Who is better placed to assist a company in its social media strategy – a specialist PR firm or a SEO consultancy?: Welcome to this month’s 35 Debate, our monthly email dialogue in association with 35 Communications.

Arguing the case for PR firms is Abigail Harrison, managing director of public relations agency thebluedoor. Banging the drum for SEOs is Andrew Girdwood, head of search at one of the UK’s largest SEO consultancies bigmouthmedia.

Dear Andrew,
PR has been practised by specialist communicators since time immemorial. It’s a discipline that communicates with the right people at the right time about the right things. The tools have certainly changed: from Gutenberg’s printing press, through to the complex coding of today’s web. However, common to all these tools is people: listening, reading, talking, thinking and sharing.

In the current Web 2.0 hype-storm, it is vital that companies remember that social media is just another new tool to deliver, communicate and protect reputations of brands, people and companies. Approaching a social media strategy involves the same experience, creativity and rigour that a PR professional would approach any other tactic: What’s the objective? Who is going to be interested? Where does the audience hang out? And what will make them give a damn?

PR must protect its expertise in the face of SEO. I would argue that SEO is intrinsically and historically linked to Google bots and algorithms – not people, and certainly not reputations.

PR professionals who’ve taken the time to understand the dynamics and technologies supporting this so-called new toy and who understand the importance of reputation management are in a far better position to deliver a social media strategy than SEO agencies. After all – PR, like the web, has always been about people.

And surely when it comes to protecting reputation, a company should opt for experience in accurate, relevant messaging and good content that PR delivers time and time again?
Best wishes,
Abigail

Dear Abigail,
Thanks for the email. I’m sure you’ll recall that this year’s Cannes for the best global PR campaign was not won by a PR agency but by a digital agency. The award was given to the social media inspired ‘Best Job in the World’ campaign to recruit a blogger for Tourism Queensland.

I think they won for two reasons: algorithms and experience.

The algorithms that matter in SEO are the mathematical formulae we used to track value and measure success. What is coverage from that blog worth? Should we spend resources for more? These are examples of crucial questions that experienced SEOs can answer and the ones they want to ask.

There is the Google algorithm, of course. That’s designed to find the trusted, credible websites, the ones with a good reputation and with influence. From the very start of the discipline, SEOers have been perfecting the techniques and thinking required to gain brands that online reputation and to protect it.

Social media, like SEO, is not new. The oldest blog that I still maintain is over six years old. For years I have had SEO agencies write me emails or leave me comments to try and get exposure or links for clients. It has only been in recent months that messages from PR agencies have made their way to that blog’s inbox.

I don’t think we’ve really seen any evidence that the PR agencies have caught up with, or overtaken, the digital natives.
Best wishes,
Andrew

“PR, like the web, has always been about people. SEO is intrinsically and historically linked to Google bots and algorithms – not people, and certainly not reputations.”

Dear Andrew,
I agree that advertising and PR experience played a huge factor in crafting, implementing and delivering this integrated campaign (as well as a significant budget). However, it was delivered by an advertising agency, which rightly used all the digital tools available.

Digital agencies that claim to be PR experts as well as SEO experts walk a fine line and should be clear about their specialism.

Clients and companies we all work for don’t just live in the digital goldfish bowl populated by digital natives. Instead, our audiences consume news from multiple online and offline platforms. Search must be given due consideration in any communications campaign but it is only one piece of a more complex approach.

Social media is not new: people read, comment and talk about companies, brands, ‘stuff’ in the pub, at home, at work and online. PR has long been responsible for kicking off these conversations, having first taken time and trouble to conduct a target audience analysis as well as a risk mitigation exercise.

PR professionals can be bold and confident to deliver social media campaigns as part of an integrated results-driven approach. We value the contribution that SEO experts make in tracking and measuring relevant results as part of a strategy. However, the SEO industry must respect the knowledge, influence and, as you rightly say, the experience our profession brings to creating buzz and managing reputation.

This knowledge puts PR in a strong position to deliver social media strategies.
Best wishes,
Abigail

Dear Abigail,
I agree that PR agencies are well placed to drive offline buzz. It is fantastic when offline buzz assists with a social media campaign or even when a social media campaign assists with a PR campaign.

Social media campaigns are digital. They involve the intricate web of virtual connections and conversations, the ebb and flow of internet communities, online buzz and the tidal wave of data that all this produces.

Social media campaigns evoke SEO knowledge. SEO techniques such as calculating which sites have traction in the search engines, which RSS feeds have the most readers, which bloggers influence which blogs, whether it is better to restrict a widget to one community or make it universal, what the best route into Google News or Techmeme is, whether a webpage will do well in StumbleUpon, which video viral hosts will link back to the original site or even if it is possible to deep link to a microsite and feed that shortened URL (picking a 301 or frame shortener) to Twitter.

The SEO skill set is wide. All good SEOs are digital natives, people with a passion for the internet. We also have SEOs who are particularly good at project management, SEOs capable of the detailed maths and analytics necessary to validate any digital campaign and SEOs with a talent for link-bait and generating the online buzz needed to draw attention to a site.

SEO or PR? SEOs tick more social media boxes.
Best wishes, Andrew

Dear Andrew,
Surely it’s old fashioned to think in terms of offline and online separated worlds? The two are intrinsically linked. Ring-fencing digital into a ‘specialism’, only to be practiced by SEOs, is a mistake.

The business of PR is to engage the target audience – online, offline, by mail, phone, or face-to-face wherever they reside. Of course, PR integrates online into campaigns, just as we embraced television when it was still shiny and relatively new.

Digital platforms of social media – YouTube, Twitter, blogs, Flickr (the list is endless) – are just some important ways PR ensures messages reach target audiences in our increasingly connected world. And it’s vital we ensure the right tools are chosen for the right job.

All good PRs have a passion for crafting creative concepts, writing credible content, ensuring robust messaging, protecting a company’s reputation and delivering excellent results, buzz and traction both online and offline. The SEO skill-set is useful and we always factor it into social media campaigns. However, it’s certainly not a substitute for the rigour, strategy, experience and discipline that PR professionals offer.

As a member of the PRCA’s Digital Committee, I feel that SEOs whose main focus is driving traffic and link-bait risk allowing metrics and algorithms get in the way of the strategic thinking required for meaningful PR.

So to answer Communicate, PR is absolutely in the best position to deliver a company’s social media strategy using the appropriate tools, tactics and knowledge at our disposal.
Best wishes,
Abigail

“When it comes to picking my expert for social media I can think of no one better than true digital natives, experts with years of blogging experience, who understand the connections of the web, technology, analytics and internet etiquette.”

Dear Abigail,
I agree that the very best campaigns are integrated and holistic. These campaigns are offline, online and will use experts from a number of fields.

When it comes to picking my expert for social media I can think of no one better than true digital natives, experts with years of blogging experience, online community management,  experts who understand the connections of the web, technology, analytics and internet etiquette.

I believe SEO professionals have already shown how well suited they are to social media. Not only have SEO experts been successful at social media, they have been its main proponents and its driving force.

Successful social media always involves elements of search engine optimisation. SEO has always made use of social media techniques from the very beginning. Social media is a discipline which equires online communication skills, alongside technical skills and analytical skills. A deficit in any one of these three key areas is a threat to success of the campaign.

Skill sets of in-house teams and agencies vary. It seems only natural to me that when, given the choice, decision makers turn to SEO experts for assistance in social media. The SEO experts have the most experience in this field, all of the required skills and the technical resources necessary to make the campaign a success.
Best regards,
Andrew