What are we doing? What in the world happened to #PR?

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So where did the first half of 2015 go? You blink and six months are gone.

We’ve been busy on many levels—not only in workload but in making some fundamental changes to our agency: what we do and how we do it. These changes mirror what’s going on in the PR industry and marketing in general. Our clients count on us to stay abreast of the latest tools and technology of the trade.

While we still do work that you’d expect a traditional PR firm would do, we also are now focused on the world of content marketing. Our new world at Hodges is best explained by three words: earned, owned and paid.

Earned

We still do and are very good at traditional public relations work like media relations. In the first six months of the year, we’ve gained news coverage for our clients in The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, ABC News, etc. This is the traditional third-party coverage that we earn for folks. We’re also providing strategic counsel, managing events, etc. Everything a traditional PR firm does.

Owned

We are now creating full-blown content marketing strategies and plans for clients designed to create content that they own, usually housed on a website. We then drive people to that owned content using social platforms to amplify that content to the right people at the right place at the right time. Here are some highlights of work so far:

  • For one client that means curated content on their website so they can explain better to customers what they do every day and why it is important.
  • For another it means marrying high-level, expertise-laden content with calls to action and downloadable offers. In order to get those offers, readers must provide personal information. The client then has a way to continue to communicate directly to that reader and determine whether that reader qualifies as a lead they can then hand over to the sales department.
  • And for a third client, it means creating, writing and managing a digital magazine designed to celebrate a lifestyle and culture. The content is not product specific but celebrates the food, travel and style of this target audience. It is our first foray into true brand journalism, a move we’re very excited about.

Paid

We also have become experts and consultants in the area of “amplification.” We are now using social platforms primarily as advertising platforms to not only post all the content but to marry that content with the ad tools that Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others provide. This helps us make sure that we’re targeting the right people with the right content and driving them to the right places for our clients. It also allows us to better measure success since we’re not “posting and praying” anymore. We are able to track success through analytics and in some cases, where appropriate, leads and sales.


Some of this is old hat for us. Some of this is very new, and we’ve committed ongoing resources to ensure we’re learning all we need to know. In some ways it is a bit of a leap of faith. But we can see the future and it is working for our clients and for us.

My guess is we’re not the only ones going through these changes, so for my colleagues out there, here are some thoughts and advice as you’re navigating through this brave new world.

  • Trust your people: You hired them and they are likely smarter than you. You need to give them the freedom to help you see where things are going and trust them to help you do the same.
  • Change is tough: You may have to lose some people along the way who either don’t fit or are resistant. Change also doesn’t happen overnight so things will be messy for a while and that’s fine.
  • Keep learning: Look for tools to help you. We have recently become a HubSpot partner to help us and our clients manage the content and lead generation process. They have become a valued partner and have some great educational tools.
  • Find some help: We’ve brought in two consultants to help us validate this newer model and identify new prospects who will be interested in our new suite of services.
  • Keep communicating: Both internally and externally. You might assume that just because you are making changes that your associates understand them and that your clients and prospects will recognize them. It takes more than one meeting or lunch to explain these new capabilities and how they work well with the old ones.

Whew.

So as I look forward to my week in the mountains, there is one question that we’ve still been struggling with as we try to easily explain this new approach: Is it still PR?

My short answer is yes, it is not only public relations but the new public relations. As I’ve said on many occasions to folks here, we are best positioned to create content that drives this new approach since we’ve been telling our clients’ stories since day one.

The only difference in this approach is that we’re not only telling the stories in a pitch to reporters, but we’re telling them directly to customers, readers and leads using the new tools that technology and the Zuckerbergs of the world have created for us.

Yes it is still PR, it’s just the new PR.

What do you think?

Jon Newman

In 2002 Jon cofounded The Hodges Partnership and has helped to grow it into one of the country’s largest public relations firms (based on O’Dwyer’s annual rankings). Jon has taught communications as an adjunct professor at VCU, speaks regularly at conferences and meetings and blogs and tweets about public relations and marketing issues.

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