Social media makes its market on PR

Hong Kong - Upstream Asia has launched a platform for social media PR releases called Views Release, as part of Viewpoints, a proprietary tool for clients.

Paul Mottram (pictured), chief operating officer for Upstream Asia. said Viewpoints has come about as the market is changing fast in a couple of ways particularly the internet, which has an impact on journalism and media as a whole.

He said trade media in some industry sectors have come under pressure as advertisers devote more resources to alternative marketing strategies.

The dynamic of communications is also moving rapidly from the traditional "one-to-many" broadcast model to the "many-to-many" model of the conversation economy.

Additionally, online communication channels such as social media and blogs are creating alternative communication channels challenging the traditionally influential role of print and broadcast media that sits at the heart of most PR strategies.

All these factors have assisted in the disruption of traditional PR, resulting in three broad trends from the shift to the customer is in charge; customer and stakeholder relationships are increasingly about dialogue, not monologue and the web allows communities to form and reform around interest areas, which enables word of mouth to work more powerfully than ever before.

Mottram said although most public relations agencies are talking about digital, their methodologies are usually US-centric and do not apply to local situations.

However, Viewpoint communications aims to cut through to traditional media to select messages that are relevant to audiences today. The key essence of Viewpoint is objectivity, relevance, insightful and originality.

The methodology is relevant to all aspects of business and the various ways of implementation from marketing and in particular how clients can best justify their budgets in the current economic climate, the service offering including views release, message development and media training, delivery to training.

As Mottram puts it: "Interruption marketing gets less return. Storytelling - to engage people in two way communications -that's the future of marketing communications."