Finally got around to adding my thoughts on this post on my new blog:

http://www.michaeljcooper.co.uk/michaeljcoopercouk/2009/7/6/you-cant-own-social-media.html

Do you think this debate has moved on since your original post?

PR people think that SEO people believe:

That PR is dying – the Internet is going to take over the world and the Public Relations business will be dead in 4 years.

PR people as below them, and that they generally aren’t needed.

PR people couldn’t understand what we are trying to do anyway.

People use the internet more than anything else – TV and Print will die in the next few years and that the traditional PR world is going to have to learn our trade so why bother learning theirs

SEO people think that PR People believe:

We are all con artists.

We haven’t ‘learnt the trade’ and are muscling in where we aren’t wanted or needed.

The internet is a bit of a Fad.

We are a bunch of Geeks that spend all day sending spam emails, writing white text on white backgrounds.

SEO isn’t really proper marketing, we don’t understand the concept of branding, brand management etc.

Ok, the above are rather extreme and also clichéd views but if you wanted to hold up examples of generalizations I think they work pretty well.

What we need to do is overcome our fears and start working together, the more we understand each others abilities and limits, the more we can work together to compliment each others skills. After all if we can all work together, the client at the end of the day makes more money – therefore so do we!

My Colleague Mindy has written rather eloquently about this on the I-com Blog

To finish off, two jokes that show how close our industries really are:

How do you ruin a perfectly good PR campaign? Give it to an SEO company!

How do you ruin a perfectly good SEO campaign? Give it to a PR Company!

David Taylor’s last blog post..Searching for information – a Change 4 Life?

@Jon Agreed the bar chart is in relation to brand awareness, however what I was trying to ellaborate on was the old ‘mud sticks’ association. Unfortunately these days people tend to trust search results, and this can heavily affect how people interact with a brand – the old Googlebombing ‘miserable failure’ campaign is probably most symbolic here…

@Stuart I think you perhaps have read my post out of context. I am and never would suggest you throw the complete function of reputational management at a SEO agency. We don’t look at the holistic picture (as you have said) for one, however what I have said is that I have seen very few PR agencies that fully understand the digital landscape.

Thus to me it is not a case of ‘Sack your SEO agency’ and more a case of get your experts working together – ie your PR agency(s) managing tone of voice and reponse, with the guidance and advice of people that can advise on specifics such as online (ie SEO’s, Social Media specialists and the like).

I’m not sure that focusing the discussion on reputation management is right. Combining PR and SEO should work well for delivering greater visibility for a company/brand. The bar chart featured in your post is looking at brand awarness, not reputation.

SEO – in my humble opinion – can help bring people to a brand, but building or destroying reputation is more closely related to how effectively an organisation communicates with, educates and persuades its audiences. And for that you need PR.

Jon Clements’s last blog post..News in an instant (coffee)

You’re right about “Reputation is no longer purely confined to offline” which is why it’s essential that public relations people must get it right. It’s not an option to delegate responsibility as you can’t separate offline and online. The difficulty for SEO people is they don’t do offline.

Not sure what you mean by “Reputation is not a PR function, it’s not an SEO function it’s a corporate function”. PR IS the corporate function that looks after reputation, on behalf of the CEO/board.

You say “tools to bring to the table such as PR and Video.” I see how video is a tool, but which of the many PR tools are you on about (e.g. video is one of them)?

You are right to say many PRs don’t understand digital sufficiently, but you pick the wrong example with Walmart/Edelman as that was a long time ago and those involved definitely do understand this space.

Stuart Bruce’s last blog post..Public relations is about reputation, not SEO

While I would agree with that, I would also say in some cases the opposite is true. A lot of PR agencies I’ve dealt with haven’t adapted to online and aren’t always well placed to advise on online situations. I definitely think that PR is something that both parties should always be involved in.

The biggest problem in my experience is when larger companies have their own in house PR teams and it’s often difficult to first of all get in touch with them and secondly, actually listen to what you’ve got to say.