I did a short talk (more of a gentle rant with strange anecdotes) at the CIPR’s Digital Impact conference on Monday. Rather than a Slideshare dump I thought I’d jot down some of what I talked about in case it’s of interest. It was all about how the UK media is changing, cutting through the crap of what digital media means for PR and what digitised ‘networks’ are really all about.

I got into PR, and in particular the technology side, because I trained as a journalist and was brought up playing with technology. My mum had been PA to the late Robert Maxwell. My dad installed mainframes for big companies. The bubblewrap opportunities were sensational for a seven-year-old.

I wrote crap for my local paper at 13. At 15 I was writing it regularly, after doing some intensive journalism training (mostly how to stitch people up). Then after a news journalism course I started working as a ‘normal’ reporter for a local newspaper. I chased down parish council tittle tattle, interviewed local ‘personalities’, knocked on the doors of newly-bereaved families and was humiliated at the judging of school fete fancy dress competitions. Then it was regional dailies, tabloid writing, some broadcast stuff, then PR.

Since then (the early to mid-90s) the media has changed hugely. It wasn’t a cosy world back then, especially if gypsies chased you with bricks, but now the media is not what it’s used to be. Print is on one knee. TV is wobbly. Radio is growing. Social media is rocketing. If Maxwell was still with us, he’d probably have tried to do some dodgy deal to cut on it on.

Snapshot of media change in the UK
1709, oldest surviving UK newspaper starts in Worcester. It was to be 282 years before I wrote for it, yet it survived that and is still around today
More newspapers, more magazines
1920s, early public radio
1930s, early public TV
1950s, TV really took root. If PR had been an established sector then, everyone would’ve rushed to start hip new TV PR agencies
1980s, beginning of diversification sparked by technological change
1990s, the internet. The conventional media largely ignored it until the second half of the decade, some beyond that

So media really started to digitise in the mid 90s. Initially it was about the web being a new platform for publishing words and pictures. Then video came. Technology has made all of this possible. About six years ago we saw the arrival of much-hyped web 2.0. There was a load of bollocks about this, but basically from a media perspective it means media began to change from being one-way to two-way. Before then, the only way the media had really been two-way was the odd TV vox-pop and the letters to the editor page, which was mostly made up anyway.

What digital actually means for PR people
So now the people can answer back. Brands may be able to talk to them directly, but then there are conversations they may want to have and they may not want to have. These are some of the fundamental issues for building reputation through social media these days and you’ll be familiar with them I’m sure.

What does this mean for PR? We’re about managing reputation. What it means for me is that we have to modernise what we do so that we can do that across the diverse and digitised media landscape, and be ready to tackle the way that landscape will evolve further.

Five years ago I felt I was looking over my shoulder at the rise of digital PR. Today that’s not the case. We are not there yet, but soon there will be no regular PR and online or digital PR. It will all just be PR.

The reason for that is that there will not be a distinction as such between conventional and social media. It will all just be media. We just have to figure out how to become the new middleman for a new media landscape.

Examples of how conventional media is addressing digitisation
Oil and water – can conventional and social media mix?

I think that The Guardian site is the closest I’ve come to a national newspaper that has rebuilt its content around its audience using features such as content curation and micro-blogging. An example is the microsite created for the Grand National. Content was posted in real time in a micro-blog format. Race results appeared in real term. And longer stories filed after the racing at Aintree. It’s typical of how The Guardian deals with a big story. It handled the Chilcot Inquiry in exactly the same way.

If you’re a reader of The Guardian site and follow some its journalists on Twitter you’ll spot how stories develop. Journalists tweet about stories they’re writing on. PRs or people in their network make suggestions for sources of information. A first story will go live as a blog maybe after a journalist has done a couple of interviews. Readers will comment on the story. Additional sources will chip in and the journalist will curate comments and produce a second and third version of the story. This provides PRs with more opportunities than ever to influence how a journalist writes a story.

Secondly, branded media: The Economist. Media is in turmoil, no doubt. Social media provides a means for brands to build develop communities in their own right. The Economist (Speed client) on YouTube is a media owner that has a branded video channel for disseminating its own content. But we could equally be looking at any number of consumer brands. Vodafone is a great example on YouTube that you might want to check out. The Economist has always done video but you have to look hard on the site to dig it up. We’ve created a channel on YouTube and promoted it as an asset in its own right. It has become so successful that it’s a top 100 channel on YouTube, and it’s generating revenue. Increasingly this will become a model for brands wanting to engage with their audience, bypassing traditional media altogether.

How PR people need to change/upgrade their media skills
I think what media change means is that PRs have got to assess what they do and how they do it. Across the board. We’ve got to become the type of PR people, PR agencies and PR sector that that media and clients will demand in the future. If we don’t, we should sod off and find another line of work.

But putting that delicate issue to one side, let’s look at the digital media that are changing the world of PR, and their pros and cons.

Conventional publishers: we need more understanding of each media and how content is likely to permeate within that platform and beyond. The pro is that the ripple effect can cause far broader and potentially more lasting impact, the con is that is requires far more work than just knowing a journalist on a publication and tapping them up. There is a need for firm insight and really clear planning so that our ideas can be successful

Conventional broadcasters: as above, but understand that journalists working for them are following what social media is generating, and that technology is going to change this media big time. An example is IPTV. Of course the ability to watch what TV when you want it has changed things, but imagine if you could engage with a local community group and some of your neighbours via the TV when a topical piece of programming content is there. With integration between the TV and social media communities, and the devices to support user interaction over that content from anywhere, it’s not far away perhaps. TV has long been influential, it will gain combined influence alongside new technologies and its content should have high editorial integrity. The flipside, again, is that keeping tabs on all of that for a PR means a lot of work.

Social media platforms: the pros are that conventional editorial barriers aren’t there, but influence will still be created by editorial content, albeit with the nature of editorial changing. It’s very agile, it can be comparatively cheap, but the potential to backfire is huge because it has that two-way channel. It can go from a minor problem to a crisis in minutes. It also means clients’ PR teams have to make themselves far more agile to ensure the right content is delivered.

Analytical tools: to measure influence on reputation. The great thing about digitised media is the audit trail – if you can track it, you should be able to measure its impact. Another big pro is that a lot of the tools for tracking and assessing social media and all forms of published digitised content are free – the trick is knowing which ones are most effective. And the downside is that PRs could end up digging in the wrong place for the measurement they seek. These tools mean we can track not only what is published and what the reaction is, but the sentiment of those conversations – but what price sarcasm? These tools move us much closer to honest and clinical measurement of PR value, but still we can only really know what impact editorial content in any media has on a brand’s reputation and purchase influence by asking the audience. And even then, they may not be straight with us.

Engagement: both with social and conventional media. Obviously engagement with social media is direct and requires skills. Engagement via digital means with conventional media is growing, but again needs skill and the downside can be that fickle PR methods used in conventional media relations are transposed to digital tools. Crap pitches don’t work offline, so best avoid them online. For media and social media engagement, the network is key.

What this network business means
The first thing to point out is the the value of network to brands lies with the trust factor. People trust other people they’re networked with. If they’re networked around a passion for a brand, that is a good thing for us.

But remember that networks are just really word-of-mouth digitised, and so preserved for the best part of eternity. Social media conversations pretty much replicate those that happen and have always happened in society anyway. The difference is that the media encourages conversations to build faster, encourages more participation and can engage more people. A bigger, bolder, faster, more impactful type of conversation typically – and they can be tracked and joined.

The trick for PRs is to apply themselves in the right way to that environment, rather than blundering in to a pub conversation like a gobby or naive person, and quickly ending up as the object of derision.