Putting the Public Back in Public Relations: How Social Media Is Reinventing the Aging Business of PR

by Brian Solis, Deirdre Breakenridge

Forget the "pitch" Yesterday's PR techniques just don't work anymore. That's the bad news. Here's the great news: Social Media and Web 2.0 offer you an unprecedented opportunity to make PR work better than ever before. This book shows how to reinvent PR around two-way conversations, bring the "public" back into public relations and get results that traditional PR people can only dream about. Drawing on their unparalleled experience making Social Media work for business, PR 2.0.com's Brian Solis and industry leader Deirdre Breakenridge show how to transform the way you think, plan, prioritize, and deliver PR services. You'll learn powerful new ways to build the relationships that matter, and reach a new generation of influencers...leverage platforms ranging from Twitter to Facebook...truly embed yourself in the communities that are shaping the future. Best of all, you won't just learn how to add value in the Web 2.0 world: You'll learn how to prove how new, intelligent, and socially rooted PR will transform your organization into a proactive, participatory communication powerhouse that is in touch and informed with its community of stakeholders.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Social Media, Buisness

344 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Brian Solis is principal at Altimeter Group, a research firm focused on disruptive technology. A digital analyst, sociologist, and futurist, Solis has studied and influenced the effects of emerging technology on business, marketing, and culture. Solis is also globally recognized as one of the most prominent thought leaders and published authors in new media. His new book, What's the Future of Business (WTF), explores the landscape of connected consumerism and how business and customer relationships unfold and flourish in four distinct moments of truth. His previous book, The End of Business as Usual, explores the emergence of Generation-C, a new generation of customers and employees and how businesses must adapt to reach them. Prior to End of Business, Solis released Engage, which is regarded as the industry reference guide for businesses to market, sell and service in the social web.

Reviews

[Dave · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is a lot of "why" but very little "how" in this book that bills itself as being about the transformation of the public relations industry brought about by Web 2.0. Page after page describes how social media are supposedly dictating new priorities and practices for PR professionals and their clients. While there is certainly much validity to the author's claims for the growing influence of social media, there is a distinct shortage of practical advice on how the reader is supposed to use it.

Unfortunately, the few recommendations the authors do make sound like they were written by PR practitioners (which, of course, they were). "Engage the bloggers" and "have conversations" are about as specific as the advice gets, with few examples of exactly what those bromides mean. Much is made of the need for one-on-one communication rather than scatter-shot distribution of press releases, but there is absolutely no explanation of how this is supposed to be done in a time-efficient manner.

What's really missing is a hint of how PR campaigns built on social media platforms are supposed to reach the great unwashed--the non-techie consumer (millions and millions of them) who never blog, tweet, or even look at the Facebook page their kids set up for them. Publicizing the latest chipset for tablets via Gizmodo may well be the way to go, but how do you sell Buicks online?

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Will fully review this on my blog in the next week or so. Overall, nothing new for people who have even marginally been following the social media scene for the last two years. And just as with many of Solis' blog posts, it would have been better if it were shorter by half.

[E · Rating 4 out of 5]

Specialized overview of social networking

Although changes in the media have always challenged public relations professionals to stay up-to-date, individual PR practitioners’ credibility and solid relationships still define their success. This means that tech advocates may be somewhat overstating when they claim that “Social Media” outlets will radically alter public relations, though they certainly add many more tools to the mix. Even if Brian Solis and Deirdre Breakenridge tend to inflate the extent of the digital revolution, their book is helpful and worth reading. You’ll have to be comfortable with some Web-jargon to understand their tech-centric thinking, but PR professionals do need to know how to make the most of social media – blogs, social networking sites, “micromedia” and the like – and how to best channel its unquestionable potential and impact. For that purpose, getAbstract recommends this handy overview. In terms of details, its most hands-on, useful section is the appendix of social media links.

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish I had read this book right when it came out. It was written in 2009 and it's now 2016 so a lot of what was covered in the book has become second nature. But this is a great wrap-up of all of the ways PR has changed with social media and this new era of "meaning making" has changed how we do our jobs.

[Kiley]

I'm reading this one for the Florida Public Relations Association book club. Very interesting read with great ideas on how social media is changing the way public relations professionals do business and how to incorporate social media into your current public relations practices.

[Rosanne Sayers · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great introduction into how PR's need to change their behaviour from selling to conversing; from monologue to dialogue; from spin to influence.

There are some great case studies and I found the book both theoretical and practical.

[Shubhada · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wasn't as informative as I'd have liked. As a previous review said, it explained a lot of the "why" but not the how. A lot of the information seemed pretty self explanatory and wasn't really new information to me. But maybe that's because I grew up with social media...

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this in preparation for a new job in interactive/digital PR. So far, it's been very insightful on where PR fits into the SM world

[Linda Vandevrede · Rating 5 out of 5]

Includes very convincing arguments for executives to participate in social media

[Carmen]

To read after Engage.