A good read in the WSJ today about video and its foothold as a corporate communications tool. The piece highlights a crop of corporate video hosting services like FeedRoom, VitalStream and Reflect Systems, each of which is delivering that YouTube-like feeling without that YouTube day-after icky weirdness.
Technorati Tags: feedroom, pr, reflectsystems, video, vitalstream, youtube
In a previous post I driveled on the idea that the PR services industry is entering a bit of a transition period and that old school agency business models need to evolve to keep in line with changing market conditions and a growing DIY business mentality.
Also, that the onus is ultimately on us, the industry pros, to adapt our thinking (and our skill sets) to bring new ideas and really, new value to the table for those clients we represent.
Great, so how do we do this?
I think a big part of the solution is shifting what were previously push-centric PR programs to pull-centric ones. Bear with me on this, I realize this post is longer than my normal stuff.
PR 1.0 (old school PR) was all about pushing content out to get attention. Press releases, case studies, white papers, VNRs, even media pitches (arguably), were all good examples of push PR content. It was a one-way broadcast for sharing your message. And for a while it worked, and to some extent it still does, but not nearly as well anymore.
Why?
Because there’s simply too much information available now and people (really, the media in this context) have more of a choice and certainly more control over what they pay attention to and, quite frankly, what they ignore.
PR 2.0 (new school PR) is all about pulling attention in using content (and herein rests a huge new opportunity for PR business). Technologies like RSS are enabling PR programs in big new ways to pull attention in – the trick is making sure our clients have compelling enough content to hold it.
A corporate blog is a great example (certainly a popular one) of how to use content to pull and hold attention, but this is the part in the post where you nod agreeingly, roll your eyes, yawn, but then I tell you that blogs are just scratching the surface.
PR 2.0 programs need to think, act and look more like Big Media networks – with blogs just being a slice (a channel) of the corporate content that pulls audiences in and keeps their attention. The good news here is that most companies are already sitting on piles of great content, they just don’t know it and those that do, just don’t know what to do with it.
John Furrier at PodTech gets this, probably better than anyone right now, and while he’s not a “PR guy” he recognizes the value of content that’s idly sitting behind corporate firewalls (in his case, smart people who don’t normally have a voice via traditional PR channels), and so he’s using InfoTalk as a way to showcase these voices, pulling attention in via podcasting and growing a massive audience in the process.
This model can work for PR programs too, it just requires taking some 1.0 tactics and putting it in a 2.0 context and thinking like a media network – always keeping in mind that good content gets good attention and bad content gets ignored.
For example, case studies and white papers could have a second life (in this PR network model) in the form of dedicated podcast channels. Likewise, glossy product one sheets could become screencasts, executive bylines could become videocasts, product support materials could become wikis, press materials could become syndicated blog posts, etc., etc., etc.
It’s about taking what’s worked in the past, remixing it a bit and using new distribution models (and a variety of new technologies) to give people a choice of how they want to consume it and really where they want put their attention on your PR network.
Update: Brendan Hodgson at H&K shares some insights that are in the same vein of this post (the future models of PR). Also read David Phillips remarks.
Related Posts:
DIY PR in a ‘Cheap’ Economy
Online Programs, it’s About the Push and the Pull
Also See:
Growing Use of RSS and why companies should use it
AttentionTrust.org
PC World’s Harry McCracken shares news today of a new partnership between Six Apart and VideoEgg, a new hosted service for online videos that will enable TypePad customers to *easily* videocast content via their blogs.
Coincidentally, this announcement comes on the heals of news that Odeo is now privately beta testing a new browser-based audio creation service for podcasters. Brian Oberkirch has the details (and some screen shots too).
And, of course, there’s the new Apple iPod that can easily download and playback the content created by these two services.
There’s a trend here: The barrier to entry for creating and consuming user generated content is lowering every day. As a result, small publishers are wielding an increasing amount of power and influence. There’s a warning here too: Networked conversations are growing faster and louder than anyone expected. Can corporate America really tune in and successfully keep pace?