It’s time for PR to get off the publicity treadmill for a few minutes, take a breath and re-imagine who we want to be. I’ve thought about this a lot and, as I said in my last post, it’s not about abandoning our heritage but blending publicity with publishing and telling standout stories that people want to share.

How do we do this?

Look to social media and make community management a model for the new PR.

I’m not the first to say this. 

For several years, Shonali Burke has spoken about how the essence of PR is community.

And if you think about traditional PR, it’s been all about building relationships and engaging a community – that is, with the media. Creating and pointing them to stories that (hopefully) matter to them. Helping them. Working in tandem so they’d help spread the word and benefit both of our respective interests. At least that’s how it worked in theory.

Community management is a natural evolution of PR with a few key changes:

• Instead of focusing on one fairly homogenous community, we now have many diverse ones.
• Instead of relationships we carried around with us and guarded, we become relationship builders and sharers because we understand behaviour, and what people want and need.
• And instead of pitches, we create stories that can be told across many platforms.

Four pillars to the approach

Listening. Yes, you’ve heard this before and it’s almost become a cliché, but that’s because it’s so fundamental. Listening and research is at the heart of what we do. By careful listening, we’ll find the communities who’ll be interested in our stories, and that takes hard work and time. A word of caution: Don’t start by turning to existing lists. Lists are a great resource, but they should come second to your own research. Always.

Publishing + Publicity. We need to wear both sides of the journalism and PR hats and truly become experts at creating content and then getting the word out. That means beginning with a digital editorial approach, looking at the calendar, picking up on trends, and then handpicking influencers who will be interested, and can help spread our stories.

Dazzling. OK – we all have to take a pledge – swear off corporate speak or else face a severe and public penalty! Otherwise, things won’t change. Instead, let’s turn back to roots of creative publicity, married with the ethics of two-way communications. Whatever we do must surprise, entertain, inspire, and mean something of value to our communities.

Measuring. Deep down I’m a creative type, and so I’m not naturally drawn to charts and numbers. But we’re in business too, and that means understanding how to move the needle. The new PR is all about the customers: thinking like them, understanding what they need and helping them. They’ll soon begin to trust you and will come back. It’s that simple. And then set quantifiable business goals, and use good tools to track and analyse them, find insights, and adapt.

Of course this requires a paradigm shift, which takes time – but not too much time or we’ll miss our opportunity.

Boomers and GenXers: You can no longer ‘hang on to what we’ve got.’ People don’t log hours of phone calls to pitch media anymore! It doesn’t work. We build relationships in other ways. Get with the program or get out!

Millennials: Learn to understand the traditions in order to break them and create new models. Think about how you consume digital media, and how that differs from previous generations as a starting point. What are the similarities? Where do things diverge? Then it’s up to you to gently but firmly guide us as we reshape the profession.

What do you think about new community management as the new PR? Do you have any ideas to add?

A version of this post was first published in Spin Sucks.

About Martin Waxman

Martin Waxman, MCM, is a digital communications strategist. He conducts AI research, leads digital and social media training workshops and speaks at events across North America. He's co-founder of two PR agencies, president of a consultancy and has worked in the industry for nearly 30 years. Martin is a LinkedIn Learning instructor, teaches digital strategy and social media at McMaster University, the Schulich School of Business, University of Toronto SCS and Seneca College. He's a member of the Institute for Public Relations Digital Media Research Center and a past-chair of PRSA Counselors Academy. He has a Master of Communications Management (MCM) from McMaster-Syracuse Universities.

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