MarCom Professional

Ideas and Inspiration from outside the PR industry

I often find that it can be difficult to find ideas and inspiration for your PR campaigns if you only read within the PR industry. It could be argued Online PR is even harder to find inspiration, as ideas spread so quickly that by the time one campaign has used a tactic effectively it is instantly copied by sveral of others to the point that it becomes almost worthless doing it yourself. So how do you combat this problem?

In order to really differentiate campaigns from competitor’s ones and to create that added value for clients that comes from original inspiring ideas, I keep track of what is happening in other sectors who have a strong and vibrant online community, which they use to create interesting and inspirational campaigns. This allows me to look at the tools and tactics they use in their areas, which can then be applied to current clients.

The community that I find myself going back to again and again to get inspiration from is the third sector. Perhaps in part due to my work with Bright One, the volunteer-run communications agency for the third sector, or through other charitable events I’m involved with, such as Twestival, but mainly because I find the discussion and ideas coming from the third sector extremely relevant to Online PR.

The similarities between the two communities are more than you might think at first. Both industries have aims that include raising awareness about campaigns, reaching out to influencers in key areas, driving traffic to websites, and participating in social media to build strong communities around brands. That’s just a few, but I’m sure you can think of more examples.

For example, take a look at Beth Kanter’s blog, especially her recent post titled ‘An Amazing NpTech Social Media Link Buffet: Take Your Pick!‘, which contains equally useful for the Online PR community as it is the not-for-profit one.

Links in the post include a look at whether ’social networks and social networking impairing our ability to learn’. This was a question raised by a recent Stanford Study and debated over on Brian Solis’s PR2.0 blog here and here.  Brian talks about how those of us active in the real-time Web experience an evaporation of attention span and our ability to digest and respond to everything that moves us.

There’s also a link on How to Weave A Tighter Community from Angus Parker at WiserEarth, with some tips for putting information on your social network community into practice.

Another article of interest looks at ‘How do you measure sucess on Twitter?‘ As Beth says, “It used to be tough to gather rich metrics on a Twitter use. But as the Twitter has flourished, so has the number of ways to track success.” The post from Marketing Profs gives you a couple tools and techniques for measuring your Twitter presence. A few tools mentioned:  Twinfluence, Twitalyzer, and TwitterEffect (which shows you how many people unfollowed or followed because of a specific tweet).

To keep track of useful tech content like Beth does, take a look at the links shared via the #nptech hashtag on Twitter or subscribe to her blog.

Another site that is worth following is GOOD, an “ongoing exploration of what GOOD is and what it can be”. Particularly worht looking at is their current series on ‘Innovation in Evaluation‘:

“We hope this forum will become a central gathering place for participants worldwide to explore innovative approaches to evaluation. Each week, we will take on a new theme related to measuring impact and will feature both guest authors and IDEO bloggers.”

If you’re looking at ways of measuring the impact that your campaigns are having on your client’s brands, the series is a must read.

Other places to look for inspiration from the third sector include the nfp tweetup, set up by Rachel Beer from Beautiful World, and Amy Sample Ward’s Version of NPTech, which often contains links to articles of interest.

So if you want to keep updated with ideas and inspiration for your client’s campaigns, it can often help to look elsewhere – outside of your community – to come up with the seed of a successful campaign in your own work.

What about you? Where do you go for ideas and inspiration? What other areas would be relevant for Online  PRs to keep track of?