Phillips D., Young P. Online Public Relations

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Building blocks for online PR

176

But the next part is also important. In Shirky’s view, when we consider

how to achieve connectedness (and enter the elusive ‘viral’ world of the

internet), then media (like blogs) that mostly have very modest numbers

of connections, nonetheless have community connectedness properties that

make them extremely powerful.

This leads us to the conclusion that both the mass and the niche social

media publisher are important, not least because both have reach, with the

former having much more but diluted inﬂuence compared with the socially

powerful la�er, and because the niche commentator has all the potential for

viral expression to the mass audience.

Segmentation is needed, not least because the platforms, channels and

context – even the language – of diﬀerent channels are diﬀerent (for example,

Twi�er versus Times online). The channel is a message in its own right, and

to be able to hold a conversation through such channels it is necessary to

understand the culture of both the channel and the community. Barging in

on someone’s ‘conversation’ is rude in any environment, and nowhere more

so than online. As part of landscaping, there may be a need to examine

internal cultures that remain content to adopt the ‘barging in on someone’s

conversation’ model.

Historically it has been considered enough to frame key public relations

communications in a few succinct messages. In the online conversation of

the internet society, this is too simple. Statements need to be supported,

users need to be able to explore further, and frequently seek to ‘pull’ more

information.

This may mean that ‘more’ information is available using other online

devices. The traditional website – the corporate repository of facts and in-

formation and some trading transactions – may be the repository for ‘more’,

but the conversation and explication of values could well be found in much

more transitory space like blogs, social networks and SMS exchanges. This

means that the content needed needs to be made comprehensively available

through devices such as hyperlinking. Where information is not provided

by the organization, online communities will go elsewhere online to meet

their needs. The a�ention to the organization is broken and the link lost.

Value partners are valuable when they have all the information they need to

hand. Identifying orphaned legacy content and the potential for its presence

to create dissonance is signiﬁcant for some organizations.

The practitioner can now have the best of both worlds: short, sharp and

appealing content supported by the deep, rich content in the backgrounders

and support content, all brought together because of the hyperlink.

Examining the availability of such content as part of the inventory needed

for development of strategy is quite important. Not having content can

mean that it will be expensive to produce.

Organizational analysis

177

IN BRIEF

 Consideration includes optimized content designed to appeal to search

engines, and content that is provided in a form that chimes with the

interests of the prospective reader.

 In order to provide content in a form that chimes with the interests of

the prospective reader, it is important to identify the unique appeal of

an organization, its products, brands and people.

 Value systems evident online need to be analysed and defensible.

 Analysis will include the corporate backgrounders (history, ﬁnancial

and management structure, products, markets, associates, regulators

and endorsers).

 Because the online community is critical (and occasionally adversely

critical), it will examine value statements and where there is dissonance

– ie the claim is unreasonable or unbelievable – will expose such state-

ments for wider user-generated comment online.

 Organizations are exposed in a range of channels of communication.

Some have a different view of values systems from others.

 Practitioners can create questionnaires to invite people to evaluate a

website, blog, wiki or any other online property to identify its appeal

as an online resource.

MAKING AN INVENTORY AND CREATING GUIDELINES FOR

INTERNET PR ACTIVITIES

Consulting for a company with many big brands distributed through on-

and ofﬂine retailers and a multi-million-pound budget for TV advertising

proved interesting for one of the authors. At the time, online retailing in

this sector had the potential to account for over 30 per cent of revenues.

The question of content inventory came up. There was no form of

inventory control over online collateral and no set of guidelines for its use.

The company did not know which elements of its collateral were in use or

where. In addition, simple things were missing like product photographs

and images, videos, TV commercials in web-friendly formats, podcasts and

interviews, speciﬁcation information, brief product descriptions for web-

site references and so forth.

On advice, the company decided that that prior to considering any

further online activity, an audit would be helpful and that resources should

be directed towards developing platform, channel and context guidelines

as part of the online strategy for the organization.

One of the more advanced and publicly available set of guidelines is

available from the BBC at http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines.

Building blocks for online PR

178

Notes

1. Wenstøp, F and Myrmel, A (2006) Structuring organizational value

statements, Management Research News, 29 (11), pp 673–83

2. Lazarsfeld, P F and Stanton, F (1944) Radio Research 1942–3, Duell, Sloan

and Pearce

3. McQuail, D (1994) Mass Communication: An introduction (3rd edn), Sage

Publications

4. Morris, M and Ogan, Christine L (1996) The internet as mass medium,

Journal of Communication, 46 (1), pp 39–50; McLeod, Jack M and Becker,

Lee B (1981) The uses and gratiﬁcations approach, in Handbook of Political

Communication, ed Dan D Nimmo and Keith R Sanders, Sage

5. Gregory, A (2000) Planning and Managing Public Relations Campaigns:

A step-by-step guide, Kogan Page; Smith, R D (2004) Strategic Planning

for Public Relations, Lawrence Erlbaum; Grunig, J E and Hunt, T (1984)

Managing Public Relations, Harcourt Brace College Publishers; Theaker,

A (2008) The Public Relations Handbook, Taylor and Francis, 3rd revised

edition; Freeman, R Edward (1984) Strategic Management: A stakeholder

approach, Pitman

6. Shirky, C (2008) Here Comes Everybody: The power of organizing without

organizations, Penguin

7. Anderson, C (2004) The Long Tail, Hyperion (Revised and Updated

edition, 2008)

 Segmentation is relevant.

 Analyse ‘user-generated’ market and social segments.

 There is a temptation for many of us who are used to mass com-

munication and mass markets to imagine that, because we can ﬁnd

references to issues and brands online, these sites and posts are a

homogeneous market. Evidence suggests otherwise.

 To achieve connectedness (and enter the elusive ‘viral’ nature of the

internet), we should note that media (like blogs) with very modest

numbers of connections may have community connectedness prop-

erties that make them extremely powerful.

 Both the mass and the niche social media publishers are important.

 Historically it has been considered enough to frame key public relations

communication in a few succinct messages. In the online conversation

of the internet society, this is too simple. Statements need to be sup-

ported, users need to be able to explore further, and frequently seek

to ‘pull’ more information.

179

Developing online

PR strategies

Through landscaping and organizational analysis, the practitioner will now

have identiﬁed the organization’s aims, corporate objectives and extant

mission statements. The la�er cannot be changed. Once online, they are, in

eﬀect, there for all time. What is becoming a major driver is the immersive

nature of the most popular websites.

The time spent on Facebook and Bebo, computer games, YouTube and

even e-mail demonstrate the extent to which these technologies draw

participants into a world that is beyond just instant gratiﬁcation. They go

deeper than, for example, a single beautifully executed advertisement into

a world of involvement, participation and interaction. These channels and

this interactivity, though still largely bounded by PC, laptop, computer

games and mobile phone screens (although not for much longer), demand

sentient engagement and response, o�en even at an emotional level.

The commi�ed groups that surround some blogging communities show

how powerful immersion by enthusiasts has become, which means that the

practitioner will need to consider immersion (including close third-party

interest) when developing strategy.

In addition, there will be a driver that prompts entry into the online

world. It may be a brief or the practitioner’s own initiative but it must be a

conscious and purposeful decision. Furthermore, knowledge of the nature

of online assets and inventory will help inform strategy.

Building blocks for online PR

180

The essence of online public relations is that it is a coherent organization-

wide online strategy. There are no ‘campaigns’ on line. The internet time-

shi�s (it is part of the many dimensions in the internet’s network eﬀect).

Few will remember that The Belfry Shopping Centre, Redhill, was awarded

the BCSC Purple Apple Marketing Award, or the details of Tate Modern’s

opening in 2000 (the year the ﬁrst edition of this book was wri�en) but

the award is still there for all to see online and so are the reviews of Tate

Modern. This legacy content, part of today’s reputation for both places,

shows how today’s public relations campaign will remain part of the rep-

utation asset of the organization for years to come.

SETTING OBJECTIVES

Thus aims and objectives for online activity have to be part of a strategic,

multi-participant, multi-media approach, and if the aims are short term,

one needs to be very explicit about duration.

Online activity might result from a corporate desire to be evident online,

to extend its ‘digital footprint’, to add to its asset base (online presence

and online relationships are signiﬁcant assets) or to establish relationships

oﬀering products or services, knowledge, meeting of needs and satisfaction.

The organization may be political, commercial, charitable, public sector or

something else. The key is that online activity is becoming essential for

most organizations.

What does the organization want to achieve? What does it seek to achieve?

There is a diﬀerence.

An organization may want to sell more products yet it may also seek

the collaboration of the online community to develop ideas, products or

markets. The means may be a contribution to the ends.

Se�ing online objectives is not as simple as it may be in many other areas

of PR. Online objectives have to coincide with organizational objectives and

values, and to do so in ways that will make both transparent to the world.

In addition, these ambitions need to chime with an online community that

has plenty of other places to go.

There is a further consideration. The internet is interesting to people in

the way they use it. Some people only use search engines and read what

sites tell them. Others only go to sites that they know and feel safe explor-

ing. Others are much more adventurous. Some add content in walled

gardens like Facebook, and others publish websites and blogs. If one asks

any audience what they use the internet for, the answers will all be diﬀerent.

Some people who use the internet are not even aware that the service they

are using is part of the network of networks.

The internet is, for the most part, not a mass medium; it is ‘me the user’,

and if this means ‘I the user’ will go to a website with huge reach, that is

Developing online PR strategies

181

just what, in these circumstances, under these conditions and at this time,

I will do.

The internet is also an experience and an emotion driver that ﬁts well

into what some consider to be an emerging economy when so many organ-

izations oﬀer so much that is so similar. Internet public relations allows

the practice to develop completely new approaches to relationships and

interactions. New PR is also about new thinking.

Professor Feng Li posits that:

Perhaps the age of the knowledge workers has come to maturity, and a new

age is emerging. Daniel Pink called it the ‘conceptual age’, characterised

by ‘high concept and high touch’. Joseph Pine and James Gilmore called it

the ‘experience economy’, because increasingly work is theatre and every

business is a stage. C K Prahalad and Venkat Ramaswamy further developed

this concept and called it the experience innovation, because the future of

competition depends on co-creating unique value with customers. Shoshana

Zuboff called it the ‘support economy’, because neither goods nor services can

adequately fulﬁl the needs of today’s market. Underlying all these ideas is a

fundamental change that is rapidly taking hold in our society and economy:

we are increasingly leaving the material and information age behind and

entering a new, emotional age.

Back in 1973, Peter Drucker famously pointed out that ‘[w]hat the customer

buys and considers value is never a product. It is always utility – that is, what

a product does for him.’ When a woman buys a lipstick, she is not buying

a lump of coloured fat. Rather she is buying something that will make her

feel more attractive. Think about the movie Calendar Girls. A group of middle

aged women managed to achieve fame and ﬁnancial success beyond their

wildest dream, by evoking emotional responses from the public. Selling high

quality products [is] important, but if you can evoke emotional responses from

customers, the potential rewards will expand exponentially.

The notion of ‘Making a Business of Emotions’ is not entirely new. Harley-

Davison (and Nike), for example, have for a long time promoted the image of

being in the ‘lifestyle’ business rather than manufacturing. This not only added

billions of dollars to their market capitalisation, it also means that Harley-

Davison does not need to compete with Honda or BMW for the technical

performance of their motorbikes. To a large extent, the success of Starbucks

can be attributed to its focus on being the ‘third place’ which is neither home

nor ofﬁce, instead of a Cafe. The shifting focus towards experiences and

emotions can often create exponential expansion of business value for all

stakeholders.

Everyone is diﬀerent and each person’s use of the internet is unique to the

individual.

This makes it interesting when se�ing out to develop strategies. The mass

market/mass media mindset is hard to leave behind when the audience is

reaching in and eschewing organizations that only reach out.

Building blocks for online PR

182

Se�ing online PR objectives requires risk and opportunity analysis and

a view of how to manage the unknown. What, in other areas, can be a

‘stand-alone’ campaign will soon reach further both inside an organization

and beyond it. Employees, customers, vendors and other partners must

assume they will have complete visibility. It is an axiom that everything

the practitioner and practitioner’s organization does and says online is

available to everyone – forever – however embarrassing that may be.

The aims need to be set as part of a continuum of objectives, and when set

in a SMART context need to be relevant to the internet:

 Speciﬁc – objectives should specify outcomes and take into consid-

eration the global, time-shi�ing, interactive, two-way and immersive

nature of the internet.

 Measurable – across many platforms, channels and contexts; one must

consider more than mass impact because of the network eﬀect.

 Achievable and a�ainable – in context and bearing in mind that most

online eﬀects are best achieved because they are multi-dimensional,

appealing to people through diﬀerent platforms, channels, contexts

and time shi�s.

 Realistic – which usually means progressive because, unlike other

activities, online adoption does not come as one ‘big bang’.

 Time – in eﬀect for ever, but also meeting outcomes as progressive

milestones on the way.

To sum up: Do the practitioner’s objectives chime with the organization’s

objectives? Are they compatible with the values held by the organization? Is

the objective relevant to online constituents and defendable in any forum?

Is risk and opportunity manageable? Are the goals SMART and agreed

with the organization?

STRATEGIES

At last! The practitioner is now in a position to get to grips with what

actually needs to be done.

Online strategies have to be creative in concept. ‘Me too’ programmes

have a lot of competition. There are so many platforms and channels for

communication. There are no boundaries. The practitioner can use e-

posters or SMS, blogs or wikis, podcasts and virtual environments, and all

of them at the same time. The ability to mix RSS with point-of-sale devices

or announce a presidential running mate via SMS, as Barack Obama did in

2008, can all be part of a timing strategy.

Developing online PR strategies

183

The programme should be part of a mix of activities for both new and old

media. Online media (the sort that does not have a print version) and media

online (the print and other media that are also made available online) can

be part of a campaign that includes internet-mediated television or games

machines. The key here is that if the practitioner does not include a mix

of activities, there is nothing to stop the online community picking up

the campaign and shi�ing it to diﬀerent platforms or channels, with the

initiative now taken out of the hands of the practitioner, organization and,

o�en, the publisher.

Strategy is adaptable by nature. It will consider availability to both organ-

ization and external constituents to take the activity in diﬀerent directions

with the application of diﬀerent resources (platforms, channels, contexts,

ﬁnance, time, old and emerging technologies).

Strategy will consider skills and responsibilities. Allocation of respon-

sibilities and reporting, with associated training and management infra-

structure, are all strategy considerations. For example, if a blog is part of a

campaign, there have to be people commi�ed to creating good and relevant

content, regularly and against a set of rules, with necessary training and

reporting.

There is an imperative for good, clear employee communication inside

the organization, and there is usually a need to involve internal ‘stake-

holders’ because online initiatives will aﬀect them; initiatives are visible and

are be�er disclosed in a structured way. No employee likes to be wrong-

footed by an outsider with ‘insider’ information.

Strategy will include methodologies for monitoring and reporting.

Online activity can be slow to take oﬀ. It can also be explosive! Being able

to monitor and report is critical, and sometimes it is monitoring the very

ordinary that counts.

Strategy will be realistic and a reality check is always worthwhile. Timing,

technologies, skill levels and vendor experience all need to be checked in

advance.

The process will at some level in the organization consider the implications

of transparency, porosity, internet agency, richness and reach, and will

include risk and opportunity testing.

To sum up: strategy will need to consider a creative mix of activities.

It will be adaptable and executed with relevant skills and responsibilities.

The programme will have to include good, clear employee communication

along with eﬀective monitoring and reporting, and will be realistic and risk

delimitated.

Building blocks for online PR

184

IN BRIEF

 What is becoming a major driver is the immersive nature of the most

popular websites.

 Entering into the online world has to be a conscious and purposeful

decision.

 There are no ‘campaigns’ on line because of the long tail effect.

 Legacy content is part of today’s reputation.

 Online activity might be driven by a corporate desire to be evident

online, to extend its ‘digital footprint’, to add to its asset base (online

presence and online relationships are signiﬁcant assets), or to establish

relationships offering products or services, knowledge, meeting of

needs and satisfaction.

 An organization may want to sell more products, yet it may also seek

the collaboration of the online community to develop ideas, products

or markets. The means may be a contribution to the ends.

 The internet is, for the most part, not a mass medium.

 Everyone is different and each person’s use of the internet is unique to

the individual.

 Setting online PR objectives requires risk and opportunity analysis and

a view of how to manage the unknown.

 The aims need to be set as part of a continuum of objectives; when set

in a SMART context, they need to be relevant to the internet.

 Online strategies have to be creative in concept.

 The programme should be part of a mix of activities for both new and

old media.

 There is nothing to stop the online community picking up the campaign

and shifting it to different platforms or channels, with the initiative

now taken out of the hands of the practitioner and organization.

 Strategy is adaptable by nature.

 Strategy will consider skills and responsibilities.

 There is an imperative for good, clear employee communication inside

the organization.

 Strategy will include methodologies for monitoring and reporting.

 Strategy will be realistic.

185

Thoughts about

tactics

Online PR tactics are a dream for creative people. There are so many vari-

ables, they can be creatively applied and there are lots that can be truly

original and compelling.

Tactics need to be well understood if they are to be deployed eﬀectively.

For most professional practitioners, there is no substitute for trying things

out. For most online channels of communication, there is a PR sandbox

somewhere. If you hear of something like Second Life, try it, read what

people say about it, and try to think why it has appeal now and how the

appeal will change as it matures.

In Chapter 2 and throughout the foregoing pages we have mentioned a

wide range of platforms, channels and contexts. They will be deployed to

meet the strategic plan. There is no online PR campaign that only uses only

one device, channel or context because the online community will, on its

own initiative, shi� channels, platforms and contexts. All tactics should, at

the concept stage consider applications in diﬀerent platforms, channels and

contexts.

There will always be elements that will be included in tactical thinking:

 proactive actions and initiatives – to get the ball rolling;

 monitoring – in place before starting to see what the online community

is doing with the campaign;