We are not selling to an audience; we are trying to build relationships across the community of stakeholders. The horizontal, peer-to-peer, conversation is supplanting the top-down, controlled messaging that is the essence of advertising. The consumer is now also an employee, a shareholder, a member of an NGO, a community activist and a passionate user of products willing to advise on design. PR is more than a set of tactics or tools. It’s a mindset; the ideas that come from PR people are different than those that come from advertising people. Both are engaged in storytelling, but the PR idea stimulates discussion and has the potential to play out over years. A PR idea has to start with relevancy and newsworthiness.

Schmidt said “the future is now” for YouTube, which recently passed the milestone of 1 billion unique visitors every month. But, he added with the Third World in mind, if you think that’s a large number, “wait until you get to 6 (billion) or 7 billion.”

Most companies view their social efforts as a form of PR, thanks to the dynamic nature of the interaction between their brand and consumers. But as social media objectives evolve from “creating buzz” to delivering return, it’s important to view social media through the lens of what you want to accomplish to determine who on your team should own your social media efforts.

The people and organizations who are really good at social media get that way with a skillful combination of ease and effort. They finesse the contradiction of working hard to come across as honest and unlabored. As Social News said, “The true key to social media is being exceptional while staying sincere. It’s harder than you think.”

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Measuring PR and earned media has always been something of a challenge in the past, but thanks to digital marketing and metrics tools, it’s easier today to find the impact of PR, even with businesses that have significant offline components. In this series on the SHIFT blog, we’re looking at 7 different ways to see how PR is improving the performance of your digital marketing and sales programs for organizations of all kinds. Take a look at the whole series, just finished today:

1. Sales/business goals
2. Marketing metrics
3. Social media
4. Search marketing
5. Paid advertising
6. Primary research
7. Standard media metrics
8. Analysis and conclusion