Under the Bus
This week one of my client's competitors re-released a well-thought-out guide to B2B and social media. Overall, I found the report to be informative and providing concrete advice until I reached the paragraph where the author suggested, and I'm paraphrasing and summarizing here, that traditional PR is dead and those budgeting dollars should be allocated to social media.
While I agree that there is a valid place for social media and companies will fall behind if they don't incorporate a social media plan into their overall PR/marcomms strategy, it is careless to throw traditional PR under the bus and suggest that organizations solely rely on social media.
For one, this is an apples and oranges comparison. Social media is a forum to reach an audience and not a replacement for the services traditional PR offers. It is bad advice to tell clients that they don't need traditional PR and can replace it with social media simply to try and usurp more of the budget allocated for PR/marketing services. What makes this example even more annoying is the source -- a lead generation/marketing automation SaaS provider. Now, stay with me here: a lead generation provider broadcasting that companies should fire their PR team and shift the budget to social media. Hmmm, but I digress.
It's important to have representation across all fronts -- social media, lead generation and, yes, traditional PR -- and bad form to suggest a company could have its social media team doing messaging, media/analyst relations, etc. I would never purport to do direct marketing and it behooves my colleagues in that space to tread lightly when suggesting direct marketers or social media experts can replace traditional PR.
While I agree that there is a valid place for social media and companies will fall behind if they don't incorporate a social media plan into their overall PR/marcomms strategy, it is careless to throw traditional PR under the bus and suggest that organizations solely rely on social media.
For one, this is an apples and oranges comparison. Social media is a forum to reach an audience and not a replacement for the services traditional PR offers. It is bad advice to tell clients that they don't need traditional PR and can replace it with social media simply to try and usurp more of the budget allocated for PR/marketing services. What makes this example even more annoying is the source -- a lead generation/marketing automation SaaS provider. Now, stay with me here: a lead generation provider broadcasting that companies should fire their PR team and shift the budget to social media. Hmmm, but I digress.
It's important to have representation across all fronts -- social media, lead generation and, yes, traditional PR -- and bad form to suggest a company could have its social media team doing messaging, media/analyst relations, etc. I would never purport to do direct marketing and it behooves my colleagues in that space to tread lightly when suggesting direct marketers or social media experts can replace traditional PR.
Posted by LA Bertelli at 2/26/2010 11:42 AM 
Categories: uncategorized
Tags: public relations communications lead generation B2B marketing automation marketing
Categories: uncategorized
Tags: public relations communications lead generation B2B marketing automation marketing
I could not agree with you more Lori.
Anyone who says traditional PR is dead should see what happens to our web site traffic when we get one mention on the Today Show.
Compare that day's worth of traffic to a year's worth of traffic we get from 500 hits on blogs and social media sites.
There is no doubt social media has tremendous value but its still not a match for traditional PR.
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