Seth Godin makes you think.
“Seth Godin just took a swipe at us.”
That’s what my colleague on the other end of the phone line said to me Monday morning.
“Who?” I asked. “Us? KGBTexas?”
“No, the PR industry,” she said.
I agreed to check it out. And I was ready to be outraged. Seth is always good for making you think. His blog is a daily requirement for me. So I jumped in with both feet.
The “offending” line was at the end of Monday’s post. Seth was talking about getting the most from your biggest fans and he used the example of a small non-profit organization. He asked if it was better to work through the organization’s core donor base to enlist friends to the cause, “or would hiring a PR firm to get a bunch of articles placed pay off more efficiently?”
A rhetorical question, but not offensive. Seth was pointing out that our tried and true fans and followers can give us more than we might get trying to lure strangers to our cause. We often piss off the fans in pursuit of the strangers.
As a PR agency, we have a new task before us. We can send out press releases and do the traditional blocking and tackling we’ve done for years. But we can also help our clients engage those core “fans/customers/constituencies” at another level. Every organization has a space that it owns. Instead of looking for a bigger footprint, they need to make that footprint as deep, lasting and meaningful as possible. Am I making sense?
Photo from Ned Grace’s Blog Site
