Editor’s note: This is the seventh in a series of 12 guest posts from industry executives predicting key trends that will impact the public relations industry in 2012. Hosted under the hashtag #PRin2012, the series began Dec. 19, 2011, with a compilation post previewing all 12 predictions.

Both a challenge and opportunity for public relations professionals in 2012 is to have more data-driven decision-making processes. I truly believe that PR will never be 100-percent science. It is, and always will be, both art and science.

However, especially for those of us focusing primarily on digital, identifying the right data that can inform our decisions, and then integrating across all channels will position us for success. There are number of new fascinating technologies out there that are taking things to a new level in terms of content optimization and syndication. It’s an exciting time to be in digital communications.

Joe Ciarallo(@JoeCiarallo) is vice president of communications at social enterprise software company Buddy Media. He is also a founding editor of mediabistro.com’s public relations blog, PRNewser.

Continue reading " #PRin2012: A Year of Shifting Metrics and Integration "

Editor’s note: This is the sixth in a series of 12 guest posts from industry executives predicting key trends that will impact the public relations industry in 2012. Hosted under the hashtag #PRin2012, the series began Dec. 19, 2011, with a compilation post previewing all 12 predictions.

Anyone keeping tabs on the booming social TV / second-screen revolution wherein TV viewers receive program-related content and conversation via mobile apps like GetGlue, IntoNow, Miso and my favorite, Umami (a Flatiron client), will be familiar with the now-regular reports touting the week’s “most social TV programs.” Companies like Trendrr, BlueFin Labs and Social Guide are crunching Twitter and Facebook’s data streams to determine which shows generate the most buzz. (Recent winners included “WWE Raw” on cable and “The X Factor” on broadcast.)

In predicting where the PR industry may be headed, I’m beginning to believe that a campaign’s ability to produce buzz in social or shared media is a valid, if not Holy Grail barometer, of one’s success plying the “earned, owned and paid” media spheres. Six months ago I said as much in a blog post that revisited the oft-quoted Forrester Research infographic showing the new “interactive marketing paradigm.”

There are now a myriad of apps, channels, platforms and devices on which our clients’ messages might reside and spread. The new paradigm for success will track our ability to create original content that’s sufficiently compelling to spur shared, aggregated or curated conversations. The new currency of success will take the form of tweets, retweets, likes and favorites on Facebook, Twitter and Google+, and eventually will play out in an entirely new ecosystem of personal social media aggregators like Storify, Paper.li, Tumblr, News.me, Flipboard, Storyful, Google Currents, Pulse, Zite, Livestand and Instagram, among others.

In spite of all the changes and challenges we’re witnessing in the PR industry, a core (and bankable) competency still involves building a positive client-branded presence in the media — one that enhances business and reputation. Buzz in the social spheres, however, will be a desired and essential bi-product of this effort, wherein digital denizens gladly share our clients’ messages with their friends, family, fans and followers across a growing multitude of channels.

Peter Himler (@PeterHimler) is the founding principal of New York-based Flatiron Communications.

Continue reading " #PRin2012: Social Validation Becomes the ‘Holy Grail’ "

Editor’s note: This is the fifth in a series of 12 guest posts from industry executives predicting key trends that will impact the public relations industry in 2012. Hosted under the hashtag #PRin2012, the series began Dec. 19, 2011, with a compilation post previewing all 12 predictions.

There is influence in everything an organization does, and sometimes in what it doesn’t do. (You have been influenced when you think something you wouldn’t otherwise have thought, or do something you wouldn’t otherwise have done.)

While influence is often considered the domain of marketing and PR, it is far more expansive. Whereas marketing describes the process of making and growing a profitable market, in partnership with PR’s mutual alignment of the organization with its stakeholders, a wider, unified perspective on influence is demanded.

The irreversible change wrought by social media and related technologies, and advances in business performance management, such as the Balanced Scorecard and strategy maps, require transformation of the organization’s structure, culture, skills, policies and processes to secure competitive advantage, or simply to maintain viability.

The task of tracking the six influence flows (the influence between an organization and all stakeholders, and between the competition and stakeholders), demands a new skill set and a new job role that I refer to as the “Influence Professional.” The Influence Professional leads the charge in sensitizing the organization to the new dynamic, and more adroitly than the competition.

These individuals are digitally native, highly numerate yet ambidextrous of mind. They recognize that the game is changed and champion the transformation. They execute a framework, such as the Influence Scorecard, to effectively “socialize the enterprise.”

Do you have what it takes to be an Influence Professional, or indeed the first breed of Chief Influence Officer?

Continue reading " #PRin2012: The Rise of the ‘Influence Professional’ "

Editor’s note: This is the fourth in a series of 12 guest posts from industry executives predicting key trends that will impact the public relations industry in 2012. Hosted under the hashtag #PRin2012, the series began Dec. 19, 2011, with a compilation post previewing all 12 predictions.

The PR industry needs to grow up. It needs leadership.

That was Dr. Jon White’s brutal message speaking about the future of the PR industry on the publication of PR 2020, a research report produced for the U.K.’s Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR).

“There is a concern that the PR industry could lose its position and become irrelevant by 2020,” said Dr. White, head of the CIPR’s R&D unit. “Equally, with the right leadership, it could become much larger, better understood, more respected and established as a management discipline.”

The issues currently being debated by the profession are almost exactly the same as those that occupied the industry a decade ago. The topics are familiar to both student and veteran: ethics, formal definitions, diversity, measurement and skills.

The PR industry may be adolescent in comparison to other professions but it is utterly depressing that it hasn’t resolved some of these big issues.

Continue reading " #PRin2012: PR Industry Needs Leadership More Than Ever "

Editor’s note: This is the third in a series of 12 guest posts from industry executives predicting key trends that will impact the public relations industry in 2012. Hosted under the hashtag #PRin2012, the series began Dec. 19, 2011, with a compilation post previewing all 12 predictions.

Time magazine named “the protester” as its person of the year for 2011 — an insight that foreshadows a challenge for every organization in 2012: never will it be easier for any David to throw any Goliath off stride, and never will organizations be more defined by communication.

Most of the great protests of 2011 — from the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street — were rooted in economic and social distress. But as 2012 dawns, there are tremors of discontent among the increasingly affluent middle classes in rising economies such as those of Russia and China; one of the greatest risks to these successful but autocratic regimes will lie in the quality of their communication.

Closer to home, when even the U.S. Federal Reserve starts to use communication as an economic management strategy, you know that authorities are starting to get the message.

As CEO of a public relations firm, I see the same challenge in the corporate world. Even in times of exceptional economic volatility, there will be many winners. Those will be the organizations that truly develop listening cultures, equip themselves to anticipate and respond to issues with agility, clarity, transparency and authenticity, give their stakeholders meaningful opportunities to influence their direction, and measure the quality of their relationships and reputations.

Continue reading " #PRin2012: Organizations Will be Defined by Communication "