Those are some of the topics I’ll be talking about at this year’s Seattle PRSA Jumpstart event. PRSA Jumpstart is an event for the next generation of PR pros that  are coursing through the pipelines of the various schools offering training on what we collectively call PR.

But what are they training to do? They’re still being taught how to write press releases, but is that important? How about we teach technical skills such as HTML/PHP, SEO techniques, video editing or visual journalism?

The future of in-house PR

Here’s my theory: In-house corporate PR will become a strategic counsel, relying upon external agencies for execution, measurement and reality checks. In the next 10 years, in-house corporate PR teams will essentially shrink to as few people as possible, depending on the size of the company.

I’ll get into the hows in a bit, but for now, let’s focus on Why? I think that as public relations as we know it continues to blur the lines between marketing, sales, customer support and PR, the focus will be more on strategic communications and less on day-to-day PR activities.

As we continue to realize that social media (or pancake media) is simply media — a way of sharing information — we’ll get less hung up on the tools were using and again focus on the messages we’re sharing.

Peter Shankman is fond of saying that good writing will save society and I think this is essential for the future of PR especially.

But how will we shift?

The shift from a traditional client/agency/consultant model to a more fluid and collaborative effort is already happening. Ubiquitous methods of broadcasting to a public that’s more willing to consume information are emerging and systems for effectively using and measuring them are evolving.

The focus needs to be on quality. It’s no longer enough to throw up some blog posts and *poof * you’re a social media guru coach rawkstar. The challenge with PR as it stands today is that people are treating the Internet like a public access TV station. Everybody. This blog included.

But the problem with public access TV is that a lot of it sucks.

The good is rising to the top. The herd is being thinned. But how? By providing quality content. Social media tools have leveled the playing field of who has access to the public. But they don’t make you a good strategist or a good analyst or a good communicator. Those are traits that need to be honed and refined with experience and execution.

So, what will corporate PR look like in the future? I think it will look a lot different. Corporations need to think like a network. Find good shows that people want to watch and your audience will come.

Tell me your thoughts about what the future of public relations looks like in the comments. I would love to hear them.

And people have written miles of books, blog posts and even tweets about best practices and what matters on Twitter. One of the biggest things that is almost universally agreed upon is to be genuine. So how do we as public relations professionals remain genuine when we’re asked to tweet about a client?

The precedent

Fundamentally you are free to talk about whatever the hell you want with your Twitter stream. It’s your content. It’s your copyright. It’s your reputation.

Your reputation? Yeah, your reputation. You put it on the line each and every time you post something to the public domain. When I hit publish on this post, I was subjecting myself to the judgment of past, present and future employers. It’s the same thing with Twitter.

If your precedent is to include links to client announcements or blog posts, then that’s fine. You’ve willingly shared that information. After all, without clients we wouldn’t be able to pay the electric bill so we could tweet, right? There is a conception that all posts in a social network should be neutral and objective. If you have a relationship, some feel it should be disclosed either up front or by using hash tags or other microsyntax. For example, James Governor from the analyst firm Redmonk uses “$client” to denote posts to his Twitter stream about his paying clients.

And that’s a judgement call you will have to make.

But what about when your employer says you must tweet on a client’s behalf?

Mandated tweeting

I see a potential for conflict when an employer mandates that an employee tweet on its behalf. Making a choice to share the announcement of a project you’ve worked on or a blog post from a co-worker is one thing.

Being told what to tweet and when to tweet it is another beast. The argument is that it’s not genuine. If you don’t want to post it, then why should you be obligated to? I’m all for being a team player. But sometimes you need to protect the community and precedent you have created. I don’t know what the right answer is. So, I’m asking you.

How would you respond to being given a pre-written tweet and being asked to post it? Would you? Why or why not?

In the new era of blogs and social media, our influencers no longer sit behind the desk at a major metro daily or behind an anchor desk. So, what makes an influencer in today’s media landscape? Simple: An influencer is somebody who people listen to.

What’s worth more to your client, a mention on the business page of a newspaper with a large circulation and possible syndication or mentions on the blogs, twitter accounts and facebook profiles of several lifestyle bloggers that frequently do product reviews and have a robust community?

The task for you as a PR person is to find the right influencers and get your client in front of them.

A variety of federal agencies exist to monitor the practices of these industries from FINRA, the SEC and even the ATF. But none of them seem to have kept up with the rapid evolution of public relations and corporate communications practices. In fact, the FINRA document regulating online marketing practices for financial services companies is nearly a decade old.

But some government agencies are making strides to enter the modern information age. The SEC recently hired Mark Story to help connect to the new media scene. And its recent launch of investor.gov, a microsite dedicated to protecting and engaging with investors, shows just how far its come.

But there’s still a huge gap between accepted best practices for the use of social media technologies and what the federal government says you can and can’t do. The confrontationalist side of me says, if there are no rules, how can you break them?

But that is a dangerous precedent to set. Instead, we must develop suond practices that help interact with the community, but protect the interests of a company’s investors.

My advice

My simple advice is to know the rules. Then, come as close to breaking them as you can.

For example, about two years ago, the SEC revised its rules regarding the release of material information to include the use of a corporate blog as a means to do releases. So, time to set up that blog network for your audience. I have yet to see a company completely turn off its use of a wire service, however.

Also, FINRA has proposed an update to its rules, which strike me as a bit much. What do you think?

My value add is this presentation. Some of the elements didn’t quite make it into the Slideshare, but they were hilarious. Thanks again to Mark and Shannon Paul for taking the time to do this panel with me.

But why have I done this? Many know I am skeptical of “personal brands” or have been known to roll my eyes at a social media guru or two. But I have volunteered my mind to this group in order to help it succeed. Many people attend this group’s events looking for good information and even better people.

I want to help those people.

I’m curious what the concept of a social media club means to you? Is it an evening of buzzword bingo or is it a meaningful opportunity to put real life faces with Twitter handles?

It will be interesting to see how this organization grows. And, I look forward to helping it grow.

But here we are. Anybody who is blogging, twittering, publishing photos, friend-feeding, Viddler-ing etc… is social media-ing. But are they? I say that social media is the platform. The platform allows us as content creators to develop content that want to share. From there, it’s a matter of how it’s used.

Social Marketing

Social Marketing is the bulk of what social media is used for. There is a distinct difference between using Twitter to discuss the banal details of your life and using Twitter to distribute 20% off coupons for your restaurant. Using the tools available to you through social media in order to generate direct sales is social marketing.

Social Marketing is often thinly veiled and that is where some of the frustration confusion occurs. When “consultants” offer their services through social media they are participating in social marketing. But it is veiled as social media. Simply sharing ideas, right? But the intent is to ultimately lead to a sale.

Using content sharing services to promote your business and services is a great use of social media as a platform. Enabling your customers to evangelize and tell your story for you is one of the greatest ways to build your brand and message. Social media as a platform also enables those people to reach each other.

Social Networking

We all like to meet people. We all like to interact with humans. After all, if you remove the ability to physically connect with the people we interact with online, social media would shrivel to nothing.

Being able to use social media to share pictures of my pug or arrange to meet some friends are great benefits of the technology platforms that comprise social media. In fact, one of my favorite aspects of social media as a platform is it’s opt in. I get out of it what I put in and if I choose not to participate, the world doesn’t end.

Plenty of stories exist about people using social media to network their way into a job or raise funds for a charity or even find a spouse. Being able to foster relationships, both professional and personal, is one of the great uses of social media as a platform.

Social Education

If you are out to share information (like this blog?) or distribute a message then you are using social media as a means to educate. Social education utilizes the alternative definition of social. In this instance, social is a reflection of society as a whole. Building communities around lifestyles or the environment is an emerging use of social media as a platform.

The emergence of the “green” lifestyle and social awareness in general is able to reach new levels thanks to social media as a platform. Video blogs, micropayments and the Twestival for charity:water are great examples of our society taking advantage of the innovations in social media technology that have emerged recently.

What Does This Mean?

It means that there’s no right or wrong way to use social media. It means that we need to be aware of the progression of the platform and how we as marketers and social beings can utilize it in innovative ways.

Just because we’re out in the “social media-sphere” doesn’t mean we know what’s happening. This shift that is occurring around us changes daily. Having a platform to build on and capture our every thought and action is both intriguing and totally frightening.

What this means is that social media is here to stay. How will you use it?

How do you measure the ROI for a Tweet? How do you measure ROI for a video posted to YouTube? How do you measure ROI for a blog post?

The concept of ROI in modern public relations and corporate communications has evolved from the old standby of column inches earned * ad rate. The common belief now days is that retweets, blog comments, saves to Technorati etc… are all forms of currency.

ROI = $$$

Yes. A return on investment can only be measured in actual dollars. An increase in reach and “authority” are great. But how does the use of social media affect your or your clients’ bottom line?

Using social currency or “whuffie” or any other social metric is icing on the cake. But the cake needs to be a financial impact of the marketing or communications program. This applies to consumer goods just as much as it applies to enterprise software or discreet manufacturing. The units may change, but the affect to the bottom line is still what matters.

The concept of attributing a sale to the use of social media has become relatively easy. Marketing automation companies such as Marketo or even URL trackers such as bit.ly have made it much easier to follow a lead through the process of becoming a contact to becoming a customer.

The bottom line

As Olivier Blanchard over at The BrandBuilder reminds us “ROI is always financial.” Lots of people are beginning to pontificate on that stance. That it’s time to make some money on social media. There’s no reason for the consultants and gurus to be the onws making all the money. But nobody’s offering a solution.

Now it’s time for me to offer a solution. Instead, I am going to try and offer a mathematical problem, so bear with me.

The first item I’ll tackle is twittering a link to a product purchase form. First, let’s define some variables. X= my hourly rate, y = the amount of time in hours it took me to get to the point I can publish that tweet, z = the final cost of publishing a form. So:

(x * y) = z

Now, let’s continue. Lets try to determine the ROI of you publishing that tweet. More variables If you have a = number of people that fill out the form and b = the cost of each unit sold and c = the number of new customers we can use the answer from above to find the ROI of that tweet campaign.

(b * c) – z = ROI

I know this is beyond over simplifying. How do RTs or word of mouth affect this calculation? I’m hoping you all can help me out with that. Can somebody check my math?

I was with some pretty interesting company, including Keith Burtis, who heads up BestBuy’s social media efforts, Amber Naslund and even Jason Falls, who works for advertising agency Doe-Anderson in Louisville (lou-UH-vul).

What’s a rock star?

Not me.

In all seriousness, people should be earning reputations for what they’ve done, not who they are. Sure, big personalities and hard workers and good writers all get noticed. But they get noticed because of what they contribute to the world. I try to do good work and practice solid PR fundamentals. Every once in a while I’ll take a risk. And, hopefully, it will work out.

Sometimes people get known for who they are. They basically were up on the mountaintop, shouting the loudest. But look at what’s happened. Jason Calacanis was, up until recently, a top user of Twitter based on number of followers. Now, he has about 7% of the top users followers.

My point is that the self-ascribed titles of guru, coach, rock star, whatever are completely irrelevant. Do good work and people won’t have any issue surviving. Or, as Jason said recently, “Shut up, get back to work and do good work.”