We recently sent out the results of our online PR survey via a social media news release (or should that be ’social media press release’?) to a number of UK PR bloggers and received some pretty decent feedback. In short, we surveyed 101 PR people from agency, inhouse and freelance roles on their opinions of the online PR space.
Some of the results were quite surprising, such as “55 percent of all respondents believe their peers are incapable of performing comprehensive and effective online PR campaigns” and “99 percent of all respondents said that online coverage is either important or very important to their organisation or clients.”
If you haven’t already seen them and want to know more about the results you can view them here.
PR Bloggers such as Richard Bailey, Heather Yaxley, Andrew B. Smith, the guys from Spannerworks, Sherrilynne Starkey, Daljit Bhurji, Katy Howell and even webitpr’s very own Giles Shorthouse covered it. And, as mentioned, provided some great feedback regarding which questions to ask next time. Let’s be honest, no surveys are 100% perfect but thanks to feedback we received, we know it’ll be a better one next time around.
For a few examples, Daljit’s (whose blog is very good if you haven’t read it) key points were that the industry needs to invest more time in training. He said: “What is needed is a longer term view of the bottom line and a belief by agency owners that freeing up staff time for training and collaboration on social media will actually be in the long term financial interests of the agency.”
Katy from Immediate Future put it down to three core issues. These are:
* Investing time in research, development and play
* Open internet access and trust
* Budgets that reflect the importance of online
Katy then goes on to explain in more detail regarding these issues. I particularly agree with this bit “For agencies and in house alike, understanding online PR and social media is time consuming.”
Ain’t that the truth!
Again, Andrew B. Smith mentioned finding out what the comparative importance is of online coverage in relation to offline.
Gratefully received comments and ones we’re going to include in the next survey we do.
See, that’s the beauty of the blogosphere and peer to peer recommendations – you’ll always come out more smarter than you went in.
Stephen is a communications consultant based out of the UK. You can connect with him on Twitter or check out his LinkedIn profile. | Email Stephen
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Heather Yaxley
We also need those who are prepared to try new things and accept recommendations so we can all become better.
New media is time consuming – and one way of reducing the impact is to share our learning widely.
Thanks Stephen for being a pioneer and being open enough to take others with you.
cass stainton
UK PRs desperately need to focus on online, if we’re not to be left behind other territories. Agree we should all work together to learn and develop as professionals, be helpful to peers, rather than act like the only one in the playground who’s in the know…..helpful advice not finger wagging….
James
Totally agree with Heather. Trying to find the services which ease the life of a freelance professional is an all day job. As an industry it requires a much more cohesive approach to flow information to the masses about which sites add real value and which do not.
And with regard to getting the questions right, it took us over 600 repondents to get our questionairre right, and I’m still not 100% happy with them. All of our results can be found online at Network Freelance
Cheers,
James
Director – Network Freelance.