Ketchum: How Not To Approach Social Media

[Originally posted at Corante’s Get Real on 15 June 2005.]

Neville Hobson touches on the reasons why would-be clients should be skeptical of Ketchum Public Relations new Ketchum Personalized Media Service:

Yet I can’t help but wonder how much credibility, if not faith, you’d want to place in a PR agency which enters this area where:

1. they don’t have a blog,

2. none of the people named in the press release has a blog (none that I could find with a bit of Googling),

3. there’s no RSS feed on their website,

4. the new offering announced yesterday isn’t mentioned anywhere on the website apart from in the press release, and

5. the offering appears to be a separate service, not integrated with PR.

Picking nits? you may ask. No, I don’t think so.

I do think that if I were a potential client, I’d want to know what hands-on experience they have to back up the talk in the press release about what the service comprises and their skillsets, and how it all fits into the overall PR services they offer. In conjunction with reviewing the CVs of all the people mentioned in the announcement and reading their blogs, and perhaps reading a paper on the Ketchum website called The Challenge of Blogs to Public Relations (undated but a thoughtful paper, in my view), I’d still want to know what hands-on experience they offer with new channels that demonstrates their understanding of them as integrated elements of a credible PR offering.

Anyone can say they can do something, and produce an impressive-looking list of people. But in this field of new-media communication, you’d better be able to walk your talk. Otherwise, the only word that comes to mind is ‘bandwagon.’

Ketchum, if I were you, I’d at least start a blog immediately.

Actually, it’s way too late for that. They had better hire someone to run or front the service with some credibility. Like Michael O’Connor Clark, for example. It’s way too late to start a blog, and point to it as some kind of success story.

And its even worse than that. The Challenge of Blogs to Public Relations paper that Neville suggested was thoughtful, has a bunch of outsider-looking-in mumbo-jumbo in it. It is also written by some faceless, nameless editor who isn’t named, but who lobs a bunch of softball questions at Ketchum’s media ‘experts’:

In its current form, how would you describe a blog?

AB [Adam Brown, director of eKetchum and ‘expert’ on new media]: A blog is the output of personal journalism. It’s a diary of its owner, a news-clipping service of its moderator, a minister preaching to the choir. In most cases, though, it’s navel gazing. Most blogs are simply people writing to themselves for their own personal edification about what interests them, with the idea of an external audience almost an afterthought. [emphasis mine]

[Yikes. This is Ketchum’s expert, mind you.]

NS [Nicholas Scibetta, Director of Ketchum’s Communications and Media Strategy Group and an ‘expert’ on traditional mass media]: There is a strong element of personal gratification to them. Blogs tend to stick to one topic because the author is passionate about it. To Adam’s point, though, I believe a majority of the bloggers are writing about issues that mean a lot to them and want to get their opinions out to a mass audience. Blogs are important because opinion influencers read them and they give a voice to people who are typically outside of the mainstream media.

[One topic? Mass audience?]

Are blogs just a passing trend, or do they represent a permanent part of the media landscape that PR practitioners must reckon with?

NS: Blogs are rapidly becoming authoritative news sources. There’s a whole level of personalization with a blog that represents a new form of media that won’t go away soon. Proof positive of that is the big move of outlets such as The Wall Street Journal to post blogs themselves. These media mainstays are slower to move into new technologies and new information channels, so they think this is something actively capturing consumer interest. That said, the blogs that will be around in the long run will be those that “cross over” and influence the dialogue in the mainstream media.

[Or the ones that remain standing when MSM finishes its death glide?]

AB: We’ll probably see with blogs something similar to what happened in the first years of the Internet, when everyone threw up their own Web sites. Ninety-nine percent of these personal sites are now ghost towns. These sites were developed in the heat of the moment of the novelty of the Internet but then were never updated. You’re going to see much the same thing with blogs. You’re going to see a lot of small, one-person blogs that people have started because it’s the newest thing, but then these will fall by the wayside. Some of the blogs published by more well established organizations will then become that much more of authoritative information sources.

[It’s a fad, it’s just like websites in the 90s, yada, yada, yada.]

I actually like the comments of the mass media guy better than the new media ‘expert’, but only by comparison. This is once again the natterings of those most threatened by the rise of social media, who see their business model being sideswiped by something large and fast-moving, but whose exact shape and dimensions they cannot fathom.

Better advice for the blog-lorn is much more likely to come from people who really understand the social dynamics in the blogosphere, not those attempting to triangulate on what is happening using the old terms and metaphors of broadcast and mainstream PR.