009 at 3:17 pm

Brent, if anyone has such a study, I would think it would be @briansolis.

Michael Miller Says:
July 24th, 2009 at 5:46 pm

I suggest incorporating the number of followers as a results metric into the business model. “Tactical” social media qualifies as semi-serivce public relations and, obviously, not full service so it would be hard to argue anything above $30/hour. In a ghostwriting sense, wouldn’t we consider it to be a conversation catalyst similar to a talk show host propping a sponsor of their show, even if they don’t use the product or directly work for the company? It’s a scritped projection of the brand and doesn’t seem disingenuous to me as long as the content is consistent with the brand voice and is accurate.

Wendy Kenney @23Kazoos Says:
July 27th, 2009 at 10:30 pm

Interesting conversation here. I work with many clients in implementing social media strategy. What I have found is that for it to be effective and profitable the voice must be authentic.

If I pretend to be the voice of the “Real Sheriff Joe” then both Joe and I are ripping off the audience, and they will find out.

However, if I tell the audience up front that I am a representative of Joe, that is okay with the audience, but they won’t be as interested in hearing from me, as they would be from him.

It depends upon your client too. For example, if I represent myself as the marketing director for XYZ (not well known) company that will work too, because they know they are building a relationship with me.

Wendy Kenney @23Kazoos Says:
July 27th, 2009 at 10:35 pm

PS. We charge a monthly retainer for this service.