Welcome to the Escape Blog

It seems that traditional PR people are actually admitting that they can’t do web very well according to a report at E Consultancy.

The research found 55% of respondents – either agency, inhouse and freelance PRs – thought their fellow practitioners were “incapable” of performing comprehensive online PR campaigns.

It is suggested that traditional PRs are busy doing what they traditionally do, which prevents them adapting to the changes and opportunities ‘online’ is bringing. That’s fair enough, I’m sure a lot of fax manufacturers were doing the same ten years ago.

One of the biggest problems, perhaps, is the fact that ‘online’ isn’t as controllable as traditional PR and reputation management. But, let’s face it, people are going to talk about you whatever - good or bad. It’s what you do about it that counts.

This creates a certain level of authenticity that is the antithesis of old school marketing and PR. Suddenly, we all have to… wait for it… concentrate on actually being:

1. Excellent at what we do: Good won’t do anymore - there’s so much choice.
2. Good at customer service: If you don’t treat me nice, I’ll go somewhere else.

Catching The Wave Of Choice

If you can consistently deliver, treat customers well and let the people who think you do a good job tell other people, then you can let go of your online PR and you may just end up catching the wave of other people’s choice. Their wave, not yours.

Of course, you can give people extra reasons to talk to everyone about you, such as useful content, tools, e-books, etc. but ultimately, if you are no good, people will find out online because people will (already do) talk about you.

And, if you are exceptional and worth talking about, you can know that people will do that too.