Complete Web Monitoring

Agencies Versus Individuals

Public relations (PR) has traditionally been an outbound business, controlling the flow and the message. Today, the new PR is community interaction. Lobbying and advocacy are so passé; we’d rather they change sentiment and tweak the zeitgeist.

While many companies have started community management as an in-house effort—often part of user groups, support communities, or blogging—PR agencies are taking notice. Seeing their roles as keepers of the corporate message at risk, agencies want to own the interaction.

This heralds an arms race between agencies and the organizations they serve. On one side of this pitched battle will be agencies, which have the ear of the marketing department and can spread worries of liability and spin control. They’ll employ mass-messaging tools—many of which we’ve seen but have yet to be launched publicly—to send personalized mass messages to followers. On the other side will be the righteously indignant individuals claiming the moral high ground of the genuine and devoting themselves to nurturing real relationships with their markets and followers.

How this will play out is uncertain. Several agencies we spoke with are building their own proprietary tools to mine communities on behalf of their clients; meanwhile, conversation listening platforms are turning support teams into skunk works PR agencies.

The outcome of this battle is in the hands of the communities themselves, who will either embrace the new communications channels ...