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Hugh MacLeod argues that “public relations is getting social media all wrong,” and “if your ideas have merit, bloggers will talk about them,” and therefore traditional press releases are unnecessary and irrelevant.

The idea that blogs and other social media have replaced the press release is simplistic. I won’t argue that press releases are often laden with corporate crap, and the PR profession needs to take a hard look at this, but the quality of a typical press release, and the relevance of press releases, are two separate discussions. Certainly more and more people in all fields are becoming social media-aware, but there are still plenty of journalists and editors who do not blog or read blogs, but who can be reached with a press release. Anyone who is currently advising clients to stop issuing press releases, whether that person represents a PR agency, an advertising agency, a marketing firm, or a social media consultancy, is negligent. Some day soon we may indeed be ready for the elimination of the conventional press release, but that day is not here.

The theme of MacLeod’s blog is “cartoons drawn on the back of business cards.” Many of them are enlightening and amusing. But I am completely clueless (I admit it) as to the meaning of this cartoon, included in MacLeod’s post:

First of all, I have no idea what the diagram is trying to convey. Second, it is labeled “ad agency biz model,” so I am not sure how it is connected to public relations. The themes of commodification/de-commodficiation (odd words) and “hard sell” are not dealt with in MacLeod’s post.

MacLeod paraphrases Stowe Boyd: “Please, please, please dont talk about audiences when you are theoretically promoting social media.” The idea that corporate communications and marketing people are clueless because they use the word “audience” is a popular red herring among anti-traditional communications jihadists. While the dictionary definition of audience might imply one-way communications to a captive and passive group, the concept, properly applied, is a powerful one that is highly relevant in social media strategy. In the corporate world, segmentation allows a company to enable effective communications with its various audiences. These audiences include customers, prospects, shareholders, business partners, employees, developers, journalists, bloggers, securities analysts, industry analysts and other influential groups that the company needs to reach.

Each of these groups has different interests. Securities analysts, for example, are interested almost exclusively in the company’s financial performance, and generally don’t want to hear about product features or corporate social responsibility. Developers want to know about tools, and the availability of software updates and bug fixes.

By understanding their audience(s), bloggers can engage in more interesting and effective conversations. If I visit the blog of an expert in Service Oriented Architectures and read a post on his experience trying to replace a stolen Blackberry, that might be mildly interesting (OK, it isn’t), but would have no value to me. I’d rather learn about the blogger’s views on the role of open source in SOA adoption. In this case, the first blogger is a narcissist, who has failed to consider his audience, readership, whatever. And I don’t care how articulate, funny or clever a blogger is. If he or she has nothing of interest to say to me, (a disregard for audience), then that blogger and the company are wasting their time and mine.

Finally, it’s totally unnecessary, unkind and uncivil to say that “most PR folk are still pretty clueless.” This kind of posturing trash talk is usually a smokescreen for the lack of a fully formed logical argument. I think the following diagram proves my point unequivocally: