By Chris Lee

Public relations (PR) is a key cog in any modern business. Social media is also becoming an unavoidable part of the modern PR professional’s armoury. Yet according to at least one recent study, 80 per cent of PR professionals don’t fully understand social media.

To get to grips with why organisations of all sizes should look at online PR and how they need to restructure their communications strategies entirely, NMK’s Chris Lee met up with Marshall Manson, head of digital for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) for communications company Edelman.

Briefly explain what Edelman does?

Edelman is the largest privately-held PR firm in the world. We’ve got some great clients and great global relationships.

So what is ‘online PR’ and how does it differ from ‘traditional PR’?

It’s all about who you’re talking to. In online PR you’re talking to real people in communities, whether that’s on blogs or Facebook or something along those lines. Traditional PR is very much about talking to professional journalists and the way you talk to a professional is going to be fundamentally different to how you talk to a non-professional. Non-professionals expect more dialogue, more interaction and building more relationships.

When you’re dealing with professional journalists they expect a level of relationships as well, and it’s relationships that have always been at the core of what PR does.

Where do the two complement each other or overlap?

It really ought to happen on anything you’re doing, any campaign or strategy you’re building. You have got to be consistent with what you’re communicating, what it is you’re trying to communicate and - most importantly - what your objectives are.

At the end of the day we want to be communicating the same sorts of information and core materials in traditional PR as we do in the digital space and they have to be complementary, otherwise you won’t get what you want out of the campaign.

When starting out in ‘online PR’ what should businesses consider?

You have to think differently about the way you communicate. You have to be prepared to have those interactions and conversations, and you have to be prepared to listen. Because you can’t walk into a conversation and just preach at [the audience] and walk away, because you won’t get what you want and they won’t get what they want.

This manifests itself in a different view of how you communicate and market. You’ve got to be more sensitive to outside-in thinking as opposed to thinking about yourself and your own goals and messages. You’ve got to let the audiences – the people you want to interact with – define the terms on which you have those conversations.

Who should ‘own’ online PR or digital marketing internally – PR, marketing, who?

We have to think differently about how we organise. The reality is that social media and digital PR have to be owned by people who understand how to do communications. There’s an element of relationship building here which is in the DNA of PR people, so my suggestion is that these things should be owned and managed by people who understand relationships.

The reality is anyone who is responsible for social media and digital in an organisation has to sit across all the functions. Customers and stakeholders don’t make distinctions between marketing and PR, so why do we? We need to think about putting people in organisations who get social media, who understand the means of interaction, who are prepared to listen, and who can have effective relationships across the organisation, whether that’s marketing, PR, even customer service or product development. If you’re listening, the things that you hear ought to be fed into those other areas and if you’re active and having conversations with people that comes down to another form of customer service, and we see lots of businesses acting in that way.

Firms might be wondering how they can cost-justify online PR – what would you say to them?

You need to be prepared to invest in communicating directly with your audiences. For 200-plus years businesses have been held back in some cases by the fact that you’re communicating with people through a filter. You don’t need to do that anymore, you can now interact with your audiences directly, and that’s a seriously cool opportunity. For me, that’s the best argument for making those investments.

You can hear the full podcast interview with Marshall Manson here.