Grab a cup of tea, sit back and hear from Alastair Campbell, Will Whitehorn, Darcy Willson-Rymer, Steve Earl and myself, on the future of media, corporate reputation and public relations.

These were two of the findings from the Business Leaders in Communications Study 2012 study published this week by VMA Group.

The study reported that fewer than half of communication directors believe that they have a major influence on board level strategic decision-making.”

These two sets of numbers are undoubtedly connected.

I’ve created a Storify summary of the launch event on Tuesday evening as told via the conversation on Twitter.

Respondents to the study have yet to recognise the role that social media increasing plays as part of the news agenda and the opportunity that is provides for organisations to engage with their audiences and participate directly in their markets.

Week-in-week-out corporate organisations take a reputational thrashing from the cocktail of traditional and social media week. This week it has been the turn of LA Fitness and McDonalds.

The start point for a comms director in understanding the developing media landscape should be a review of the role that social media plays in reputations, and the implication of all editorial content (conventional, social and their own branded) being shared socially.

In 2012 earned media, more commonly known as traditional media, is influenced as much by the professionals creating and publishing content as it is by those who consume media and respond instantly.

It’s not atypical for a media organisation such as The Guardian to publish three or four versions of a story as it develops, or to report it via live blog.

All forms of media have had to become social in a bid to remain relevant. Anyone with access to the Internet can create, edit, share and publish content to a global audience.

The media agenda is no longer neatly defined by the near 24 hour cycle of print. Instead it is set by individuals breaking stories via Facebook, Flickr, Google+ Twitter and YouTube.

The respondents to the VMA Group study have yet to identify with this shift. Simon Francis labelled them dinosaurs. I’m not going to be so harsh as I’d like the opportunity to sell them Speed’s services to help them through the process of understanding the new reputation landscape.

My view, Speed’s view, is that social media is returning the public relations industry to its roots of engagement in a two-way dialogue rather than a means of broadcast via the proxy of media relations.

It’s a journey back to the future of the industry defined by Eric Goldman, Edward Bernays and Ivy Lee.

Brave organisations have the opportunity to participate with their audiences via their own branded media and social media channels.

The opportunity for the PR industry is develop and understanding of the impact and interaction of owned, earned, and social media on an organisation’s reputation.

Measurement wasn’t raised as an issue during the VMA Group event. But herein is our greatest opportunity as communicators. Every action and interaction online leaves a digital footprint and provides a mechanism to measure results and take a step closer to proving return on investment.

If the PR and communications industry invested the effort in tackling these issues communications would command greater respect in the boardroom.

Thanks to VMA Group for investing in the report and organising a really excellent debate that will no doubt run and run.

It’s no secret that the fastest way to resolve a customer service issue is to complain noisily via Twitter. If you haven’t seen this consumer behaviour before check out the Twitter profiles and conversations of any of the mobile phone, telephone or broadband service providers.

The simple fact is that for consumers complaining via Twitter is a lot simpler than visiting a retail store or dealing with an offshore call centre. The willingness for consumers to embrace social media is one of the reasons that many sectors such as retail banking have been slow to embrace social media. They simply wouldn’t be able to cope with the demand from customers seeking to engage directly.

For brands it’s an issue of customer service as well as reputation. Organisations are having to quickly integrate their social channels with other operational parts of the business giving rise to the social business.

But consumers also need to temper their expectations. Re-engineering businesses so that they put social communication at their core will take time.

This comment was originally written for an article for New Media Knowledge about consumer expectations of brands that interact on social media. It follows the publication of a study on Social Brand Experience by the CMO Council (PDF download) last week. Please click here to read the full article by Chris Lee.

It also happens to be Speed’s view.

Command and control was the defining communication strategy of Campbell’s time in Downing Street.

A splash in a couple of national papers and coverage on BBC TV News would enable the Government to lead the news agenda for 24 hours he said.

No longer.

A decade on and the news cycle is defined by stories breaking minute-by-minute on the internet and not by the daily production cycle of news print. Meanwhile there are an increasing number of outlets fighting for the attention of consumers.

“The agenda is being set as much by those who consume the media, and respond instantly, as those who are trying to exert that control,’ said Campbell.

It has made the business of public relations much tougher. We have entered an era of authentic campaigning.

“Organisations must develop a narrative and build their reputation by landing stories in the media over time,” said Campbell.

I’d argue that media relations has only ever been a proxy to reach an organisation’s audiences.

It’s why it is critical for organisations to be authentic, engage directly with their audiences, and build reputation over time.

It’s a long term job.

Tonight Alastair will talk at a Speed sales event about the end of the age of spin and the need for a more authentic style of communication in the future.

The fragmentation of traditional media over the last two decades and the rapid rise of social media has brought brand reputation into sharp focus like never before.

Disaffected shareholders, customers and staff are noisily voicing their opinions to a global audience via the Internet. Meanwhile the established media is shared in new ways.

No one knows whether it’s going to get even worse. Will conventional media find a sustainable business model as attention continues to move online? Will new social forms of media over power brands?

Speed’s view is that you will never have complete control over your brand’s reputation. You never have.

But you might be able to get more control over your reputation than you’ve had in the past if you are willing to engage directly with your markets rather than via the proxy of traditional media.

That starts with a whole new approach to planning – because of the changed media – and a degree of organisational change for communications teams.

We believe that the future of organisational communication, and therefore the future of reputation management, lies in participation of a brand with its audience.

It’s a return to public relations in its purist form and it’s a huge opportunity for corporate communicators.

Clearing out your virtual life is always a good resolution for the New Year.

You know the sort of thing: unsubscribe from email newsletters, unfriend the Facebook bores and declutter your Twitter network.

As Twitter’s popularity has increased the network is increasingly being abused by automatic Tweets from other social networks and applications.

Without any social content these are nothing more than tweets from machines and that plainly isn’t social. It’s spam. Regularly automated abusers are unfollowed.

Here’s a list because we all love a list. I’ve scribbled down some of the auto-Tweet frustrations shared by people in my network and added a couple of my own.

I fear that I’ve sprayed my network with at least two of these machine-based tweets this week. Guilty as charged. I must do better.

Automated follow
My week on twitter: lost 23 followers, gained 0 followers, 0 RTs, because I auto my tweets

Virtual achievements
I’ve just got a virtual @xbox gold star for another pointless achievement

Automated YouTube tweets
I just liked another smiley cat video on @YouTube

The No One Clicks Daily is out
Featuring a machine-curated list of articles tweeted by those I’m following

Domestic Foursquare check-in
I’m at my house. Alone. Again

Tweet in your sleep
A link that makes me looks smart and is good for my @klout. Please RT but don’t reply because I’m asleep

Instagram: because we are all photographers now
Another snap of my lunch with an arty-farty filter

Do please feel free to make further additions in the comments.

A dull but worthy topic you might think. Not one bit. Wikipedia is a top ranking site for search. It frequently takes the number one slot in Bing and Google search results, Alexa ranks it as one of the top ten sites on the Internet, and its credibility makes it a starting point for internet research.

Wikipedia is a community. As Julio Romo highlights PRs can register as contributors but must follow Wikipedia’s guidelines:

• Contributions or edits must have a neutral point of view and no conflict of interest
• Content must be verifiable
• Articles must not contain new analysis or synthesis

It’s the first issue: neutrality and conflict where the PR industry falls down.

Wikipedia has published guidelines for the PR industry. In its Social Media Guidelines published last year the CIPR advises that PR practitioners seeking to update a Wikipedia entry on behalf of a client should work with an editor to update the relevant page per the CIPR’s Social Media Guidelines.

This is social media at its most social. The ultimate arbiter is the community. If anyone makes a contribution that the Wikipedia community deems to breach the guidelines it will be removed. To misquote James Grunig or more recently Philip Sheldrake, it’s a platform for symmetrical communication.

But Phil Gomes and Stuart Bruce don’t think the existing Wikipedia guidelines are sufficient. Gomes cites company data and information that is out-of-date and Bruce reckons that the very community nature of Wikipedia is the natural playing field of activists.

In a response on Gomes’ blog Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales says that he has yet to hear a cogent argument for PR practitioners to directly edit entries. He says paid advocates don’t make good editors because they insert spin.

“The simple and obvious answer is to do what works, without risking the reputation of the client: talk to the community, respect their autonomy, and never ever directly edit an article,” he said.

Wikipedia agreed last Thursday to meet with representatives of the CIPR to develop clearer guidance on this issue. Ahead of that meeting Philip Sheldrake has, appropriately enough, developed a wiki page on the CIPR Social Media wiki to kick off the discussion.

Head to Twitter and search for the transport operator that you used to get you to work this morning, the name of the high street or ecommerce site that you recently visited, or the restaurant where you’re planning to eat tonight.

You’ll turn up a stack of insights from customers noisily expressing their views. Technology in the form of monitoring solution is essential to manage the huge volumes of customer data.

We’ve tracked the life cycle of a social profile for numerous clients at Speed. Launch a profile on Facebook or Twitter to engage with customers and within less than a week you’ll be dealing with customer service and sales issues.

Consumers are using social media to short cut existing customer management systems such as call centres. Good communication and integration between PR, marketing, customer service and sales is critical to meet consumer expectations.

It’s an issue that Econsultancy’s Online Reputation and Buzz Monitoring 2012 Buyers Guide recognises:

“This step-change has resulted in a shift in consumer expectations. Many customers now expect a public response when they mention a brand on a social network or have an issue or complaint. The absence of a swift response (in real-time if possible) is now seen as an abject ‘fail’ and responding online is increasingly seen as the norm.”

The Econsultancy guide assesses the marketplace for reputation monitoring solutions from the perspective of the buyer. It profiles 15 companies offering reputation and buzz monitoring technology and tools.

The companies included in the report are: Alterian, ASOMO, AT Internet, Attentio, BrandsEye, Brandwatch, Cymfony, Infegy (Social Radar), Market Sentinel, Meltwater Group, Onalytica, Radian6, Sentiment Metrics, Sysomos and Visible Technologies.

Econsultancy stops short of recommending any of the suppliers featured in the guide. Instead it characterises each of the organisation and its’ tools against a variety of criteria, namely history, business model, technology, data sources, monitoring and reporting, language support and cost.

“There is a concern that the industry could lose its position easily. Some of the people [involved in the research] said that by 2020 [the public relations industry] could be irrelevant. Success would be a larger industry that is well understood, respected and established as a management discipline,” said Dr White.

Dr White undertook interviews with 15 groups each with an average of seven practitioners around the country. He used scenario planning to explore what the industry might look like in 2020.

In every case White said that the outcome of the scenario planning was unacceptable. He said that leadership was essential to develop the practise as a serious management discipline.

Here are the top ten findings cited by the report that the industry needs to address to ensure a healthy future:

1. Leadership: Encouragement to the Institute to provide leadership and meet expectations for its leadership
2. Professional development: Education and training for PR practice need to be taken to higher levels, which will involve greater collaboration with education and PR
3. Confidence: Practitioners need greater confidence in what they do, and should lead practice development by example
4. Measurement: There is a need for clearer thinking and guidance on measurement and evaluation
5. Ethics: Codes of conduct should be strengthened
6. New skills: Practitioners need to move faster to develop their knowledge of digital communication
7. Definition: There is a need for better definitions of PR and what it is to achieve
8. Change: Change should be embraced
9. R&D: Industry bodies should commit to R&D
10. Young talent: There is a need to synchronise experience and fresh talent, and to celebrate young people in practice

Dr White is an international consultant in management and organisation development with links to academic institutions including Henley Business School, Cardiff University and University of Central Lancashire.

• addressing gender profile – getting more men into the professional and retaining senior women
• training for the future – making training affordable and developing new skills
• managing the jobs market – ensuring efficient transfer of talent into growth sectors
• demonstrating value and standards – communication value, practices and ethics

It’s a depressing snapshot. These are issues that have challenged the industry for more than a decade.

The survey results were presented back-to-back with Dr Jon White’s report ‘PR2020: The Future of Public Relations”. His work provided recommendations for the future of the industry.