If you’re in the PR industry, you’ve spent endless hours debating, agonizing over and reading about the future of PR. But it’s not every day that you’re invited to look into the crystal ball of one of the great PR minds of our generation.

On Wednesday, Worldcom Public Relations Group invited its members to do just that. Paul Holmes, president & CEO of the Holmes Group and editor of the HolmesReport, shared his predictions for the PR industry in 2012. And to my relief, it looks like there may be exceptionally clear skies ahead.

In fact, Holmes predicts that PR will soon earn a seat at the executive table as the C-suite begins to recognize the importance of effectively managing relationships between organizations and key stakeholders.

But is PR really ready to take on this challenge? According to Holmes, we’re in an era of unprecedented opportunity for our industry – but it won’t all be smooth sailing.

Here are the 10 things Holmes says PR must “get right” if we’re going to succeed:

1. Recruitment: We must attract top-level people – those who understand not only PR, but the business environment impacting our clients.
2. Development: Our industry is evolving; it’s critical that our people keep pace. We must ensure we are continuously seeking out and providing learning opportunities for our colleagues/employees.
3. Retention: Attracting the best people isn’t enough; we must also retain them. It’s important that we create engaging work environments and put our people first… even if that means letting clients go when they don’t do the same.
4. Research: Think Moneyball. Billy Beane was able to defy conventional wisdom and outsmart much richer baseball franchises with the use of research. PR needs to do the same.
5. Conversation: PR isn’t about crafting and delivering messages. It’s about two-way conversation; listening as much as talking.
6. Content: We have to become adept at content creation. We must be able to create content that enables us to reach stakeholders in an impactful way.
7. Courage: “Do one brave thing today… then run like hell.” We must have the courage to counsel our clients; to truly earn a seat at that executive table.
8. Integrity: Credibility is critical to our industry. As Marcus Aurelius said, “If it’s not right, don’t do it. If it’s not true, don’t say it.”
9. Independence: The advice we give must be genuinely neutral in terms of media channels and tactics. PR folks: that means that if the right solution is advertising (gasp!) – that’s what we recommend.
10. Measurement: At the end of the day, if we’re going to have a seat at the table, we must become better at measuring the value of PR and the relationships it builds and manages. We have access to more data today than ever before. We must find more effective ways of using it!

What else would you say PR needs to “get right” to survive as our industry and the business environment we work in continues to evolve?

Social media spend is on the rise. As of August 2011, marketers were spending an average of 7.1% of their marketing budgets on social media and planned to increase that to 10.1% within the next 12 months. But “social media” is vast and as B2B companies rush to join the party, many are frantically asking the question: “where do I start”?!

To help answer that question, we’ve developed a set of “starter questions” that every B2B marketer should answer before developing a social media campaign:

1. Where does your target audience “live” online? It’s likely that your clients and/or prospects are not equally as active on all social platforms. Find out where they are online and use that intelligence to select the social platforms that are right for your campaign.
2. What are the key characteristics of your primary audience? Social media provides an opportunity for marketers to learn more about their customers’ persona than ever before. Learn your audiences’ demographics, preferences, wants and needs, and use that intelligence to determine the products, services, or content you promote through social channels.
3. What are the current conversational themes of customers and prospects? Listen to your target audiences’ online conversations. If you can identify what motivates and engages them, you can determine how to position your firm or content to enter the dialogue. You can also identify themes that are absent, i.e. opportunities for differentiation!
4. What potential do major social platforms have given your key messages and marketing objectives? The same content does not work on all social platforms (and the same audiences do not “live” on each). Make sure the social platform(s) you incorporate into your social media campaign make sense given the products or services you ultimately want to sell.
5. Are there smaller social networks with potential for your campaign? One of the beautiful things about social media marketing is the ability to reach niche audiences. But they all may not be on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook. Look for smaller networks where your targets are engaged online.
6. Who are the online influencers you need to be aware of and interact with? Social media marketing is not only about reaching your buyer. It’s also about reaching key influencers who your customers will listen to online. Find out who they are and engage with them – often well before you launch a major social media campaign.
7. What is your top competitors’ presence online? Evaluating your competitors’ presence online is critical to identifying opportunities for differentiation. If they’re active and strategic, it can also provide valuable insight that will help you answer the questions above.

So, now that you have the questions, how do you answer them? Research, research, research!

Let us know what questions you’d add to this list!

In his latest webinar on the science of social media, Dan Zarrella explored that question. Through his social media research, Dan has found that ideas do not spread because they’re “good;” they spread because of a series of other factors, which can be explained through his “hierarchy of contagiousness”:

In order to “go viral,” an idea has to have exposure (your audience need to be exposed to the idea), attention (the idea needs to grab your audiences’ attention) and motivation (the idea needs to motivate your audience to act, i.e. share the idea).

Here are three tips from Dan’s research for optimizing the exposure, attention and motivation in your social media marketing efforts:

Exposure

While we still believe engagement is critical to a successful social media marketing campaign, Dan’s research has found that publishing interesting content may play a more important role in increasing exposure:

• Twitter: There is a correlation between Tweeting many links and having a high number of followers. However, when measuring engagement through Tweets starting with @replies, Dan found handles with more than 1,000 followers actually engage in conversation less often than their counterparts with fewer followers.
• Blogs: Dan also found that there is no correlation between comments and links back to a blog post, or to the number of views a post receives. 

Attention

In order to gain your audiences’ attention, it is important marketers do not crowd out their own content and that they use contra-competitive timing:

• Twitter: When looking at click-through rates by links Tweeted per hour, Dan found that as users crowd out their own content with multiple links, they garner less attention (measured by click-throughs) per piece of content.
• Facebook: In regards to timing, Dan found there is actually an uptick in Facebook shares per day on Saturdays and Sundays, because less content is shared on these days and many workplaces block Facebook from their employees.

Motivation

When trying to motivate people to share your content, remember that scarcity, simplicity and calls to action make a difference:

• Twitter: When looking at “word novelty” in ReTweets, Dan found that ReTweets tend to contain much rarer words. At the same time, Tweets that say “Please ReTweet” are ReTweeted four times more than posts without a direct call to action.
• Facebook: Posts that have nouns or verbs in the title are shared more frequently than those with adverbs or adjectives. Similarly, as the reading grade level increases, the frequency of shares decreases. So, simple content is more likely to motive your viewers.

More information on Dan Zarrella’s “Hierarchy of Contagiousness” can be found in his e-book available on Amazon.

What other factors have you seen influence when content reaches its “tipping point”?