As the headline implies, even though Social CRM exists as an official category, what it is and what it is not is blurry and hotly debated. No, it doesn’t need a new definition. And, no, it doesn’t need new leadership. sCRM, and now “social enterprise” as categories could however, benefit from clarity around what it is they’re solving for, which companies actually provide solutions against those objectives, and ultimately, how everything works together for the benefit of customer engagement and relationships.

Think about the vast array of vendors selling social media solutions for a moment. Many of them are positioned as Social CRM or sCRM tools, but when you examine true capabilities versus stated positioning , you will find that many vendors are in fact stronger players in social media management (SMMS), social CMS, listening, collaboration, intelligence, and conversation management.

If you think about this from a business perspective, it’s almost impossible to identify which vendor is truly qualified to deliver against the goals of a new social CRM system.  Decision makers have to spend an inordinate amount of time attempting to sort through what is true and what is simply good marketing. Often, they must recruit experts to help survey the landscape and qualify vendors.

Earlier in the year, I met with Houston Neal to discuss the state of Social CRM, where it’s headed and where it needs to go. As you can see, I believe that 2012 is the year when we finally start to accurately segment the market while better defining what Social CRM really is and how businesses need to think and rethink their approach to customer relationship management.

So, no. This is not a post to redefine sCRM. Nor is this a post to argue about nomenclature. This is an attempt to bring clarity and alignment around real world business problems and vendor capabilities. More importantly, in 2012, I hope to see greater movement toward solving for the business issues that software and social media cannot fix. It’s part technology and part philosophy. Because, in the end, it’s about relationships.

Here’s the transcribed conversation…

Houston Neal: To begin, do you think a true social CRM suite exists in the market?

Brian Solis: That’s a good question. Let’s first take a step back. The thing that’s a little bit more interesting about Social CRM – and definitely one of the things that’s under appreciated – is the idea that it forces us to rethink the definition of CRM. By that I mean, CRM was originally about putting together an infrastructure, processes, and methodologies to support customer and sales processes and customer relationships. With Social CRM, we are introduced to a customer that resides in different channels, channels businesses don’t control. This introduces new touch points within the business ecosystem that we didn’t design around originally.

Paul Greenberg introduced a working definition of Social CRM that I think helps frame the conversation, “Social CRM is the integration of traditional operational customer facing activities including strategies, programs, systems, and technologies with emergent social channels to provide businesses with the means to communicate and engage with customers in their preferred channels for mutual benefit.”

When you ask if there are any solutions out there, the answer is yes and no. What was CRM and what will be CRM are two very different things. By this, I mean this is an opportunity to evolve an aging infrastructure and philosophy to adapt to customers where they expect engagement. And, as a result, you’re actually going to see a complete transformation in business in general. It goes by names like “social business,” “adaptive business,” and “holistic business.”

What we’re learning now with the democratization of information is that individuals are in control of the brand and brand experience as much as the business. This is paramount. This is at the heart of what’s fueling the socialization of CRM. If I could put it into one nutshell statement it would be that customer relationships and engagement channels used to be defined and governed businesses. That was because they controlled the technology and the media.

When you try to design software around capturing this activity, you have to begin by questioning your business strategy and your intentions for customer engagement. What is it that you are trying to accomplish? Are you trying to steer experiences at the beginning, during, or after? Or, all of the above? Tools are starting to emerge that allow you to identify decision making processes across distributed platforms outside of the firewall or call center at every step. They are all, in one way or another, adapting to certain parts or many parts of this social CRM idea. But if indeed social CRM is much bigger, as we’re discussing here, then it’s just getting started.

Finally, just to make things a bit more interesting, what if for the sake of this discussion, we removed the “C” from CRM? For all the pundits who read this, I’m not calling for a new category. This is about perspective or how businesses view customers. Let’s say that in a connected world where customers are gaining influence, customer relationship management becomes only part of the opportunity. What it’s really about is relationship management, before, during, and after meaningful transactions. You can influence the decision of someone before they’re even a customer. You can manage the whole information work flow process, channel it within the organization so that you’re not just learning and responding, but so that you are adapting as a business to be better structured to handle the customer of the future.

Moving on to a more specific question, what type of applications do you think would make up a social CRM suite?

I recently wrote an article about Dell and Gatorade building social media command centers. These rooms resemble NASA’s mission control with screens everywhere displaying conversations, relationships, keyword clouds, sentiment, and real-time trends. But it’s so much more than social media marketing. It’s about intelligence. It’s about learning from customer activity to design new engagement programs, better products and services, and ultimately optimized processes.

This is one way that the social CRM system would really start to begin. From there, it’s a matter of technologies and work flow that allow you to hear, see, process, respond, and adapt all within the infrastructure in the way the business is designed.

Take Nimble for example. It will allow you to track all of these different individuals, then at a point of engagement it, let’s say its Twitter, channel one individual to someone in customer service or product management.

If I send a Tweet, customer service then uses a tool like Nimble to bring in more information than what you would normally find in that tweet or bio, for example, the person’s name, what other accounts they have across other networks, etc. It would then introduce that information into a centralized database. Customer service can then push out a response and track the response. Nimble could also send a signal to the listening agent to say, “we’ve got this one handled, you can check it off your list.” If the listening manager finds a sales opportunity, they could funnel it over to sales.

If you look at my early blueprint for the social business you’ll see this thing called the conversation cloud on the left side of the blueprint. You’ll notice Get Satisfaction. What they represent is this conversation cloud that channels conversations into one place. So, let’s just say somebody asks a question on Twitter, or somebody asks a question on Facebook, or somebody goes to the website to ask a question. The magic of Get Satisfaction is that they can put together common responses and common answers from a knowledge-base, directly to the individual. So it can just constantly serve up the right answer without even having to have a human being present, which is huge. It saves them a massive amount of time. This is yet another dimension to CRM that we really haven’t seen before.

So, when you look at Get Satisfaction, combine them with Nimble, then combine with a command center, we’re starting to see pieces of this complete social CRM suite emerge. Then there is going to be some type of glue that brings it all together. That glue is probably going to be somebody like Salesforce who buys all of these pieces to offer one complete solution, or parts of the solution.

What trends are you seeing in the market, both in terms of product development, and general market activity?

I’ve seen a lot of innovation from vendors who claim to have leading social CRM solutions. Many however, offer facets of a bigger of social CRM system. There is great confusion in the market as businesses attempt to qualify vendors based on stated capabilities. For a while, it seemed that if you could track conversations on social networks and respond from one interface, that was all you need to qualify as a sCRM solution. There’s obviously more to the story. I believe we need to not redefine sCRM, but instead clarify what it is and isn’t. Additionally, we need to better align vendor capabilities with real world business needs. One trend that I see unfolding in 2012 and 2013 is a shift from a groundswell-driven process of move-and-react to a top-down leadership approach to innovation in technology adoption, innovation in processes, and a reassessment of mission, vision, and purpose. As a result, how businesses see the customer and in turn engage and manage relationships will dramatically evolve and improve to the benefit of all parties.

So basically coming up with use cases?

Ahh, use cases. Let me start by saying, I’m open to seeing case studies on this subject. Feel free to email me with your stories. Here, I’d like to talk about Dell,  a case that is often used in the realm of social marketing. But, I believe the true story is around how a big company used a crisis to innovate around processes, services, and ultimately transform its culture as a result.

For years, Dell was subject to severe problem that were catapulted into mainstream media via blogs and social networks. Michael Dell – and the rest of the company – took it so seriously that they innovated systems around solving the problem at a customer engagement level and also in product design. And it’s still evolving today. When there’s a problem on Twitter, blogs, Facebook, or anywhere else, they watch to see which issues gain momentum. As this happens, they unearth what the problem is, get a team to fix it, then push the fix before it’s a mainstream problem. This completely extinguishes those discussions. So that means that it went from a listening component to a development component to a distribution component of a CRM system. They’ve got the same infrastructure for sales, human resources, finance and legal. Dell is building an infrastructure, and more importantly, a methodology of philosophies around engaging with those experiences, dealing with those experiences, or managing those experiences. So while they’re far from being the complete example of an entire solution, Dell is by default, building a social CRM system for the entire organization.

On another note, I also wanted to send a special note of thanks to Lauren Carlson, Houston Neal,  and the Software Advice team for including me in the 2011 Authority Awards. Other winners include good friend Mr. Paul Greenberg and Denis Pombriant, who is someone I look forward to getting to know better in 2012.

Connect with me: Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook | Google+

The End of Business as Usual is now available

The headline is shared mostly in jest, but this topic is one worthy of serious attention. The question at hand is whether or not the general advice shared in popular blogs and books when designed to be snappy, shareable, and consumable, help or hinder the ability to learn critical and important lessons in social media.

I recently read a post by Alan Maites that used an article that I wrote for AdAge as the nexus for an industry-wide quest to seek answers for specific marketing challenges and ambitions. Chris Syme also continued the discussion.

There was a line in Maites’ post that resonated with me and serves as the inspiration for this discussion,

There’s nothing here that addresses the special circumstances that can make social media difficult for marketers to use.

Obviously, a guide on style and persona is not intended to address special circumstances on how to make social media easier for marketers. However, herein lies the essence of the frustration many share, including me – the ongoing need to discover useful direction, answers, how to’s, and guidance.

Advice is a commodity, but usable, not practical, instruction is scarce.

While his counsel to help marketers find solace is to “Google it,” I would like to take the opportunity to forward the discussion.

My advice? Reduce the weight you place on the social media guidance and examples that are universal, as they won’t apply to the specific circumstances or context of your challenges, opportunities, and market dynamics. Use them solely for inspiration, but not as templates for your endeavors.

It’s Time to Write Your Own Success Stories

We can’t assume that the lessons and successes we study are motivated by planning, calculation, and purpose. Many of those experimenting online today do so with more resolve than strategy. Creating a profile on Twitter, blogging, and introducing brand pages on Facebook are rudimentary. Mapping social media capabilities and corresponding objectives that contribute to the common goals of any organization require vision, creativity, and business acumen that are vastly absent from Google’s search results.

The only resolution to help you begin your path to learning lies in the questions you ask and answer yourself.

The sentiment shared by Alan and others is not at all wrong. It’s exactly right. When I started to write Engage!, I too, couldn’t find meaningful advice or instruction that I felt would apply to a majority of the organizations that face distinct challenges. And at 300 pages, it makes no apologies for the amount of information within, as there really are no shortcuts.

I spend every day experimenting with new media in marketing, advertising, communications, media, business, service, and I can assure you, that there is no “top 10 guide to do X” that will apply across the board. I answer my own questions in every case I work on and I share much of “how to get those answers” in everything I write.

Self Empowerment Leads to Self Actualization

Any program tied to templates will perform as such.

For example, I recently met with a handful of small businesses as part of a Citibank initiative to help companies get started in social media. It was very different than anything I write or read, and in each case, the steps they would take the next day shared very little in terms of execution. When you really peel back the layers of specific business objectives and how to attain them against unique market conditions, the questions and answers that surface bear little resemblance from business to business.

I’m a champion of self-empowerment and the only replicable process that I’ve discovered that consistently works in new media, is the necessity to gather, interpret and implement insight into programming that matches the dynamics and challenges of the matter at hand – one company or one objective at a time. It is the only way to evolve from where we are today to the level of expertise we so often seek from others.

The truth is that experts, whether it’s social media or any field for that matter, are inspired by possibilities, but proven through experience and the ongoing quest to transform theory into practice. The more seasoned experts will also have figured out how to establish business metrics and in turn, design campaigns that map to objectives.

It’s this process of asking and answering questions that forms the framework for how and what to measure in order to capture everything necessary for KPIs, ROI, and also action that has a pre-defined impact on any effort. But you can’t measure what you don’t know to track. You can’t start if you don’t know what questions to ask. I believe that programs inspired by insight, data, and business-caliber goals (before you start experimenting) set the foundation for a program that might share some attributes with many of the “how to’s” that are out there, but are unique in their content, context, execution, support, and measurement – and that’s the point.

Much of the information online is helpful for inspiring creativity and direction. But, it’s up to each one of us to get the answers through the hard work necessary to see how any of this applies to our unique challenges and opportunities that face us today and tomorrow. We have to become the very experts in our space that we once sought to answer our own questions.

Our works should focus on empowerment, placing the responsibility of leadership and direction directly on us. The real opportunity lies in our ability to teach individuals to become self-sufficient. As my good friend Chris Heuer says, “there is no box.”

Indeed, sometimes it’s easier to think outside the box, when there isn’t a box to begin with…

Connect with Brian Solis on Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Google Buzz, Facebook
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Please consider reading my new book, Engage!, I think you might like it…

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Get Putting the Public Back in Public Relations and The Conversation Prism:

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Image Credit: Shutterstock

Early stage and bootstrapped startups must embrace DIY (Do it Yourself) or outsourced PR as their product reaches advanced alpha in order to build strategic visibility without losing precious time.

It all starts with answering a several important questions:

Who are your customers?
Where do they go for information?
What are they looking for?
Why would they need this product?
How can it help them do something they couldn’t do before and better than anything else out there?
What will be the most compelling things to convince them to give it a shot?
How can you tell your story in a way that matters to the people you’re trying to reach without speaking “at” them?

PR is not an afterthought.

You need PR to help you carry your product or service to the very people who will help your company grow.

Simply relying on features and word of mouth simply isn’t going to cut it. This is a real world and the reality is that customers aren’t looking for you. You have to compete for mindshare. Those companies who don’t proactively tell their story will find themselves missing from the radar screens of their customers while their competition earns their business – regardless of whether or not it’s an inferior solution.

In order to be successful in Public Relations, you need to grasp what it is, what it isn’t, and how it works and why. Otherwise, you’ll never be able to build the right team, determine the best strategies to amplify visibility and gain traction, or have the ability to effectively measure it.

I’ve created an ebook for startups and VCs based on a previous post to help steer them in the right direction on the road to visibility, attention, and resonance. It will go through several revisions in the future, but at the moment, it’s a great place to start.

Table of Contents:

1. Understand what PR is and isn’t.
2. Don’t under value PR.
3. PR is not a switch.
4. Initial and consistent coverage takes time.
5. Get a spokesperson.
6. PR is not the only tool in the shed.
7. PR at the Head, Across Chasms, and in the Long Tail.
8. Engage in social media.
9. Support and reward your PR program.
10. Keep good people.
11. Keep an open line of communication.
12. Establish realistic metrics.
13. Do not launch your company or product at a conference.
14. Do not start contacting people on your own.
15. Breaking News.
16. PR and Social Media Enable a new form of outbound customer service.
17. PR isn’t charity.
18. You’re not the only company with a great story.

Download as a Word Doc.

Download as a PDF.

Connect with me on Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, Plaxo, or Facebook

The discussion around blogger relations is more relevant now than ever. And quite honestly, with every debate, exploration, and analysis, these conversations only fuel the advancement and improvement of Public Relations overall.

It makes us think.

Lest we forget, there is a significant percentage of bloggers, reporters, and analysts who think we’re useless – we’re merely spin artists who focus on pitching, blasting, and cranking out poorly written press releases. We contact people without caring or knowing their interests or passions without knowing what we’re talking about or why it should matter to them. That’s the perception.

Don’t be that PR person.

No, seriously. Chances are, at one point in your career, you contributed to the stereotype. So, let’s do something about it now.

Believe it or not, I still arm wrestle with influencers defending PR. But in may cases, they’re right. And, a lot of it has to do with pushing down important outreach to people who are either too junior to engage with industry veterans or not concerned with educating themselves as to why they’re reaching out in the first place and why it matters to the person they’re contacting. But, this is another topic for another day.

Blogger relations is so much more than the recognition that bloggers ARE influencers in their own right. Now it’s the understanding of how PR can work with them in addition to their traditional day-to-day activity.

I compiled a series of articles into one ebook that I hope will contribute to the elevation of PR as a respected profession, not just by the clients and executives, but by the very people we hope to build relationships with to bridge our story to the people who matter.
View it here.

Download the Word Doc.

Download the PDF.

Connect with me on Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, Plaxo, or Facebook

In celebration of Alex Iskold’s brilliant toolbox for startups on Read/Write Web today, I’ve decided to join the conversation to help startups make PR work for them now and in the long term.

PR is one of the most misunderstood disciplines in the marketing department and many startup entrepreneurs and even veteran executives are quick to under estimate and under value it, or on the contrary, expect PR to solve all of their marketing needs all with just one email or press release.

In order to be successful in Public Relations, you need to grasp what it is, what it isn’t, and how it works and why. Otherwise, you’ll never be able to build the right team, determine the best strategies to amplify visibility and gain traction, or have the ability to effectively measure it.

And, for disclosure purposes, the following points are based on good PR and are highly summarized and simplified to get you thinking. As in anything, there’s more to the story. And, there are always those that do not represent PR in the best possible light. Keep in mind that those who do not practice PR effective are obvious when you know what to look for, and thankfully, they do not represent the entire industry.

While much of this seems like common sense, please remember how uncommon common sense really is.

1. Understand what PR is and isn’t.

All too often, businesses expect PR to perform miracles simply because they confuse it with advertising, online marketing, media buying, search marketing, etc. PR can’t guarantee legitimate coverage in industry publications – no matter how tight the relationship. If PR promises it, then they’re lying. I leverage relationships daily to consider stories that I package in a way that’s most relevant to them. Most of the time it works because I take the time to make it valuable to respective markets. If I took advantage of my contacts to force coverage whenever I needed to deliver on a promise, then it would mark the beginning of the end of my relationships.

While I won’t compare PR to each branch of marketing, I will say that PR IS NOT ADVERTISING. Reporters and bloggers don’t stop what they’re doing to write about your company, just because we send them a press release. They’re bombarded by PR people all over the world. Stories are cultivated. If we respect them, do our homework, and help highlight the value of a story, coverage is imminent.

If you want guaranteed exposure, buy an ad.

2. Don’t under value PR.

PR, when done right, is extremely valuable to company branding, which has immeasurable benefits in the long haul. Customers have choices and if you’re not consistently vying for their attention, it’s pretty easy to fall off their radar screen when they evaluate options. Too many companies nickle and dime PR to the point of absurdity. Don’t get me wrong. Expensive PR doesn’t equal success. But short changing PR is usually a first step in the wrong direction.

3. PR is not a switch.

It doesn’t go off and on whenever you have the time or budget to throw at it. The market moves too quickly, and if you’re not actively participating in it, you’ll quickly find that company sales and site traffic will begin a downward spiral that may or may not recover. Embrace it. Nurture it. Stick with it. PR is an inexpensive solution for gaining visibility within the market segments that matter to your business.

Don’t fool yourself. As a company executive, you can not and should not run PR yourself. You have more important things to do, like say, run a company.

If you turn off the PR switch, your competitors will steal your thunder, and, your customers.

4. Initial and consistent coverage takes time.

In most cases, coverage doesn’t just happen. PR is like farming. The more seeds you plant, along with the time you spend watering, caring for, and feeding them, your crops will grow in the form of coverage over time. While some things such as news, etc., force information out quickly, other stories take time. And when they appear, they help raise brand visibility, drive some people to buy, and they also spark others to consider writing about it – which in turn also influences the cycle to replicate. Don’t assume all of this coverage happens simply because you are a popular company.

Also, realize that there are different forms of media and they each react to different stories in their own way. Trades (whether traditional media or blogs) will cover certain things that relate to your industry whereas mainstream media will need the story presented in a way that has broader appeal.

5. Get a spokesperson.

Just because you created the product doesn’t mean you’re the best person to sell it. I’ve worked with some of the most passionate executives that just don’t click with the people they’re trying to engage – no matter how hard they try. This has negative impact that lasts and is tough to overcome.

Suck it up and get a spokesperson who can help tell the story to the people that will help grow your business.

6. PR is not the only tool in the shed.

Understand that PR is only an umbrella for the specific communications initiatives that will help you achieve complementary, simultaneous goals. For example, corporate branding and product marketing require different campaigns. Don’t put all of your eggs in the PR basket. Run SEO campaigns. Look at online ads and promotions. Run contests. Attend events.

PR can not be the only thing you rely on in order to build and sustain a successful business.

7. PR at the Head, Across Chasms, and in the Long Tail

No matter what industry you’re in, realize that the most popular blogs, newspapers, or magazines are only one part of the process.

Your market is divided by adoption and buying behavior and documented through a bell curve rich with chasms, pyramids that further divide and classify them, quadrants that demonstrate competitive advantages, ladders that represent the technology that people can use to reach customers in different ways, a cluetrain that shows how people carry it through the long tail, and hopefully reflected by a hockey stick that forces you to evaluate what to do from Inside the Tornado.

Yes, of course this was meant to be funny…but it does show that one program no longer serves the masses when you deconstruct it by the markets and the people that comprise it.This means that you have to embrace both new media and traditional media in PR.

For example, in the tech space, TechCrunch, Mashable, VentureBeat, Read/Write Web, et al, will yield measurable traffic so great that most of the time it will knock out Web servers.

Every executive wants them. CEOs cry if they can’t get coverage on them. But, by no means, do they carry your value proposition to the entire collective of people that will embrace your product and help sustain your business for the whole game.

They represent the early adopters and pragmatists. However, there are other worlds of global microcommunities rich with horizontal and vertical publications and blogs that will carry your story to the more conservative groups of people that collectively converge as the primary base of recurring revenue.In this case, it’s less about traffic and hits as metrics for success and more about quality, registrations, purchases, referrals, etc. that define business growth and sustenance.

8. Engage in social media.

We live in a “social” economy and the only way to succeed in it, is to participate. Participation is marketing. Community relations is marketing. Engagement builds trust, relationships and loyalty, but it requires a genuine, dedicated, proactive, and value-driven effort.

Blog about industry-relevant topics, not just company accomplishments. Provide tips and hints to help your customers make more informed decisions. It’s not a new tool in the marketing belt. It is a new opportunity to engage customers and cultivate relationships. Simply put, be a resource for your community.

Embrace online video and watch how creative, genuine, and cool content becomes incredibly viral. Words can carry the message so far, but video is also an opportunity to showcase the product while entertaining viewers.

Podcast new updates, customer successes, ideas for new product uses, etc.
Bookmark and share relevant links using the popular social tools available.

Cultivate user generated content.

The press release IS NOT DEAD. Write them. Write social media releases. Write SEO press releases. However, write them well and strip out all of the bull shit, hyperbole, and marketing speak. Make them meaningful.

If relevant, build transparent profiles in the social networks where you can find and support customers.

Share images and behind the scenes footage using services such as flickr and YouTube.

Listen and engage in MicroMedia.

Hire a community manager. In the new world of social media, new PR can be complemented through the efforts of someone who can actively represent the company in all things social so that they can provide proactive information and support to people looking for guidance in the communities they frequent. Don’t market to them, have conversations.

Note, this is an ultra-simplified list of how to jump into the world of social media. Read the Social Media Manifesto and The Art and Science of Community Relations for additional suggestions and guidance.

9. Support and reward your PR program.

Feed it as you do any other branch of the company. Respect it when it works and let your team share in the success. Don’t focus on the shortcomings. Don’t take credit for coverage if you randomly sent someone an email a long time ago. Don’t tell your PR team that the coverage that’s happening is solely driven by the viral activities of users and other existing coverage. PR is designed to spark Word of Mouth and every time a new article appears, it’s because of something that PR did either recently or awhile ago. That’s the value of PR. It’s the program that keeps on giving!

Bottom line, extend congratulations as goals are achieved and support PR in a way that keeps your team motivated to kick ass.

10. Keep good people.

If you find a PR person or team that truly lives and breathes the company and the product, never let them go. They are a rare breed and deserve support and promotion.

11. Keep an open line of communication.

Meet with your PR team regularly to communicate realistic goals and measure progress. Paint a real world picture of what success looks like each month and listen to the reports to see if they are indeed attainable. You get out of PR what you put into it.

12. Establish realistic metrics.

PR isn’t a miracle solution to help you attain all business objectives.

Agree upon realistic metrics in advance.

All too often executives lose sight of what PR is designed to do. The right coverage is invaluable, even when it doesn’t translate into visible hits, traffic spikes, or sales. Super Bowl ads, for example, rarely pay for themselves in the short run.Realize that a proactive, intelligent and consistent PR program will contribute to the bottom line. It shouldn’t be solely responsible for company success or failure.

Metrics can be in the form of specific targets every month, traffic, registrations, lead generation, links, and now, conversations.

13. Do not launch your company or product at a conference.

Contrary to popular belief, do not attempt to launch your company at a tradeshow unless it is a venue specifically designed to make your launch successful. For example, in Tech, we have DEMO and TechC

Crunch40, and each draw worldwide attention. But, the best PR is always done before the event.

At conferences, companies kick and scream for attention and usually drown each other out. Tell your story before you have to compete to do so. However, go to conferences and events for lead generation and networking.

14. Do not start contacting people on your own.

This is one of my personal favorites. Many executives believe that in order to get something done right, they have to do it on their own. So, they start emailing reporters and bloggers on a whim without regard for relationship, existing conversations, or their best interests. I have seen some pretty interesting ramifications for doing so.

All I can say is this. Consult with PR before doing so. In fact, sometimes contact is best coming directly from an executive. It just needs to be planned and orchestrated in a way that is beneficial to reporter/blogger, the company, and the overall PR initiative.

15. Breaking News

The blogosphere and social media in general has created the need for new rules when breaking news.

Determine who your news benefits, where they go for information, and what they’re looking for. Then reverse engineer the process and design everything around what you learned, from writing the release, what you say and how you say it, to whom and when.

Do not rely on a wire service to get your news out. PR is best served by specifically working with the new and traditional influencers who can help get your story told, in advance, and usually under embargo. (Note: Most of the time, less is more. Do not try to take your news to anybody and everybody under embargo. Be smart about it. A few key places can carry your story farther, and, without ruining relationships with influencers along the way.)

Exclusives are a rare practice these days and usually reserved for some pretty incredible and industry moving news.

16. Customer service

Customer service is no longer an inbound activity or viewed as a cost center. Social Media changed everything and it isn’t a spectator sport.

Marketing-savvy corporate executives are working with PR, Advertising, and Marcom teams to explore options and strategies on how to participate in relevant online conversations. This represents a shift in outbound marketing as it creates a direct channel between companies and customers, and ultimately people.

Social Media is rooted in conversations between people and peers, regardless of the technology that facilitates them, and every day they take place across blogs, networks, forums, micromedia, and online groups. And, each day, with every new community and social tool that is introduced, brands, products and services are actively discussed, supported, and disassembled.

Social Media represents an entirely new way to reach customers and connect with them directly. It adds an outbound channel that complements inbound customer service and traditional PR, direct marketing and advertising, placing companies and their customers on a level playing field to discuss things as peers. Most importantly, it transcends the process of simply answering inbound questions to creating a community of enthusiasts and evangelists.

17. PR isn’t charity.

While many PR people and agencies demand unreasonable fortunes, remember that you’re a startup and solutions are abundant when you know what you’re looking for and value the engagement.

In PR, you get what you pay for – well most of the time anyway. Don’t expect brilliant PR for pennies. Nor should you expect results by over paying for services. There are consultants, individuals, and agencies willing to work for reasonable cash and stock incentives. But, I can’t think of anyone, who’s good at what they do, that will work on a performance-based payment program.

PR just doesn’t work that way. Think of it this way. Good sales people don’t work solely on commission. Most earn a salary on top of their commission to keep them active and successful. If PR people wanted to earn their income on a commission basis, they would get into sales where they can usually make a lot more money. They’re in PR because they prefer to “tell” a story instead of “selling” it.

18. You’re not the only company with a great story

Remember this. At any given moment, reporters and bloggers are getting bombarded with pitches, both good and bad, by companies that take the time to learn what they want in addition to those who simply spam them and hope for the best. It’s overwhelming to say the least.

They have better things to do than stop everything that they’re working on just to read your press release. This is one of the reasons why you need PR. Well that, and the fact that you need someone who’s not drinking the bath water to tell you that your story needs help in how it’s told to the specific groups of people to whom it matters.

Just because it’s new doesn’t make it newsworthy.

You have to compete for attention and in order to do so effectively and genuinely, you need someone who can help tell your story, the right way, through the people who reach the customers that will impact your bottom line. It’s not an overnight process. It’s not a game. It’s a process of investing in building and leveraging relationships now and in the long term.

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