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.

The ICCO Summit is a bi-annual event that pulls together senior practitioners from public relations consultancies around the world to explore the issues and trends affecting the industry. Last week’s event saw 120 PR consultancy directors from 30 countries come together in Sintra, Portugal.

In my session I explored the emergence of social media and the opportunity it provides for the PR industry and argued that the future of PR is the future of social media.

In time I reckon we’ll come to recognise the development of the Internet at the turn of the 21^st century to be as radical to society as the invention of the printing press in the second half of the 15^th century. That’s incredibly exciting for anyone in the media but it’s also incredibly daunting.

Powerful individuals and journalists have always had a platform to share their views of course. But now social media means that anyone can demand “do you know who I am?” of a brand. It’s made the whole area of reputation management much more complicated, not least because there is so much more to manage now.

There are two possible reactions to social media within an organisation: social media as bolt-on channel; or as a strategic platform for customer engagement.

In using social media as a bolt-on channel, an organisation transfers the communication techniques that it has used with its traditional audiences, typically the media, and supplements them with a sprinkling of social media. You can spot these organisations everyday on Facebook or Twitter spewing out content with little or no engagement.

In contrast the strategic approach to social media recognises the opportunity that it offers a business to put its customers at its heart.

I took issue with Huntworth’s Lord Chadlington who said during a Q&A following his keynote on the previously day that “the PR industry was not good at digital”. Speak for yourself Lord Chadlington, speak for yourself.

There’s a turf war going on, no doubt. PR agencies are competing with ad agencies and digital agencies for budgets. It is time for the industry to stand up and be counted. Otherwise we’ll almost certainly lose out as we did with search marketing.

The identification of a community and development of content to engage with that community in a participative relationship, whatever the media, is an editorial process.

This is the PR industry’s ground. We need to claim it.

It’s a thin volume that is as relevant today as it was when it was published. It’s so good that I sought out a first edition from a book dealer in the US.

The three stages of the industry could be mapped over the second half of the 20^th century and into the 21^st century just as Goldman used them to describe the development of the industry during the first half of the 20^th century:

1. Public fooled via spin
2. Information through communication (broadcast)
3. Public engagement via two way engagement

Perhaps I’m being overly simplistic but its uncanny isn’t it?

Sometime during the 60s and 70s the PR industry squandered the heritage described by Goldman, like early 20^th century practitioners Edward Bernays and Ivy Lee before him, and it became industrialised. Around the same time the PR industry became obsessed about communication with publics via the proxy of media relations rather than direct public engagement.

What happened? Why did the industry ignore the progress of previous generations?

Now that print media is in decline and the internet has enabled communication with publics directly with digital media, and ultimately direct participation within communities, the PR industry is attempting to modernise and reinvent itself. Yet Goldman described this as the vanguard of the industry 60 years ago.

What happened in the intervening period? And aren’t we going back to the future?

I’ve put these questions to various academic pals that have studied the history of the industry in a bid to frame an outlook for its future for the book that Steve Earl and I are writing.

We’d be interested in your views and would love to quote you if you’ve got any compelling insight.

Thank you to Heather Yaxley for recommending Goldman to me.

This Summer Social session will explore why it’s never been easier for PR professionals to build relationships or personal reputation.

Social media provides the opportunity for an individual to build a personal network like never before. It used to take a graduate several years of lunching journalists and boozy after work drinking sessions to build up a network of contacts.

But no longer: face-to-face meeting remain invaluable but now armed with Twitter anyone can build a network of journalists and over the course of a few weeks learn about their likes and dislikes. That’s one small step away from engagement and developing a relationship.

Social media is also enabling savvy individuals to build their personal reputation by showcasing their work whether that’s words, photos or video. It takes no more than 15 minutes to create a blog or an account on Flickr or YouTube to share with your network and peers.

Professional networks such as LinkedIn and personal web sites have become the modern portfolio. They’re almost certainly the first place that an employer, potential business partner or prospect will go to check you out.

In the meantime I’ll be following tonight’s #CommsChat at 8pm about online influence, hosted by Neville Hobson, communicator and blogger, with guest Azeem Azhar, founder of PeerIndex, to make sure my content is up to scratch.

Here, in her very own words, is a post she has penned about what she’s learned this week.

Social media is starting to have a powerful effect on an organisation’s reputation and is forcing all companies to evaluate their PR and communication strategies.

Social media crisis vs crisis on social media
After an discussion with Speed’s Scott McLean about distinguishing between a crisis that happens as a result of social conversations or an actual crisis that plays out via social media, I started looking into examples of both and set out to discover the best way to manage reputation via social platforms.

The challenge with social media is that you have no control. Comments or accusations can be completely unfounded but get picked up and take momentum across the internet. A untruth or bad consumer experience could be front page news within hours, as a result of journalists searching social media channels such as Twitter.

Paperchase came under fire for reportedly plagiarising an artists’ work. Thousands of Twitter users picked up on the story and within hours it was one of the top trending topics both in the UK and globally. At the peak of a ‘Twitter storm’ it was trending with #paperchase.

Paperchase at the time had no Twitter or Facebook presence and so could not react to the story as it was happening and crucially, where it was happening. As it turned out, it had bought the work from a trusted agency who later admitted the mistake and took full responsibility.

The need for Speed
Speed is everything. A slow response leads to an assumption of guilt. Unless you very quickly respond in the right way, through the medium on which the crisis has broken, why should anyone believe anything else?

An example comes from Quantas airlines, which had to ground a flight after a small engine fire. There were no injuries and the plane made a safe landing.

However, at the same time as Quantas made a statement about the incident, photos appeared on Facebook and Twitter of people in Indonesia allegedly holding pieces of the plane. This led to chaos and confusion for friends and families who had no real idea what had happened.

Risk management
Brands are understandably terrified of social media platforms as a huge risk to reputation management and are now often placing customer service on channels such as Twitter above traditional email and phone. The most important thing to understand and consider are what are the risks and do you have platforms in place, that you actually use, to deal with these risks should they occur.

United Airlines provides an example of how not to deal with a social media reputation crisis particularly if it is unavoidable. It took a huge hit to both reputation and share price after failing to deal with a customer complaint properly.

A musician had his guitar damaged on a United flight and after failing to get any real response from the airline for more than a year he took to YouTube with a  video he had made himself entitled ‘United breaks Guitars’. The video went viral and after four days had more than 4 million views. The company’s response was poor. It eventually Tweeted that it was looking into it, but by then it was too late.

Google-sink
The company reportedly lost $180 million revenue as a result. It also had an astounding effect on the natural Google rankings as the YouTube videos started ranking higher than many of its own pages. This is something that will become more and more significant as Google places more emphasis on social search, and social platforms such as YouTube and Twitter feature more prominently in Google’s top rankings.

So what is the best way to deal with crises that unfold on social platforms?

Social media crisis management
As all of these examples show, it is vital to not just have social media platforms but to actually use them. If Paperchase had an active Twitter account with a significant number of engaged followers it could arguably have averted the situation by going directly to the angry mob and getting its side across

United Airlines has also been criticised for not issuing an apology on YouTube, the benefit of which would have meant the video would show up along with the artists.

The other consideration is the speed of your response. Social media is instantaneous and if you don’t get your side across quickly then it may be too late. However, it is still important to think before you post or you could actually do more harm than good.

Paperchase adopted a strategy over speed technique for how it handled the situation. The company took time to explain the situation, with the accurate facts. It explained in detail that the design in question had been purchased from an agency and gave the agency the courtesy of writing a statement of its own before its name was made public. Was this the right thing to do or not? Probably not, but it has given me plenty to think about.

For me, this week has given me a really interesting insight into reactive PR something that I was not hugely familiar and has again reinforced the idea that PRs and digital agencies should be working closely together to manage a client’s reputation, as is anything happens it could have a huge effect from rankings on Google to share price and reputation.

To find out more about my experiences of online PR and social media follow me at @jo_morley or read my blog.

For the past week I have been immersing myself into the world of PR at Speed, a forward thinking agency that recognises that the PR industry needs to modernise. I’ve with the consumer PR team who have taken the time to teach me about their day to day lives and responsibilities.

Speed has some high profile clients with high demands and what I have seen at Speed in terms of creativity and hard work for delivering results has been impressive. Lesson number one, PR is hard work and requires long hours.

PR vs SEO
As a social media and SEO consultant at SiteVisibility, a Brighton based digital marketing agency  my role focuses on building relationships, creating brand awareness and managing brand reputation online.

We focus on writing and publishing content that is relevant and engaging with links back to our client’s sites. This is all part of running a successful social media and SEO campaign and as I have now learnt is essentially what a successful offline PR strategy is about. Unbeknown to me I have been ‘doing’ online PR as part of my social media strategy without ever learning about PR in the traditional sense.

This week has given me a fascinating insight into what traditional PR is about, how the industry is changing and where social media and SEO fit in. Brand and reputation management is no longer just off line and must also focus attention on the online and embrace social media channels.

Social marketing
The real challenge for PR agencies is managing the shift from a one sided flow of information with consumers to a two way dialogue that centres around consumers needs and interests. With social media, consumers own the space and dialogue flows both ways.

Companies must be prepared to listen to what their customers are saying and respond appropriately.

Changing media, changing PR
After catching up with Stephen Waddington, Speed’s managing director, I understand that the PR industry is undergoing many changes.

One of these being the way the social sphere has changed the way news stories are approached and journalists are contacted. A journalist is just a likely to pick up a story from someone Twitter as they are to be sold it in from a PR agency which requires a more creative approach to getting stories published.

The most important thing I learnt is that successful PR centres around building strong relations with the media and journalists. I also gained an insight into the skills required to be able to utilise the information you have about a client and package this in a way that creates an interesting and engaging news story.

That old story called measurement
Another interesting insight from my week at Speed is that, PR in the traditional sense differs to my experiences in online PR within a digital agency in that, it seems to be lacking in the quantitative measurement associated with SEO campaigns yet to me, the two should fit closely together.

I take it for granted that I have always worked with Google analytics as a part of SEO campaigns and tracking web traffic is a daily part of the job. What I didn’t realise is that currently digital agencies are in many cases the only ones utilising this valuable and free tool.

Google analytics allows you to measure where traffic to your site is coming from and when. It allows you to see which sites are driving the most traffic and which keywords are successful in sending traffic to your site. Therefore, if a PR or advertising agency is running a successful campaign you would expect to see an uplift in branded keywords sending traffic to your site.

What this means is more people are typing your brand name in to Google. Consequently, an increase in branded search signals a greater awareness of a brand name and consequent change in behaviour to want to visit this site. Agencies should be taking the credit for this but many are not measuring it.

Speed is a forward thinking agency in that they have already recognised and addressed the way they do business and  have embraced social media and built it in as part of their strategy, something many PR agencies are still not doing.

To find out more about my experiences of online PR and social media follow me at @jo_morley or read my blog.

Sarah Hall spotted an article in the Mail on Sunday last week that called out celebs that pimp products on Twitter, claiming that the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has them in its sights.

In December PR Week’s David Woods reported on the OFT’s call to the PR industry to adhere to consumer protection law, notably disclosure of interest, when posting content in social media.

I typically add ‘[blog]’ or ‘[client]’ to the content of a tweet to declare my interest. And that, or a related abbreviation, seems to be the common approach of my Twitter network.

Thanks everyone for your comments.

bit.ly or goo.gl has become the standard on Twitter for most users and companies such as Pepsi, Techcruch and The New York Times have built their own shorteners.

Brand promotion is one benefit but URL shorteners also provide a monitoring benefit enabling the newly minted URL to be tracked as it is shared in a social network.

Creating your own branded URL shortener is a reasonably straightforward job. Arguably the toughest part is finding a suitably short domain. Head to your favourite domain registrar.

Once you’ve got URL domain you have two options: either use a self-hosted application such as Kissable or YOURLS or a managed service using a provider such as awe.sm or bit.ly pro.

I’ve created my own after individuals such as Andrew Grill (lc.tl) and Stephen Davies (ste.de) led the way. I registered a Columbian domain wadds.co (via uk2.net) and signed up to the free bit.ly pro beta programme. After editing the domain set-up, verifying the domain via bit.ly, and configuring Tweetdeck all my URLs are now shortened automatically using the wadd.co pre-fix.

The chances are that’s how you arrived on this post either via Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter. And even if you can’t remember I can now check thanks to a bit.ly analytics dashboard. I’ll leave it to you to work out whether personalised URL shorteners are geek chic or the social media equivalent of personalised car number plates.

The North-East has itself been a place of incredible innovation in media business models during the last 18-months and the hunt in Rothbury for Raoul Moat made it the location of one the biggest news stories in Britain this year.

The Northumberland Gazette was the first regional newspaper to trial a paywall. Josh Halliday, a former-student at Sunderland University and now journalist at The Guardian, was one of the first individuals to explore a hyper local media model with his SR2blog.

And the Trinity Mirror-owned Journal in Newcastle has pioneered a network of hyper local blogs throughout Northumberland.

The presentation content abridges much of the Social Summer series that the CIPR has been running in London each Thursday evening since early June.

Thanks to Sally Keith, Sally Pearson and Laurel Hetherington for organising the session.

That’s the view of Daryl Wilcox as his firm Daryl Willcox Publishing released the findings of a research project into the social media habits of the PR industry.

The evidence?

Nearly 60 per cent of PR agencies and departments that monitor social media spend no more than two hours a week doing so, despite its perceived importance.

More than a third (36 per cent) spent between three and six hours monitoring with 7 per cent putting aside at least a day each week.

The publication of the research coincides with the launch of a new whitepaper by Daryl Willcox Publishing examining tools to monitor social media.