The client value of public relations and social media

The “transaction” is the lifeblood of any business, without which there are no revenues, without which there are no other ancillary business activities … no communications, no public relations, nada, zilch, zip. In case you may doubt this, remember that the fundamental absence of transaction is what stalled the Web 1.0 boom and, ultimately, burst the bubble.

Elementary, my dear Watson! Yes, but maybe its being so elementary to any market activity is precisely what makes the importance of the transaction so often overlooked by practitioners of certain ancillary business activities, say, journalism or public relations, for example.

So, I was heartened to see Joel Postman’s recent piece about his efforts to enlighten clients about the business value of social media, Get that social media guy outta here! (don’t get your hackles up … Joel is the ‘social media guy’ in this instance).

I linked to Joel’s post yesterday and commented that in all the online discussions of social media I’ve been reading, overlooked is the ultra-obvious point that Joel makes that clients first and foremost “want to achieve communications and business objectives” and are specifically interested in “driving more traffic to the web site and generating leads.” Those are “sales leads,” by the way, and their only purpose is to culminate in … yes, you guessed it, a transaction.

It’s my feeling that the professional identity that has been developed around journalism and, to a lesser extent, public relations, has led practitioners to think of what they do more as a vocation or calling, than a business activity. In journalism, this skewed view has meant that successive waves of practitioners have stood frozen like deer in the headlights of oncoming market forces that are driven by tighter margins and increased competition as a result of technology-enabled new and faster means of delivering information to consumers.

Somethin’s happenin’ here … the radio seemed to be playing, but to myself and many colleagues for many years, what it was wasn’t exactly clear. What it was is a basic truth that journalism within a market economy is a business activity, part of the news business, dependent for its survival on revenue-generating advertising and subscription transactions; a basic truth that was largely overlooked by the practitioners themselves in favor of the journalism-as-profession construct.

I think that practitioners of public relations, particularly those in agency management positions, are less likely to overlook the obvious business reality of PR. But the tendency to view PR as a collegial profession — with its professional societies, university curricula, codes, social and educational events — still clouds the understanding of the specific value to clients of what is inherently a business activity built around the fundamental need to drive the transaction.

Yes, we’re communicators; yes we’re public relations professionals; yes, we may believe in social media as the wave of the future. But, the real task at hand, in addition to showing our adherence to professionalism, is to demonstrate that with our skills and knowledge we can help clients to meet real business objectives and generate sales leads that will lead to revenue-generating … oh well, shall I say it one more time? … transactions.

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