Where Does Social Media Belong?

I must thank Twitter and everyone on it for continuing to expand upon the conversation that was generated from my previous post. Someone I follow on Twitter brought up the excellent point that I've singled out PR as the sole profession at fault here. She's right - I did. With that, I double-checked the letter that my friends received received and sure enough, the PR side of the agency wasn't credited - it was the Social Media Director. So, I stand corrected for blaming bad strategy & execution on their PR personnel. (But that still doesn't change my opinion that it is a flawed strategy with bad execution.)

But this did bring up a couple great points which I'd love to discuss further:

1. Who should manage social media outreach - PR, Marketing, WOM Agencies?

2. What is the definition of PR in today's social media world?

My fellow tweeter questioned "why is poor outreach always blamed on PR." I replied that typically PR agencies are assigned the outreach while marketing agencies develop a strategy. I want to clarify that PR does need to be part of any marketing strategy so we PR folk either work closely with those agencies or we develop client-direct PR strategies. One of our roles as PR practitioner is to understand how to effectively manage the communication flow and which tools are the best used in the process. What I'm trying to say is that when it comes to outreach, it typically lands in the laps of PR professionals, however she is right -  in today's multidisciplinary environment, all personnel under the communications umbrella should be held accountable. At very least I would expect that anyone managing social media outreach on behalf of a client should be communicating with other members of the communications team (including PR) to ensure the strategy and execution align with the brand itself.

The PRSA definition of public relations is "the practice of managing the communication between an organization and its publics. Public relations gains an organization or individual exposure to their audiences using topics of public interest and news items that do not require direct payment." So in the traditional sense, one would assume that tweeting to gain exposure would fall under the PR category. 

There's an awesome post by @JasonFalls of Social Media Explorer that I feel presents a great argument for SM being handled by PR practitioners -"PR as social media owner in many ways also addresses the concern of the online community that marketers don’t belong. Assuming we can trim away the corporate speak and manage transparent communications efforts in years to come, public relations representatives are the least likely to sell and most capable of speaking as humans to humans, rather than up-selling hucksters to “consumers.”

So now its your turn, what is your definition of PR and do you think Social Media 'belongs' to any specific practice?

What Not to Do

In case you missed it, Twitter was all a-buzz yesterday when @TassimoCanada launched a twitter giveaway which stated:

“ONLY 50 TASSIMO Systems remaining for Twitter Giveaway. DM your email if you want one! You must live in Canada and have 500 + followers!”

(Now, don’t think that you have been living under a rock because you haven’t heard of Tassimo because I expect 95% of the twitter entrants hadn’t. Tassimo is a Kraft coffee machine that has “patent barcode technology” that will brew a cup precisely each time.)

In a subsequent tweet, @TassimoCanada responded to a mom blogger and stated:

“we are trying to give TASSIMO Systems to as many moms as we can ... thank you for spreading the word!”

Like all the other entrants, I was excited because …well, who doesn’t love free stuff! But what intrigued me the most was the strategy and execution of this PR campaign and the fact they are trying to target moms. On a base level, there were many flaws to this campaign, which I believe will ultimately negatively affect the brand.

1. EXECUTION: Twitter 101: As many of the entrants pointed out, you cannot DM someone if they aren’t following you back. So everyone (including me) sent a general tweet to @TassimoCanada which first pointed out that you can’t DM them but that you wanted to be considered. The big problem was that their entry guideline was flawed by a lack understanding of how Twitter works on a basic level, which can translate into a negative for brand value.

They also created a storm in a teacup, which could have gotten much worse. By singling out moms on twitter, a few dads got up in arms about why they couldn’t enter. The company quickly rectified the situation by offering a machine to a couple dads but this brings me to my second point -

2. NO TRANSPARENCY & GUIDELINES: One of the #1 rules to any contest is the entrant needs to understand how you are going to choose the winner and make it clear for the entrant on how to submit their entry in order to have the best chance of winning. Well, I met the criteria of being a mom, having over 500 followers (I have 1100 in fact) and being Canadian but somehow, I didn’t get picked. Yet 3 (count them 3!) of my friends did and 2 of them entered AFTER I did. Before you say I have sour grapes, I should mention that I have a kick-ass Saeco coffee machine (valued over $1,000) so I didn’t really want or need a machine. What irritated me was that no one truly understood that they were being judged on; obviously there must have been some other criteria than what they said otherwise I would have won.

3. RESULTS & MEASURABILITY: As I stated 3 friends have won machines. They received a nice long email from the PR company that stated they received 1 of 300 machines for free. But what shocked me was that they stated they ‘chose’ them because they “love to drink and talk all-things coffee and tea.” - which they don’t and that definitely wasn’t made apparent as part of the original criteria to enter into the contest. The letter goes on to say that they “did a search for active bloggers and social media enthusiasts in Canada and you were within our top list”. Hmmm, since when did tweeting that you want a free item make you an active blogger and ‘social media enthusiast’? What this says to me is they are looking for quantity over quality of results (assuming that results are defined as number of tweets, number of blog posts).

Sure, the PR company generated a bunch of twitter posts but they are all based on a FREE value proposition – which is an easy route to take and could actually hurt the company’s overall brand value. 

I also know that at no point in their communication with the winners has the PR company defined any obligation to post or tweet about the machine once they receive it. Perhaps they are hoping that everyone who receives a machine will do it, but I know from experience that unless you give people direct instruction and deadlines the novelty of the item quickly dissipates and so does the ‘buzz’ factor.

What are the measurements of such a program – number of tweets, number of blog posts? When I create a program I include those numbers as part of the measurement but I have quickly realized that the value of a campaign is in the quality of interaction and conversation with a brand – not in the amount of posts or tweets it receives. PR is about brand recognition and equity that is obtained through continuous, relentless and prominent presence in the media and key influencers. You cannot obtain this by ‘spraying’ a bunch of products into the twitter-sphere.

4. A "FREE" PROPOSITION DEVALUES A BRAND: At the core of my ‘beef’ with this campaign is the fact that when you give something away for free, you diminish its value. I’m sure this machine is great for rushed moms & dads who are trying to get out in the morning but instead of describing the benefits of how this machine will save time, save money and ultimately making these parents lives easier so they should consider BUYING a machine, they are doing us Canadians a favour and giving them away for free instead. In other words, why buy it when you can get it free!

As you can tell, I’m up-in-arms about this so I’m committing to the fact that my next post will be on how I would have done it differently. It will be a few quick tips so that hopefully you won’t make the same mistakes as these big players did. Stay tuned!