Last week, I was in Cape Town, South Africa, for the twice-a-year meeting of the Public Relations Global Network, an association of 45 independently owned and operated PR firms from around the world.
I was asked to facilitate a workshop on the state of social media in various markets and agencies worldwide.
The conversations, coming from PR leaders in diverse parts of the world, were fascinating. Here are the big takeaways:
Integrated or specialized? Across the Network, member firms are employing different models for how they deliver social media services to clients. Some, like DVL Public Relations and Advertising in Nashville and Currie Communications in Sydney, have a specialized director of social media who lends support to the firms’ clients.
Others, like HWB Communications in South Africa and Mileage Communications in South Korea, share strong partnerships with firms that have substantial social media capabilities.
But the most common approach seems to be the model where public relations professionals are also proficient in social media.
CooperKatz in New York City originally started its social media practice as a specialized practice group, but three years later came to the conclusion that an integrated approach made more sense for the agency and its clients.
As Energi Public Relations in Toronto said: “PR people are now expected to be competent in social media. They are hired on the basis of their social media knowledge and experience. It’s the price of admission for jobs in our market.” That sentiment was echoed by PRP in Brussels, who reported: “We always include social media in our plans, as automatic and organic.”
There’s a difference between social media and digital. While most member firms are delivering social media services to clients, some have extended their reach fully into the digital arena.
They are part of clients’ digital strategy teams and, in some cases, are leading the charge.
The walls between advertising and public relations continue to crumble. About half of the PRGN agencies now regularly place Facebook ads for their clients.
Measuring the effectiveness of social media remains a universal theme. Most member agencies report using a standard industry measurement tool like Radian6 or SM2. But a few, like GroundFloor Media in Denver, have built proprietary research tools. Their Digital Snapshot uses Radian6 as a base but layers on customized, manual research for each client.
Regardless of what tool they used, agencies from around the world were consistent in their enthusiasm for using visual tools like videos and photos to drive response.
Clients view social media differently around the world. For most of the members in North America, social media is now regarded as a communications channel that is used alongside traditional public relations. But in other parts of the world, it is still viewed as a separate discipline – one that gets billed differently and is sometimes delivered by a completely different team. As Cros Communications told me: “The perception in Russia is that a classic PR company can’t work in social media. They’re too old, they don’t understand it, it’s better to work with a specialized company.”
According to The Content Factory in Dubai, social media is still fairly new to the Middle East. Twitter, in particular, has not yet taken off – but they expect it will.
And a handful of countries, like Switzerland, have yet to fully embrace social media. “Frankly, it’s still a question mark,” our member Cabinet Privé de Conseils told me. “Clients want traditional, old-fashioned PR.”
What’s ahead? When I asked PRGN firms to identify the biggest trends they are seeing in social media, here’s what I heard:
• In Sweden, Coast Communications is increasingly using social media for internal communications. “Closed Facebook pages are a great way of communicating with employees.”
• Mobile apps for PR. According to our members, expect to see mobile apps begin invading the PR space.
• Blogging is down. Pinterest is huge.
What are you seeing in your corner of the world?
In the parts of the world where social media is still a relative unknown, those who embrace it now will definately be ahead of the curve and will be leading experts when the time is right.
Anne, I love your international take on the wonderful world of social media. Despite the many cultural differences, social media can be a thread that unites business and people.