Focus on Risk Means PR Could Miss an Opportunity

Here's an interesting PR Week (U.K.) article--Google Sidewiki Could Damage Corporate Brand Reputations--that sums up what's wrong with the PR industry's attitude to social media.

"New social media technology will cause major headaches for PR professionals," says the publication in a subhead that's based on the quotes of the PR pros interviewed for the article: "Managing corporate reputation online just got harder" and "it's like having a heckler at a press conference you're not allowed to do anything about."

The article in question is sufficiently short that it's not entirely clear whether these quotes are representative of the industry as a whole, but it certainly wouldn't surprise me if they were, because an alarming number of PR people continue to react to the emerging power of social media in general by focusing first and foremost on risk rather than opportunity.

In fact, there's generally--and I recognize that I'm generalizing here--a stark difference between marketers and corporate communicators when it comes to social media. Marketers see only opportunity, and they want to try anything--although they're still much better at talking (shouting?) than they are at listening. Corporate communicators see only risk and they generally don't want to do anything except listen, to make sure nothing that's being said online is going to bite them on the ass in the real world.

Both approaches have their flaws, but the former is clearly preferable to the latter, which I believe carries a huge opportunity cost.