3 Reasons Online PR Pisses Me Off
If you read NakedPR regularly, it should be no secret that I have some pretty major issues with certain aspects of online PR (such as wanting to gouge my eyes out every time I read something else hyping up social media press releases). First let’s just clear something up. I’m not some “old school” type who’s anti-Internet or any of that garbage. I’m just anti-stupidity and anti-hype. I’m still a “sweet young thing” (ha), and the Internet is most surely my “friend.” There’s a lot of marketing and PR potential, and I wouldn’t deny that for a second (hell, with most of my clients being online entrepreneurs, I think it’s fair to say I’d better not be of the “online PR is evil” mentality… and I’m not). Yet there are a few basic things that royally piss me off about online PR, like these…
1. For goodness sake, do we really need all of the new buzzwords??? 2.0 this and social media that… Booooorrrrriiing! The PR industry is already behind the rest of the world in the Internet game. Let’s just get our asses in gear and catch up, and quit throwing pretty words around to make it sound like we’re still “hip.” And that brings me to…
2. The PR industry is quite pathetic at getting its own message out. Ummm, isn’t that supposed to be what we’re good at? So while we’re tossing around new words, trying to overhaul everything, and trying to convince big business that they still need us in some way with all of the new, big, scary online tactics available, we’ve lost our identity almost completely in the potentially largest audience with an interest in online PR (webmasters and online entrepreneurs). The Internet marketing umbrella has gobbled us up, and people in that market see PR and think Google pagerank rather than public relations. Many don’t even have a clue as to what public relations is. Hmmm… so that’s why I keep seeing people using PR tactics for hard-sell goals, and bitching and moaning that they’re not working. Let’s blame it on Google though, right? I mean… it’s not our responsibility to understand new key publics in our industry… is it?
3. We’d rather re-package than re-educate. This one pisses me off the most (and it’s relating a good bit to social media press releases as a prime example… I’ll post separately about that later or tomorrow). It’s become easier for us to “dumb down” everything, rather than teach people how to effectively use PR. PR is becoming more and more of a self-serve industry (and as a whole, I’m OK with that… the ones serious will still keep turning to consultants, so I don’t look at it as a real threat). In that process, we should be helping people to understand how to use PR tools well, write effectively for PR, and such, rather than creating a surge in usage without a matching “up” in quality. But that’s just me… I’ll rant more about that later, just because I can.
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Comments
Brendan: I’ve already heard talk of web 3.0. yes. its scary.
Jennifer: “anti-hype”? You’re in PR - is that even possible?
And I wouldn’t bet against the PR firms for too long. Eventually, someone will develop a process to do PR really well, and give consultants some pretty stiff competition.
It’s most certainly possible. 
Remember, PR didn’t always carry the ever-popular “spin doctor” image. It used to be, and still is for many of us, a means of building and maintaining a legitimate image, and disseminating news to the media before information reaches them “through the grapevine” totally skewed. 
Hi Jennifer,
Agreed on all points. I think the ‘buzzwords’ are just springing up all over the place because, let’s face it, there’s a lot happening right now - blogging, Second Life, news aggregators - and, well, there’s just no other way to describe them! We might see things settle down when people get the hang of things (although that’s probably when someone will start calling it Web 3.0). I’m not saying online is new, but the explosion of interactive, immediate and unmediated coverage is relatively recent, and that scares people right now. Give PR people time and they’ll realise they need to engage rather than just elevate opinion.