An Interview With A Leading PR Professional

Rob Key, CEO of Converseon Discusses the Emerging Blogosphere

A found a very interesting Q&A session on Global PR Blog Week, featuring Rob Key, President of Converseon, a website that includes a stream of blog entries, news stories, pictures, podcasts and video clips, loosely coupled through hyperlinks, and accessible on-the-spot through RSS syndication. Rob was once an employee at a big PR agency and has formulated proprietary online communication tools that can give a company an edge in the new digital PR battles.

Here’s a brief excerpt from the interview:

Global PR: How do you think blogs will change traditional PR agency practices?
RK: Right now there's a Blog mania, and not enough strategy around how they are used strategically. We see new "blog practices" emerge at agencies. We have big brands asking us for "blog and RSS strategies" but are unclear about their objectives. One of our top global petrochemical clients told us that one of the PR agencies suggested a CEO blog, which they believed, and I concur, is probably one of the worst ideas
Blogs are incredibly powerful content syndication tools. They can help establish thought leadership and build community. hey can articulate points of view and better engage key constituents in conversation. There are myriad strategic uses, but in the end they are just another form of a website. The creative application of Blogs is where there is fertile ground for communications innovation.
Blogs can be much more efficient at syndicating content than traditional PR releases. But PR firms will need additional skill sets: RSS fluency, search engine optimization skills, tracking/monitoring and data-mining capabilities, along with sophisticated monitoring of consumer generated media to make this successful. I don't believe the tactic, in isolation, will revolutionize the industry.

Global PR: What are the important new skills necessary for the effective public relations account executive of the future?
RK: We're in a fast changing environment. A key skill for public relations will be to not see every problem as a nail and every solution as a hammer.
A critical skill will be embracing new concepts, approaches and technologies and fully understanding them. These can range from search engine algorithms to social networks. All are having significant impacts on brands and reputations. The PR executives we look for look on this new frontier as opportunity, not fear.
Truly, also, the best communications leaders will be those who can bring the best fusion of creativity skills from PR, with the discipline and metric driven approach of direct response, with the brand managing and building skills of advertising. It's difficult to delineate where one marketing discipline leaves off and the other begins in the digital realm.
Our programs pull on elements of all the disciplines together with an aptitude for new technologies.
Of course, underlying all of this is still the power of the content and information that one must develop. You can utilize all the technologies in the world but if you're not communicating authentically, creatively or effectively, you won't be successful. The "big ideas" that the best of the public relations industry has produced over time is perhaps more important today than ever.

Global PR: How do you define public relations today as opposed to five years ago?
RK: We evolved out of the "Innovations Group" at a public relations division of Young & Rubicam but by 2001 had recognized that so much had changed in the communications world that we needed a new model and new definition to what we needed to achieve to be successful for our clients. So we sat down and asked ourselves, if we were to get rid of all preconceived notations about what a communications agency should look like in a digital environment where the way people gather and act on information has dramatically changed, what would the agency look like? We decided that it would look very little like many of the traditional PR firms we had grown up in.
As such, we brought together the best public relations/reputation minds together with the best technologists from search engine optimization, web development/RSS, datamining and more. The fusion of the two has given us much greater latitude and influence to achieve client communications goals.
We now define what we do as capitalizing on the changing ways consumers and businesses gather, synthesize, share and act on information. We influence all touch points as opposed to just a small portion of the spectrum. It can be an article, or a search engine result, or microsite, or blog or other form of digital content. We sometimes also describe what we do as helping our clients successfully engage in the digital conversation. Markets clearly are conversations. There are conversations occurring all the time about products and brands. Companies face a pretty stark choice to either ignore the conversation, or join it. But to join it, one has to embrace new technologies, and innovative communications approaches. Change is always challenging and even frightening to companies who had a pretty clear, but narrow, definition of what communications and public relations was. But we're seeing more and more brands taking the plunge.
It's an exciting time for the communications industry. Never has the industry had so many tools and technologies to influence target audiences. We've also never had the opportunity to "listen" to target audiences and track our effectiveness. Some agencies will evolve, and surely some will not. The PR industry certainly isn't immune to Darwinism.

Global PR: What is the most important recent technological breakthrough to aid the practice of public relations?
RK: Conversation mining tools, without doubt, must become essential elements of any thoughtful and strategic public relations program.
With the proliferation of consumer generated media, companies' have an unprecedented opportunity to capture, understand and act on the "conversation" that is occurring about their brand and products in the digital realm.
Converseon, for example, utilizes proprietary monitoring tools that scour public, online discussion areas to capture, understand and report the products, issues and opinions that consumers share between and among themselves. Understanding this unaided, unprompted and unstructured "conversation" that is occurring among and between key constituents is critically important to:
Understanding brand/product perceptions
Providing "early warning systems" regarding brand or product issues
Gleaning intelligence for communication and product strategies
Measuring effectiveness of communication and advertising efforts
Mobilizing "allies" and "evangelists"
Informing content, search engine optimization and public relations strategies
For far too long, companies have been talking past or over their target audiences. It's analogous to walking into a cocktail party conversation and just begin talking without understanding the conversation. Who are the influencers? What do they care about? What are the critical issues? Not understanding the communications environment has far too often created a dissonance between PR messaging and the issues most important to their audiences.
These new Conversation Mining tools truly do provide that ability to listen by providing a window into what target audiences feel and desire, but also how effective your messaging is and who it is that you most need to influence. Only by listening first, can public relations programs be effective.

Global PR: Can you name recent successes that PR agencies have had in using blogs for clients or agency administration? Where are agencies falling short?
RK: We have built a series of blogs for clients for a variety of purposes, including search engine listings, acquisition (driving sales), and generating overall visibility and "POV." I haven't reviewed enough PR agency blogs to comment.

Global PR: Examples of how you augment traditional PR practices with Converseon practices and how it benefited a client and the agency.
RK: We approach the PR practice very differently than most agencies. We first utilize created a "conversation audit" using our proprietary tools to map the online consumer generated media conversation. In many cases, we identify about 10 percent of the population as advocates or potential allies/thought leaders; and 10 percent what we can determined. The 80% in the middle are influencible. We also understand what they key issues are which informs a communications strategy. Our strategy to engage in communications triage. We mobilize the potential allies and transform them into evangelists, and we minimize the visibility and effectiveness of detractors. And we then influence the persuadable.
We mobilize, minimize and influence through an array of strategies and technologies, including affiliate and word of mouth marketing, search engine optimization (which makes content visible), RSS/Blog strategies, viral promotions and more. Behind it all we have sophisticated tracking that enables us to understand with a good deal of preciseness how effective we are, and how we need to optimize and evolve the programs. We look at all touch points where are target audience gathers and shares information, and try to influence them across the continuum.