Where to begin: Life as my muse

Last year when I had the chance to meet Brian Solis at the CPRS National Conference I brought up the fact that like many PR practitioners, I constantly refer people to his conversation prism and that I thought the foreword he wrote for Deirdre Breakenridge’s PR 2.0 captured in three and a half pages the best way to describe what social media has done PR in its 100+ year history.

I highly recommend the entire book, but here’s a brief summary of the key points from the foreword.

Two key players are attributed with creating public relations just over 100 years ago – Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays.

After an accident at the Pennsylvania Railroad, Ivy Lee created the first press release because he believed PR was a “two way street” in that companies had a responsibility to inform their audiences.

Sigmund Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays was PR’s first theorist who based his approach on people’s irrational and unconscious motives.

For decades following, the work of these two individuals shaped public relations, and somewhere along the way the industry lost its vision – leading into “hype, spin, hyperbole, and buzzwords.”

Enter social media and PR moves from companies marketing at audiences to humanizing conversations with people. It was a return to “two way conversations” by forcing PR to stop broadcasting and to begin a dialogue.

The term PR 2.0 has been around since the 1990s, before web 2.0 was coined. It’s not about the technology – it’s a philosophy that changes the game by getting organizations engaging with people on a level playing field.

In the end it’s a renaissance that brings the public back in public relations. (also the title of Solis’ new book)

A few times a year I get the chance to speak to students about careers in public relations. In my discussions I always ask how many are on sites like Facebook. Not surprisingly most are, but I’m actually more intrigued by those who aren’t because they usually question its value altogether having seen what people will share.

A few weeks back I came across Flickering Pixels – How Technology Shapes Your Faith by Shane Hipps. While some of the later chapters in the book seemed a little out of place, the overall message was good.

Hipps makes the argument that community is a large component of faith. He goes back to the shift in oral cultures to literate cultures, which created and reinforced individualism. Today other technologies continue to reinforce individualism.

People now rely on tools from phones to email to Facebook to manage their relationships, leading to less in-person contact. Hipps doesn’t make the argument that technology is evil, but rather a reality of our lives, which makes it important to understand how it can shape us. He makes many references to McLuhan‘s work in this area.

The best analogy I’ve heard about this compared “community” to “food.” Everyone needs food to live. To maintain health, we’ll often supplement our diets with vitamins. Face-to-face community is like food and social media helps to supplement as vitamins do.

This lesson is also true in professional community. Healthy relationships are not based on technology, but rather a very intentional act of making an effort to create a relationship. Whether or not a PR student or practitioner is involved in social media, an understanding of how it should be used is critical. Basically social media supplements and will never replace what we all need to do to maintain healthy relationships.

Back in June, I sat down with Don LaBelle, APR, FCPRS to chat about his public relations career, which spans some 50+ years. This story he shared was from 1957 when he served for six months in Sardinia with the air force. Don paints a picture of the Italian culture in the 1950s and shares a story that would challenge even the most experienced PR practitioner.

Remember it’s 1957 and big news will hit the paper the next day. I wonder how different this story may have been had YouTube or Twitter been around.

We did this video over the summer, before Twitter lists was introduced. Regardless, a good basic understanding of how you should tweet. Why people tweet came from a Pear Analytics report released in August.

Public relations is the strategic management of relationships between an organization and its diverse publics, through the use of communication, to achieve mutual understanding, realize organizational goals, and serve the public interest. (Flynn, Gregory & Valin, 2008)

The delivery of public relations has certainly changed drastically over it’s 100+ year history, but the basic elements of what makes a successful career remain the same. This summer I sat down with one of my favourite public relations mentors, who has been a Canadian Public Relations Society member for 50 years. Founding member of CPRS Edmonton, Don LaBelle, APR, FCPRS, provides his two pieces of advice.

Complete aside: One of the proudest moments in my career was when I walked off the stage in Vancouver to accept an award and Don was seated by the stage and said, “way to go kid.” I should tell him that one day.

The thing I hear most with PR practitioners and their reluctance to get started with social media is that they don’t know where to start. Often people get intimidated with the technology. My advice:

1. If you’re not afraid to have a conversation with a person, get over being intimidated by the technology. Social media is not about technology, it’s about the people at the other end of that technology. In fact, face-to-face interaction is just an important as the relationship you maintain online. Technology is just an enabler of that conversation, so just start the dialogue.
2. There’s no “right” place to get started. BUT there’s a right time and that’s NOT when you’re trying to pitch something. It’s important to establish your credibility online before you can expect people to care about what you have to say and ultimately get engaged.
3. Social media does not replace your other PR activities. This comes up time and time again when people think that social media is the magic bullet to save their product after other marketing didn’t work. Truth is, if you have a product that people don’t want, putting a video on YouTube won’t save it. Through communications planning you can be strategic and see how social media can be incorporated by tailoring your content to what your audience wants to see.
4. Be a real person. I’m highly unlikely to follow you on Twitter for example, if all you have in your profile is business related interests. I want to know that I’m going to be talking to someone who’s not just going to pitch me all the time. Even if you’re reluctant to post personal information for privacy reasons, find something you’re comfortable with. So you may not be posting things about your family for example, but the fact that you’re an avid sailor may be something you’re comfortable with. Personally sailing doesn’t interest me but I’m more likely to follow you because I know you won’t be all business.

When a friend suggested that I use my last name in the title of my new blog, I wasn’t convinced that I should. The only other time that I had used my name that way was to set a birth date for my stray dog Autumn by adding “ ’s birthday” to the calendar on the date that fall starts.

After thinking about it for a while “where to begin” popped in my head because I kept hearing how intimidated people are with social media. While this blog is for public relations practitioners who want to use more social media in their activities, anyone with an interest in social media should get something from it because it’s about everyday stuff.

Using “Begin” was also fitting because my whole life whenever someone saw my family name spelled out, they’ve never pronounced it like the English word “begin” (the preferable pronunciation should you not be French). In fact, when I pronounce it in English, I’m almost always asked to spell it out. Great analogy for social media: it’s human nature to make things more complicated than they are.

While there’s technology involved and generally some etiquette and norms, it’s really just about conversations and if you’re not afraid to talk to people, you shouldn’t be afraid to get involved in social media.

A nice twist none-the-less to my name because every single day there’s something new to learn in social and my colleagues and I often feel like the Carpenters’ song suggests “We’ve only just begun.”

Diane Bégin currently works in corporate communications for a PR agency in Toronto. She has been an active member of the Canadian Public Relations Society since 1999.