long tail for PR? (WIP)

Should the public relations industry, in a bid to survive in the new media paradigm, make the move to charge for individual online hits?

Digital activation to SEO are buzzwords or entire new departments in marketing circles worldwide. Much of the billing or chargable deliverables are based on processes or hours spent. Don't these online relations count towards the ends of elevating a brand's public profile?

Blog coverage, event listings or even blog aggregators are often thought of as ' low hanging fruit'. Any self respecting PR firm may scoff at the idea of charging for mass online coverage online as PR results.

Instead, the standard practice is to propose a project and hit social media like blogs, social networking sites, forums (which I consider a web 1.0 legacy) and social bookmarking sites.

Typicaly there's the content creation and story angle phase,the outreach phase. In a guerilla or viral marketing program, the SOP is to leverage and interesting video, Internet meme or alternate reality game and allow word of mouth to propagate the desired messaging.

Then there's the carpet bomb approach, more process led than creative led, which 'spams', for the lack of a better term, the intended announcement or an idea or point of view which sparks a conversation.

Now, assuming these programs have the desired effect over a period of 1 - 3 months without any negative blowback, what are the means to quantify the results and allow an agency to charge for each individual hit? Then again, should an Internet phenomenon be measured by the sum of its parts?

To be continued...

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]