Passion for stories

It's common knowledge that journalists like stories. The funniest thing in all these modern means of communications is that [let's say] some journalists don't like to create their own stories and prefer to get something 'ready-to-print'. I don't know why it happens. When I used to be the journalist myself, I had a passion for story-seeking, matching and comparing facts, building the context which made my articles bright. Today it looks like storytelling becomes a task for PR-specialists. I consider it to be a good way to build a good PR. But you can judge for yourselves.
Once one of my clients decided to make a charity action. So he bought the violin made by famous master. Honestly, that was a really old instrument, and surely it was very expensive.

Goals, objectives and principles of social networking

Typically, is social media goal setting and objectives planning are similar to the general principles of PR-planning: reputation KPIs, audience coverage, the wording of key points of communication. Further objectives tree is constructed, the audience is segmented by quality groups, messages for each of them are written. So you start working and developing effective projects and actions on the best channels of communication. I prefer to create a prototype of the communication model and test on a focus group, adjust it if necessary, get a budget and start an implementation. Coverage of the tasks of social networks commensurate with their abilities - from selling apples to crisis communications. You can even conduct case studies, test product and choose the chief for your transportation department. And the principles of communications will meet these challenges. But it’s very important to conform to generally accepted norms of behaviour. Don’t be rude, don’t continue senseless debates, don’t even try to start censorship on your blog. Also don’t lie. Please.  It’s rather better to be positive, non-intrusive, interesting, original  erudite. Remember that you are a storyteller. A good story told in time to the right person, can enter the company name in the history of the market.

On-line ecology

On-line environmental friendliness is very important. It is very sad to see the projects’ profiles, rapidly and successfully carried out, and then abandoned at the mercy of spammers and bots. It is clear that qualitatively promoted site with the high attendance and popularity is very nice meal for commercial posters. Project ends, the participants get their prizes, the company decided to stop the SMM-promotion, and after month or two of old beauty and fascinating history we have only painted graffiti wall spamming. It is rather strange as it’s very easy to close the public access to the SMM-group. This is what I call "clean up". Actually, again, nothing is original here - in real world the maintenance of cleaning office, home or city is not even a case to discuss.

Quantity and quality

The lack of quantitative/qualitative focus the audience will certainly play a cruel joke on those for whom the figures in the reports overshadow the strategic objectives of the project. For instance – one manager desperately need to show a convincing figure in the statistics of visitors to the page by the end of the month. So he begins to wreak news, comments, videos and pictures of all available profiles. Even, perhaps, fall to such a mechanism of "black PR" as bots and the "ghosts". Perhaps, at the end of the month the statistics will shine with a four-five-digit numbers. But in reality, the reputation of the company / product / project will not acquire anything new, but in very advanced cases even lose. We remember the shocking statistics from “Vkontakte”: there were 76% of noodles in a "Rollton" group, 73% in "Svyaznoy Bank,"  59% in Adidas and  37 % in Coca-Cola. Conclusions are evident.

Main mistakes of social-media managers

As the social-media is still too new trend in corporate communications, let's not talk about the "mistakes", but "failed experiments". At least, PR-effect is very long story, who knows where those missteps will lead their authors.

However, as Paul Holmes said on his lecture this April, there hasn’t appeared any fundamentally new thing during last 80 years in public relations. Generally speaking, the basis of all failures of web-PR-experiments are the same mistakes as in off-line. In my opinion, the main factors of bad luck are reluctant to listen to the audience, not understanding the difference between advertising and PR, the lack of originality and creativity, as well as unwarranted activity. As you can see, nothing new and it is typical for the Internet. Specific things - such as too long texts are too big/ small pictures, unattractive prizes for sweepstakes and confusing conditions – all this can be corrected by own or somebody’s practice. In addition, the information field on the Internet is changing rapidly, and today no one remember what exactly was so terrible on the company’s page a month ago. This is great advantage of online, but this is the main risk for you – you should always be faster, remembering that the competitors warm your back by their breath. And everybody is copying everything – or, ok we can say that the ideas are just flying on the air. So you burn three days and caught a brilliant idea, admired your "fans" and "likers", and next day after your neighbor added a couple features, and sowed in his audience. A week later, no one will remember who was the first, and the audience will become hungry for more fresh ideas. Lose the rhythm is another great risk for the PR-specialist.

RUSSIAN PR IN CHINA: EXPEDITION STARTS TODAY!

Today, on April 19, of Russian PR experts Expedition goes to China to get acquainted with the experience of the Celestial Empire’s modern image creation.

As part of the recently launched Year of Russian Tourism in China, delegation of the Russian Public Relations Association (RPRA) will visit Beijing and get acquainted with the Chinese experience of territorial brand building. The expedition will be held from April 19 till 26, 2012.

 Territory promotion, competition for investment between regions, development of tourist image are hot topics for both Russia and China, which is always able to solve these problems efficiently. Among the topics of interest are attraction of tourists (more than 53 million one day tourists visited China in 2012), holding sport events (Summer Olympic Games 2008 in China were the first to be broadcast entirely in high definition and drew 4.7 billion viewers), use of popular art for promotion of national values ​​and mentality, ideas of national identity and statehood. During the event Russian pr-experts will appreciate the communication component of the "Chinese miracle".

The visit is held at the invitation of China National Tourism Administration. The agenda includes business visits to the Chinese companies, familiarization tour to the tourist objects, meetings with representatives of industry of public opinion control.

By agreement of the parties, all events of the working trip will be reported in the special blog on RPRA website, personal blog of Alexey Glazyrin, head of the Russian delegation, RPRA Vice-President and GC Newton Chairman of the Board of Directors.

The PR profession continues to evolve

Thanks to Joe S. Epley, APR, Fellow PRSA for kind words and nice article:

"A good example of the bright new stars in the Russian profession is Natalia Gurova, a vice president for the Moscow-based Newton-PR. She sees continued growth in the profession, particularly because more small- and middle-sized businesses are recognizing the value of public relations. “There is a growing need for specialists within the profession, such as analysts, event planners and internal communicators,” she says. “Now everyone is trained as generalist.”
http://www.prsa.org/Intelligence/Tactics/Articles/view/9700/101/Public_relations_in_Russia_Keeping_open_a_once_clo

Customer request

A myriad of constantly working information channels are trying to get customer's attention every single minute. It makes him to straight against this information attack. Successful PR-strategies today are not concentrated on storytelling, or product advantages, or company achievements. The main goal we are focusing is audience's interest. Only this interest leads us to concrete customer request.