Mention ‘PR’ and ‘increase sales’ together in ear shot of PR practitioners and you’re sure to receive a mix of responses. For years, debate over the role that PR plays when it comes to sales generation has led to a lengthy justification of the discipline and its role in brand building. Certainly PR can help to generate leads and sales, but sales cannot live by PR alone.

Move on to a new era of social media and digital marketing and the same discussion reigns. Whilst social media can offer direct links to e-commerce, and therefore offers a closer link between PR and sales than ever before, the same trusty elements of brand building and online presence need to be appreciated and considered.

But how do you monitor the success of online PR and social media? How do you move away from the easier to understand ‘number culture’ where numbers of followers and fans are increasingly considered more important than quality of the campaign?

Social media is all about engagement of the right audience online not the largest. A niche subject will attract a niche following and it’s more important to consider the influence of your brand and how you are sharing with individuals (stakeholders) who can become positive ambassadors for your brand.
As with any campaign, measuring and evaluating success starts with the creation of key messages or KPIs. Understanding from the start what your online messages are and who you’re talking to can keep a campaign focused on the straight and narrow. You can then track activation and repetition of these messages and demonstrate how they travel. Word of mouth has always been a valuable PR tool and this is the golden ticket that all social media is based on.

There are many tools for tonal and message evaluation on the market from free tools such as google insight to paid for applications which give you a more in depth service such as Radion 6. By looking at these qualitative measures you can take a more sophisticated approach to social media and include more sentiment in your reviews. Snapshots quotes of what people are saying about your brand online or messages you’ve received from target consumers should all form part of evaluation.

PR and social media will always be at the centre of a debate on how tangible it can be compared to other forms of marketing, but the brands that take a holistic approach to brand awareness and understand the benefits of an ongoing strategic campaign that covers the important bases of listening, measuring and engagement will be the brand that reaps the social media rewards.

So much more than PR

Times they are a changing… if you asked me a few years ago what I did for a living.  I would have said I’m in PR.  Ask me today and you’ll get a different answer.

So what do I do today?  I work in communications.

It’s not just the old PR vs. marketing debate but with online/digital having entered the arena I believe that for quite some time now there is a bigger, better industry that has been bubbling away, growing and refining itself.  Yes – communications.  Forgive me if I am stating the obvious but have talked about this at length with colleagues and other industry professionals and I don’t know that everyone can see it as clearly as maybe I do.  I suppose it’s a bit like the EU debate.  Some want to be part of it (and are), some will not and still see themselves as individual member states and others will be in it to make the most of the benefits. 

Integration and understanding are key

Ultimately for me communications is about understanding and engaging with people in the most appropriate way and thus finding the right solution for the client.  Many people are still trying to fit a square peg into a round hole and it’s not just wrong in an ethical sense but it’s a big waste of time for everyone involved.  People who do this are just setting themselves up for a big #FAIL. 

Don’t get me wrong, I think there will always be a need for expertise in different areas of the traditional marketing mix, however I think that the future holds integration and collaboration for PRs and marketers, a place where people allow themselves to see the bigger picture, doing away with tunnel vision and having the courage to admit that there is not always one solution.

So do you see yourself as a member state or will you embrace integration?

Don’t write

“Just because you’re called a copywriter, don’t start thinking about writing. The best copywriters are often highly visual. After all, a newspaper ad is just a blank sheet of paper in which you can do absolutely anything you want. As long as it makes a point.”

And don’t be scared to fight!

“People don’t like the great ideas. They’re original. Which means they’re unfamiliar and therefore frightening.

This explains why mediocre advertisements sail through without touching the sides, whereas people always find a million and one reasons why a great idea should never run.”

It’s opinions like this that made James Lowther one of the best copywriters in the UK, and one that I greatly admire.

Hooray, huzzah, whoop-de-whoop, yeaaaaaahhh boy-ee!

A fitting introduction for my first McCann Erickson Bristol blog post?

I think so.

As a first (of many) blog posts from myself, I decided to see what my face will look like in the hallowed pages of Campaign magazine.

So here it is, I’m in The Hot Seat!