Reminds me of an experience last month where I used LinkedIn to ask a PR consultant about a work-related topic — this person was seemingly social media savvy, which prompted the question. Person replies back with follow-up q’s plainly answered on my own profile. I decided that, perhaps, that person wasn’t quite as savvy as I’d hoped … I didn’t reply back. Ah well.

As I mentioned, there were a series of mistakes made by both parties that total to one bad perception of the PR firm and the client. But as I said I’m open to rebooting everything. I’m open. We’ll see what happens. :)

As a former agency PR executive, I can tell you that a big part of the problem lies in the economy. I know it sounds crazy, but let me explain.

PR agencies (especially those that specialize in tech) really took off in the late 80s and grew up during the go-go 90s. They are structured for retainers of $20-30K and above. That’s how they were designed.

After the dot-bomb era retainers fell and now, as the economy continues to fall, retainers have plummeted to $5-10K range. So consultants which used to service a maximum of 3 clients now have to service more than 5 in order for the agencies to continue to make money.

The result is overworked PR consultants at a time when social media has been exploding. You can see the dire results everywhere – nearly every day with all the mistakes and miscues from PR folks.

All PR people know mass email pitches are terrible and shouldn’t be done. Yet every big firm does it. They have to in order to keep up with workloads and client demands. Shortcuts are the only way many of these consultants can get their jobs done.

Then of course there’s the second reason: treating social media as just another marketing channel. But that’s a whole other rant.

Thanks for sharing!