The development of social media has removed the distinction between journalist and audience. The internet has become the vast equivalent to a magazine’s letters pages, with an audience potential beyond virtually any media that has come before it. This has created a react or die situation for organizations in terms of their communications strategies.

In the world before this one, accusations, criticisms or praise would make their way into the hands of concerned media, where, pending a hierarchy of editorial approval, would make their way onto pages or screen or airwaves for the public to receive. Now we live in a world where information or opinion goes directly to a global, open access publication. Read the rest of this entry »

One thing that people talk about when discussing online marketing and public relations is return on investment. Because of the reach of the internet, it’s possibly to increase exposure of a single activity and order of magnitude beyond what’s done in traditional PR. While that’s true and is the driving force behind the fast growth of digital PR, it’s often overlooked just how simple it is to integrate these services into a traditional PR and marketing plan.

Digital PR and marketing works by taking the mainstay of traditional PR and marketing – information – and translating it into a language the internet understands. This is a language comprised of readers, journalists, editors and search engine algorithms. Developing information that can reach all of those is not an easy task and is the reason IT firms and communications firms alike are now specializing in online marketing and PR. The language that communicates effectively to people and that which communicates effectively to machines is similar, but it’s in the subtleties that your communications consultants prove their value (or fail to). Read the rest of this entry »