If your reading was just restricted to social media, you might think that PR had no more role to play in the marketing arena, that the rise of ”trusted peers’ has so marginalized the communication professions that most agencies are now folding their tents and encouraging all their staff to learn a new trade.You might be right, only if PR consultants are still plying their trade like their predecessors did 30 years ago. However, most don’t do that now. Long gone are the days of expecting a press release to generate media coverage. Instead, these press release are used primarily for SEO to reach their target audience directly. These days, the term ’spins’ no longer means twisting a client’s response to make them look good. Instead, it is more likely to mean telling a story in such a way that it is meaningful to the audience. More and more PR consultants are developing two-way efforts and interacting with the communities.

As word of mouth become more and more important, PR consultants are adapting to help their clients to succeed in this area as well. I don’t think that ‘trusted peers’ are getting any more powerful than PR. PR has always done a very good job to inform and influence the conversations trusted peers have with their friends, colleagues or family members. Like every other industries, the marketplace continue to evolve and develop.

So, how can PR be as powerful as their trusted peers? Here are 10 ways:

1. Promote a culture of transparency: Transparency is one of the 5 determining factors of trust as defined in a study done in 2000, “Measuring Organizational Trust.” It is a comprehensive project funded by IABC Research Foundation and the study found out that how much information is shared, how accurate it is and how sincere and appropriate it is communicated determine how much trust the target audience have with the organization.
2. Encourage and equip front-line employee participation: Start ranking the front-line employees that represent public relations. Their discussion of work or work related issues on social networks whether online or offline can be haphazard or they can reflect their understanding of the organization, their initiatives and positions. This doesn’t mean that employees are made a parrot, repeating everything the organization tell them, but rather to inform and be knowledgeable about what is going on in the organization. How much they can influence conversations will determine how well the organization communicates with them, how much the organization trust them and how clear the organization’s social media policies are.
3. Find unique ways to tell the company’s story: For the organization to be seen in the media, the story must be compelling. When people are out there talking about the story, it’s not in a vacuum, it’s because the story sparks the conversation in the first place.
4. Connects company’s leadership to the new marketplace realities: There has to be a reason why PR people are called “counselors”. They counsel their clients on the communications implications of their actions and the best means of telling their stories. The communications function is the only function that is 100% dedicated to protecting and enhancing the organization’s image. However, it’s time consuming and very frustrating. Communicators are in the best positions to help leaders understand the results and the consequences of ignoring social media or implementing it badly.
5. Recommend corrections based on intelligence monitoring: Careful monitoring of social media can reveal customer sentimental and even provide an early warning signs to emerging issues. Most importantly, it can help organizations to response to issues before it reach crisis proportion.
6. Earn the media coverage that get bloggers’ attention: There is no doubt mainstream media still matters because I have yet to see any study done any where that says that people have stopped trusting local newspapers and TV. If you think that mainstream media have lost it’s influence, just select 100 random blog posts and count how many cite, opine on, analyze or pass along reports from mainstream media. Getting your organization into mainstream media can easily create a fodder of trusted peers.
7. Create assets that help trusted peers grow in reputations: The whole idea of social media news release is to provide digital assets that help citizen reporters tell their stories. Citizen reporters such as bloggers inject images, videos, audios and widgets into their conversations in order to help them make a point or stand out.
8. Guide the company’s adoption of social media tools: Anyone can actually throw social media tools against the wall and see what sticks. However, understanding which channels, communities and approaches will produce results that align with business goals comes requires different skill set. Knowing how to measure the results give your organizations added advantage.
9. Know that the old rules still applies: The fact that there are new rules for communicating within the social networked environment doesn’t mean that the old rules has been replaced. They are just been augmented. Organizations ignoring non-social dimensions of PR at their peril. In fact, there are far more to PR than media relations.
10. Become the trusted peers: Number of organizations have shown that PR people can be a trusted voice just like anyone else. For example, there is a crew from Dell, Scott Monty from Ford and Christopher Barger from GM and many others. By being human, candid and interesting, PR people can earn the trust of community members and directly influence purchases. Like anyone else, professional communicators need to learn how to be a trust agent.

So what PR activities can you add to this list?

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1. Warning! Social Media Challenges Ahead
2. Does The Rise of Social Media Let Everyone Become a PR Agent?
3. Thought Leadership – The Concept That Will Propel Your Business
4. 3 Golden Rules For Hiring Social Media Candidates
5. How’s Your Reputation