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Every company, cause, and career with a stake in positive public
exposure depends on successful public relations, and until recently, PR
professionals had the art of promoting messages, shaping opinions, and
protecting reputations down to a science. Then, the Internet opened up a
staggering array of unparalleled possibilities—and previously
unimaginable dangers.
Whether you're an in-house PR manager or an outside PR consultant, the
constantly evolving world of online communication has made your job more
challenging than ever. In the view of PR icon Robert L. Dilenschneider,
the only effective way to deal with those challenges is to integrate
your firm grasp of "old-style? media—television, radio, magazines,
newspapers, direct mail, personal appearances, and others—with the new
and emerging Web 2.0 outlets. In The AMA Handbook of Public Relations,
he offers you a comprehensive operator's manual to communicating with
influence in the 21st century.
If you're looking for tried-and-true formulas, you won't find them
here—because they no longer exist. Instead, you'll get an expert's help
in developing the mind-set, strategies, tactics, and confidence to bring
together and fully exploit all the vehicles for information, ideas, and
debate now available to you. You'll learn how to take your skills to a
new level on a new playing field—and gain new advantage. "This hand?book
will explain in detail how the tools and techniques of the Internet,
when combined with conventional understanding of communications, can
make a major difference in your life and career,? Dilenschneider
affirms. "It will also tell you how you can master this new world.?
Informed by hundreds of interviews with business leaders, media heads,
cyberspace trailblazers, policy makers, consumers, and college students, The
AMA Handbook of Public Relations reflects the latest digital
communication trends and addresses key influence concerns. Along with a
wealth of illuminating real- and virtual-world examples, you'll find
action steps and practical tips to help you:
• Create a website that connects with visitors on a human level.
• Get more comfortable with the nuts and bolts of blogs, microblogs (aka
"tweets?), podcasts, and social networking sites . . . and then let your
target audience determine which tools and forums you should use to reach
and engage them.
• Reframe your PR universe in terms of hyper?links—the digital version
of the wisdom of crowds—and seize every chance to cooperate and
collaborate with your competitors.
• Recognize, measure, and budget for what counts—results that are truly
relevant to your company's or client's goals. (For instance,
word-of-mouth from satisfied customers counts much more than total
website traffic.)
• Monitor what is being said about your company, products, services,
industry, competition, and leadership on the Web, 24/7, and invest in a
strong offense against Internet security threats and cyberattackers.
• Plan ahead for crises and worst-case scenarios, transform
misinformation and mispercep?tions into opportunities to reinforce your
message, and uncover the real motives behind persistent false rumors.
• Experiment with a mix of digital and tradi?tional media—and have the
courage to change a tactic or strategy without apology. As you'll
discover, trial and error is vital to public relations success in the
ever-evolving communications landscape.
You'll also find helpful chapters devoted to specific PR skills and
specialties, including investor relations, tourism, speechwriting,
market research, and more. If what you do depends on communicating the
right messages, you'll find The AMA Handbook of Public Relations
an essential resource and an invaluable guide.
Robert L. Dilenschneider is the founder and Chairman of The
Dilenschneider Group, a global public relations and communications
consulting firm head?quartered in New York City. He is the former
President and Chief Executive Officer of Hill and Knowlton, Inc., and
the author of many books, including the best-selling Power and
Influence.
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Excerpt
INTRODUCTION
"The old paradigms were breaking down faster
than the new ones emerging, producing panic
among those most invested in the status quo.?
—MIT media professor HENRY JENKINS in Convergence
Culture: When Old and New Media Collide (New York
University Press, 2006)
SUCCESS IN PUBLIC RELATIONS depends on the ability to communicate—
to put your ideas and thoughts across to others, to make
them listen, to get them to act. And communication now depends on
technology that is changing every day.
Public relations was one of the first industries to recognize and
harness the power of the Internet. The Web was a natural venue for
corporate communications, establishing brands, spreading product
information, and much more. PR professionals with vision and
imagination jumped on board as soon as they recognized the unparalleled
possibilities. But the Internet can also be filled with unexpected
dangers and quick-strike ambushes for those who aren't
properly prepared.
The AMA Handbook of Public Relations has been written to
help you combine traditional media and Web-based campaigns in
successfully getting your message out, while at the same time protecting
your clients, your company, and yourself against harmful
cyberattacks.
Here I am sitting in my office in Manhattan. But I could be sitting
in an office just like this one in Algiers, London, Oslo, Beijing,
Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Paris, or Calcutta. The reality of technology
is the same around the globe.
We in business are trying to figure out how to be successful in a
very different century. The key to this is finding out how to exploit
the power of the Internet. We know it's there. After all, when Google
Inc. speaks, the world listens. Insurance companies, Wall Street,
retailers, universities, and industrial companies around the globe
know this and are struggling with what to do. This handbook is
about how you can gain advantage and bring your skills to a new
level and in a new way that will enable you to communicate your
message even more effectively in a digital age.
Yet the Internet can be a double-edged sword. You may have
been blindsided already by the digital guerilla attacks cyberspace
makes possible on reputations, products, and services—and ultimately
profits. Three renegades on Twitter.com caused Johnson &
Johnson to discontinue its Motrin commercial and issue a mea
culpa. The national pizza chain Domino's was victimized by two
prankster employees who posted a clip on YouTube of a third
employee doing gross things with the food he was preparing. In no
time the offensive clip went viral, attracting millions of viewers.
Today is very different from those confident days when public
relations agencies executed proven formulas to promote our messages,
manage rumors, enhance brands, or support clients during
litigation. Every day I get a call from a CEO who asks about something
that has happened online and what to do about it. The public
relations practitioner must always keep in mind that the Internet—
where information travels at warp speed—can be a source of PR
nightmares.
On the other hand, the Internet also has helped many people and
organizations succeed beyond their wildest dreams. Consider how
Senator Barack Obama used technology to reach the White House.
Obama is the first president to have weekly Internet chats with the
people. Life has changed. CEOs now use the Web to reach managers.
Many CEOs are starting to blog. Think about how big corporations
are using tech to advance their interests, and how technolo-
gy has leveled the playing field so that success is not based on who
you know, where you're from, or what school you attended, but on
what you know about using the new tools available to you.
When I leave this office based over Grand Central Station and
take the Metro North commuter train home to Darien, Connecticut,
I encounter another aspect of this new reality. Darien, like much of
the New York Metro area, still enjoys affluence, but now has a different
tone—it has become a community with many unemployed
financial markets experts, C-suite executives, and recent graduates
from college and professional schools. The jobs they lost, and the
ones they were educated for, no longer exist.
To make a living again, they have to reinvent themselves using
the Internet and then present their new selves in digital ways. For
the lion's share that is a paradigm shift. Most businesspeople are so
preoccupied with their careers or schooling that they are behind the
learning curve about how to use the Internet as an extension of
themselves. That has to change if they are to be successful.
Your world is very different today than it was five years ago, and
it will change even more in the next few years. That is what this
book is about—helping you to adjust to a new world and to position
yourself for what is ahead. If you do not adapt to what has taken
place and what is yet to come, you will fall behind; and in a time of
economic challenge, that is simply unacceptable.
Adapting may be hard, especially if you've been doing things the
same way for years, but you must do it to survive and prosper. Many
people over forty are still not completely comfortable with technology.
People under forty learned how to use technology early on, but
they aren't always adept at using it for business purposes.
Moving to new, or digital, media isn't just a case of transplanting
old media. It also involves a new vocabulary, altered interaction
with an audience that can now literally talk back, and different
standards
about objectivity, relevance, and timeliness. Indeed, for many
it has become easier to watch television on the Internet than on an
actual television. Today, nearly everyone e-mails. Many people are
now using Kindle to read books and periodicals—a change, a phenomenal
change, from the way things used to be.
Defenders of traditional, print-based old media criticize the
Internet for what they see as its shallow, unedited, anything goes,
copycat coverage of events. But they also acknowledge that the
Web has opened the door to unprecedented public participation in
nearly every area of life while providing an audience reach far
beyond the capabilities of most of the analog world.
This handbook will let you know what I have told many about
how the tools and techniques of the Internet combined with conventional
understanding of communications have made a major difference
in lives and careers. It will also tell you how you can master
this new world.
One more thing: There is no denying that those who seemed to
have an intuitive grasp of this new medium and have invested in
picking up operational know-how on the Web are prospering even
in these uncertain economic times. Like John F. Kennedy, Bill Paley,
Ronald Reagan, and Procter & Gamble, all of whom understood the
new medium of TV and how it differed from radio, Barack Obama
recognized the power of the Internet to reach vast numbers of voters
and raise money in unprecedented amounts. It's a whole new
world.
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