Raise your hand if you have a Facebook and/or MySpace profile. Anyone here on LinkedIn? Have you ever commented on a blog?

If so, you’re part of a changing dynamic in how we communicate that very few PR professionals understand. At Flat Creek, we work to integrate communications messages across various channels, insisting that our clients focus on delivering an outstanding service or product as the basis for a good reputation. The product, the audience, and the goal are what matter most from a PR perspective.

Richard Edelman, the well-regarded president and CEO of the global PR firm which goes by his name, shares this sentiment in a recent post about how corporations must adapt their communications efforts in order to maintain some sort of brand integrity. His full post can be found here, but I’ve listed a few notable lines below:

“My central thesis is that corporations can’t buy reputation or brand loyalty any more. These are earned through performance over the long-term.”

“In this changed environment, I believe that PR can adapt as well as, if not faster, than any other communications discipline… Our aim is to educate when possible, build bridges when necessary, and respect the new market-based conversations always.”

“The new reality for communications is the sphere of cross reference, in which information moves unpredictably among equal stakeholders. Conversations now occur spontaneously, in peer-to-peer discussion, with individuals creating their own webs of trust including people like themselves.”

KEY NOTE: “PR is simply a reflection of reality, well presented perhaps but based on fact and behavior.”

If your organization still believes that the only way to reach mass audiences is through traditional, mainstream media, then think again. Citizen journalists - those scrappy individualists who contribute articles, camera phone pictures, and new ideas to their community - are more than a trend. They are an evolution of the media landscape.

And just to bring home the point, the Knight News Challenge is offering $5 million dollars “for innovative ideas using digital experiments to transform community news.”

“The Foundation plans to invest at least $25 million over five years in the search for bold community news experiments.”

Has anyone handed your local newspaper $25 million to experiment with journalism in your community? I didn’t think so.

Citizen Journalists. Professional firms, political campaigns, and non-profits had best get to know them.

Those of us in marketing communications hate to see a perfectly good organization hand over their website to IT. It’s clearly a recipie for disaster.

But, what if they hand it over to marketing? Who owns it - marketing proper or PR specifically? Should IT still have a voice in this conversation?

Fundamentally, as far as we’ve moved in terms of corporate branding online, we have not reconciled the fundamentally different disciplines which are needed to really make “new media” work. It takes marketing, PR, IT and others (not to mention buy-in from management) to collectively work together to really make a project successful. But we haven’t merged those people effectively. More on that soon…

A lot of these thoughts are the result of something said this weekend at BarCamp Nashville by Chris Houchens, who writes a blog called Shotgun Marketing. While talking about social media (Facebook, MySpace, etc etc) in the context of corporate marketing he said, “It’s about reaching the audience that has already identified itself as your audience; it’s not about sales.”

His premise raises a much deeper question than how corporations should approach corporate marketing. It’s often a given that internally, marketing should own managing the online experience. But is that so? If the online experience is not about sales, then fundamentally it’s not a marketing function. Marketing is all about sales! So social media seems to fit in a different category, such as PR. Or are we back to IT?

Should it be that way? Who owns online?

It appears that we, as web surfers, like content. That’s essentially what a new Neilsen/NetRatings study has to say:

Internet users spend nearly half their time online viewing news or entertainment content, surpassing activities such as sending e-mails, shopping or searching for information, according to a study released by the Online Publishers Association on Monday.

We’ve written on this before, and no matter who writes it (or produces it in the case of podcasts and video) it is most important that your website have content. This isn’t new information, and I’m proud of our clients who work hard to keep their content up-to-date. Kudos especially to Backbone America, What’s News Colorado and A Line of Sight who do a terrific job putting up new content several times a week, if not daily.

Following up on my post from yesterday about the evolution of content online, here’s a quote from Associated Press CEO Tom Curley during his speech at the Seoul Digital Forum Thursday:

“As we consider the digital future though, let’s be very clear about one thing: Technology may change how journalists work, but it has never changed what journalists do.”

Just what is it that journalists do, exactly? Other than your favorite punchlines, here’s his answer:

“Speaking truth to power or acting as the watchdog of the powerful is one of journalism’s enduring values.”

I would argue, however, that these “enduring values” are not the exclusive domain of journalists but rather our civic duty as citizens and consumers. Anyone who has experienced bad customer service is more than happy to “speak truth to power” to get a refund, exchange, or just tell their friends not to use that service. The key difference, obviously, is that journalists traditionally have had exclusive access to megaphones (print or broadcast) loud enough to share their message.

With Technorati’s estimate that there are now 82.6 million blogs online, there are a whole lot of megaphones out there. Curley didn’t answer the question of how they deal with that, and ironically the AP writer covering his speech didn’t ask…

Of course that’s not breaking news. But what is exciting is how that online content has evolved from the product of professional writers to semi-pro bloggers/ vidcasters. In this process, an interesting question arises: If content is king, then whose content wins - the professionals or the passionate?

Professional journalists bring style and discipline while the citizen media brings passion and raw, often breaking, news and opinion. Bloggers are witty and compelling. Professional journalists are often more calculating and organized.

Ultimately, the real winners will continue to be those professionals who have loosened the proverbial tie in order to blend their training and experience with passion and personal interest in their topics. The Politico, a new Capitol Hill newspaper/news site in Washington, has attracted many top tier journalists in part due to the editorial flexibility and creativity the paper brings to the online/print media mix.

Salon.com was one of the first to successful unleash professional journalists on a less structured environment with well-written, opinionated news pieces online.

Print journalists, even broadcasters, have been trained to operate within the logistical limitations of their medium, from print deadlines to get a story to layout and on to the presses or a TV/radio segment. As the Internet has erased these boundaries, new training and techniques are needed as well. And often, the writers best suited to produce content online are those who were never trained for the old media.

While we see it most often with our political clients, any individual or company is exposed to the risk of getting trashed online. In politics, it means votes. In business, it means dollars. And as comment after comment piles on, each one nastier than the last, panic can set in. As BusinessWeek pointed out:

When the Web turns against them, executives are faced with the problem of how to manage the blowback. They have two choices: ignore the smaller furies and hope they won’t metastasize, or respond outright to the attacks. It’s rarely a good idea to lob bombs at the fire-starters. Preemption, engagement, and diplomacy are saner tools.

There are options. Flat Creek offers a blog clipping service that consolidated blog posts about our clients to give them a heads up about the online conversations that could affect their business and enable them to plan proactively in case an issue does pick up steam.

As an issue begins to heat up, we look at a range of options, but never ever ever is no response a good response. No response immediately gives off the scent of fear and only drives the conversation. Who knows? Most of the time, you have supporters online who are afraid to stand in the way of the mob. But if someone else does it first… it’s just as easy for a positive comment stream to get started as it is for a negative one.

As BusinessWeek advises though, preemption is always the best policy. We make prominent bloggers who write on topics of interest to our clients part of their media relations contacts. Often a blogger will want a lively comment thread but will not allow it to get out of hand with personal attacks.

Ultimately, as with any brand, it comes down to whether or not the experience matches the expectation. If you as a politician or company have not lived up to the expectation you sell, then honestly the online fury may be well deserved. The key is to stockpile goodwill through great customer service, a great product, or a principled message. So when - not if - you are attacked online, your supporters will be there for you and the issue can be neutralized.

Communications professionals tend to spend more time with print reporters than journalists from any other medium. It’s time we challenged that notion.

Granted, PR flacks have chuckled to themselves over the last several years as traditional newspaper empires have wasted away under the pressure from online media. But what they haven’t done is change their daily routine and priorities.

In order for a communications strategy to be effective in the Web 2.0 era, the media mix needs to be re-prioritized:

1. Online media: The Internet has changed everything, so the cliche goes, so it should change how we look at media relations as well. Too often we look at blogs, YouTube, and other sites but we don’t engage in the conversation. Our day should start and end by researching relevant websites, commenting on blogs, and injecting new information into the conversation. Create YouTube video, podcasts, and fresh content for your website. If you don’t tell your story online, others will tell it for you.
2. Events: if you don’t hold/attend creative, meaningful events with a message, there’s really not much to cover now is there? You have a message/policy/product that you want to share with the world. For heavens sake, give them a good reason to find out about it. Seminars, briefings, speakers, rallies, press conferences - the options really are only limited by your creativity.
3. Radio: This may seem counter intuitive, but it could be that your target audience spends more time in the car than anywhere else (other than in front of a computer). Leverage that valuable time when your target audiences are tuned in. Take the time to work with producers and hosts to get your product/service/issue on the air. You may not reach the numbers of people as other media, but you will reach the right people.
4. Print media: Ah, the bread and butter of public relations. Until now. See #1, then spend your time developing relationships with your key reporters. We’re talking daily papers here, not magazines or weeklies. Don’t send them a press release. Call them. Tell them your story. Tell them why it’s important to their readers. Invite them to your event (see #2). Take their call after you’ve been mentioned on the radio. Be persistent but courteous. Your value to your organization will increase exponentially.
5. TV: Let’s face it, out of a 30-minute evening newscast, there’s about five minutes for everything that isn’t sports, weather or house fires. The competition to get on the air is intense and the payoff can be elusive. But if you have prioritized and are ready to take on TV, then be sure you’re pitching them some good visuals. They don’t want stale walls, they want noise and people and colors. How do you do that? Go back to #2.

I know there are others, such as specialty media and long-lead magazines, and going after those may make sense in some cases, but not until you’ve got a handle on the big five. The media environment has shifted. Our media relations strategies should as well.

What happned to John Jantsch? His Blogging Business site has really laid out some great tips for small business online marketing, but he hasn’t posted since October of last year. I hope he’ll get back to it, because a great deal of his writing speaks directly to small businesses trying to get a marketing boost online.

For example, last September his post on Ezines, Email, Blogs or RSS clearly lays out the small business marketers delima - should I have an e-newsletter, or a blog? Unfortunately for the time-crunched, the answer is both. The point is not whether you are "blogging" but what your content says about your company and your services.

To me, it all comes back to the target audience. Everything in your marketing plan needs to be geared around the audience - from their media consumption preferences to the messages they’re most open to accepting. So whether you blog, or publish a newsletter, or just put press releases on your website, what you ultimately want to do is reach your audience, and as Mr. Jantsch has pointed out in the past, that’s how you create momentum.

Writing - whether it be for a proposal, press release, or personal note - is a crucial part of your day-to-day business. So, as PR maestro Shel Holtz writes, don’t forget to proactively think about the style and voice of your writing. Whether your writing is conversational, poetic, youthful, or "official" just take a minute to think about it before putting pen to pad. Especially for small firms, your writing can shape your brand just as strongly as any visual. It’s important to the experience that is your organization.