The Financial Times published an article last week advising companies that they could manage the web without the help of PR firms. I agree with my colleague Charlie who runs our digital business in Asia/Pacific who responded to the FT with letter detailing some of the challenges, opportunities, and skills required to navigate the web. Now, admittedly I run the digital business for a PR firm, but whether or not clients pick us, I’d hate for them to go it alone. The Internet is still in very early stages, a digital wild wild west of sorts, and I don’t understand why any company want to risk figuring all of this out for themselves. PR advisers bring unique perspective to digital challenges, just like other professionals do within their respective fields.

From a public relations perspective, think about context - in the era of open communications facilitated by the Internet, your consumer messaging will affect corporate reputation, and vice versa. It is not possible to say one thing to one audience and something completely different to another, at least not without them hearing both sides of your story. PR advisers are uniquely situated to provide context and help guide messaging that creates dialogue with stakeholders while building and protecting a company’s position. Next, think about content. There are so many options for where to participate. Are companies really prepared to figure out what messages are appropriate for different types of sites on their own? What about community, which gives companies the opportunity to build loyalty around their brands based on shared values. Then, think about control. Companies are used to completely controlling their communications messages, but the Internet prohibits that. Instead, companies need to figure out what their most important messages are, and then figure out where they can control them, and where they can influence them, and then participate accordingly. Lastly, there is the very important fact that online chatter dramatically influences offline communications. Having a qualified PR adviser is one sure way to straddle all of these, and many other critical elements of navigating digital media.
Companies may be able to figure all of this out on their own, but why wouldn’t they want a communications adviser who can share broad-based experiences that cut across sectors, stakeholders, and platforms to help clients make the right choices the first time around?

B-M has released a new survey indicating that ‘e-fluentials’ (active and involved individuals who make up around 15% of internet users) in the US are increasingly concerned that hired third parties are leaving biased opinions on consumer web sites.

As opinion leaders, e-fluentials shape many others’ perceptions of brands and products, so their concerns over diminishing trust in the online environment might be considered a harbinger of things to come.

On the surface, such a theory goes against the grain of received wisdom - after all, the internet is super-charging world-of-mouth, that most trusted and impactful of all forms of communication according to multiple surveys (see here, for example), and online consumer opinions are regularly rated as more reliable than other types of marketing, notably advertising of almost any description.

A combination of factors may be eroding this trust, from the open access models adopted by MySpace and other social networks that have made them manna to paedophiles to knowledge that marketers are pulling all sorts of tricks to gain people’s attention, some of them below the belt.

Yet, according to a recent Nielsen survey, this scepticism has yet to reach Asia, with users in seven Asian markets most likely to trust recommendations from consumers, notably Hong Kong, Taiwan, Indonesia, India, South Korea and the Philippines.

The study also suggests that Asians (especially South Koreans and Taiwanese) also place a high level of trust on consumer-generated content such as blogs - despite the persistant popularity of bulletin boards, where users are often anonymous and which account for higher levels of traffic than blogs.

One reason for this may be Asians’ respect for authority, a common cultural trait across the region, another could be distrust of print and broadcast media in many markets, which is seen as little more than government propaganda.

Yet another might be the comparatively high levels of security and privacy provided by homegrown social networks such as Cyworld and Mixi, where users can communicate safe in the knowledge that they won’t be pestered by unwanted intruders.

All the more reason for high levels of transparency and authenticity when planning online PR and word of mouth programs in the region.