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I’ve long held the belief that public relations, as a discipline and department, should own the responsibility for social media across the spectrum of enterprise and corporations. Mind you, I don’t think social media should be crammed into a silo with PR and forgotten about, but rather, employed across the organization with PR owning the responsibility of managing its implementation and internal education.

According to a study released today by Eric Schwartzman’s iPressroom, in collaboration with TrendStream, Korn/Ferry International and PRSA, that belief is a general reality. The report, titled, “2009 Digital Readiness Report: Essential Online Public Relations and Marketing Skills,” shows that public relations owns the responsibility for web strategy relative to blogging, podcasting or RSS; social search; social networking; microblogging and, to a lesser extent, web content management. PR prevails in comparison to marketing, IT, HR and Executive Management.

Email marketing and search engine optimization are owned by marketing, but SEO only slightly so. The organizations interviewed for the study include corporations (22%), PR/marketing agencies (44%), non-profits/associations (14%), government agencies (6%), academic institutions (7%) and those classified as “other” (6%). The respondents were 278 public relations, marketing and human resource professionals chosen to identify trends regarding their approach to social media.

The overall conclusion of the study was that public relations and marketing professionals had better be equipped to handle social media if they hope to get a job in the industry. The study includes some fantastic insights and is, perhaps, the first in-depth look at social media and new media marketing needs in the public relations industry.

Schwartzman’s opening letter for the report says, “In addition to providing the first social media and new media channel rankings by adoption rate, importance and type of organization, the study also indicates the broader trends concerning which branch of the organization is winning the right to lead in the use of digital communications in the workplace.”

Winning, yes. Doing it right? Still up for debate.

The problem with the statistics, that indicate my desire for PR to manage social media for organizations is coming to fruition, is that, in my opinion, public relations professionals, by and far, are still ill-prepared to do so. PR has taken on an entirely new role in the organization over the last 2-3 years. It’s the most dramatic shift in the industry since the invention of email, but is happening faster and more dramatically.

College programs are still teaching media relations classes with no regard for bloggers, new media or even the Internet. Press releases, though still a needed skill set, are still being upheld as the industry’s standard fare of everyday productivity.

But, according to the study, PR professionals are now being placed in charge of website content (a little intimidating for most PR folks), blogging/podcasting/RSS (moreso), social networking (frightening) and are a close second in being responsible for SEO (are you kidding me?).

My point, besides directing your attentions to some fascinating information about the changing face of the public relations industry, is to say that public relations professionals, but more importantly, public relations educators, need to quickly recognize that what we’re teaching those new to the profession had better not be what we were taught.

The industry has changed. Now more than ever it is imperative to know we are digital. We are connected. We are charged with managing technology, interconnectivity among organizations and individuals, Sure, we need to understand media relations, crisis communications, event management and all the other sub-topics of PR. But all of them have taken on different environs in today’s world.

Public relations professionals need to make sure we’re teaching what is necessary for younger PR folks to succeed in today’s professional landscape, not wander about it confused and wondering why no one picks up our stories.

Please go read the study, download the PDF and think through the insights it gives. Make sure your bosses, agencies, firms, professors and alma maters are recognizing the world for PR has changed. Without a concentrated effort to do so, our jobs are only going to become more difficult.

And please, share your reactions to the study’s insights in the comments. What I saw is only a fraction of what is there. Discuss!

Related articles by Jason Falls with Zemanta

• Top Ten SEO Tips for PR Professionals (toprankblog.com)
• New Role For Public Relations Pros: Best Practices From The Obama Media Trail (ComPRehension)
• PR 2.0: Community Expectations and Business Behavior (Valeria Maltoni)
• Sue First, Ask Questions Later: A Classic Lesson In Social Media & Public Relations (The Lead)
• Making Myths: Public Relations on Social Media (Rich Becker)

It seems as though Quality Score has fallen off the blog bandwagon here lately, but I’m here to say that the Quality Score and the Quality Index is still here and more important than ever.

One big problem that I have seen in many new accounts that have either transitioned from other search marketing agencies or in-house employees is the inability to accurately determine when to pause an under-performing ad text and exactly which ad to pause when testing. Pausing the wrong ad or making a decision to pause something too early can have a detrimental effect on your Quality Score.

Most PPC advertisers should know that the Quality Score is mainly based off how well your keywords relate to your ad text and landing pages. There are other factors that affect Quality Score but this is the main one.

It makes a lot of sense if you think about it: Google will make the most money on ads that have higher click-through rates. Ads that have high click-through rates get a lot of traffic, so it makes sense for Google and Yahoo, etc to reward those with higher click-through rates over others. The way they reward you is that if you have a higher click-through rate, you’ll receive a lower page one minimum bid. This means that if you follow their rules, do all the things that get you a great Quality Score, then you’ll be able to place higher in the search engines results pages for a lesser cost.

Too many times I see ads that are paused or deleted that over time have a much higher click-through rate over other ads that are currently active. This tells me that people are not properly testing their PPC ads to determine a statistically valid ad winner. And let me just say, if you’re not testing your PPC ads, then read this PPC for Beginners post already, geez!

Go back into your Adwords account, click on your highest volume campaign and ad group, view your ads, and change the date range to show one whole year of stats. Check all of your ads and see if the ads you have active currently really do have the higher click-through rates.

If they do, great! If not, then you may need to reassess how you determine when to pause or delete and under performing ad text.

1. Go further back in time. Most people just look at past seven day stats or month-to-date stats. Go back further in time to get a more broad view of how well an ad has really performed. If you’re looking at a shorter data range certain seasonality or ebb and flow of traffic could have made the performance of an ad change. But the longer the data range you use the more those seasonality and ebb and flow of traffic changes affect the overall outcome.

2. Know when to make your move and when to wait. The more clicks you have on an ad text the more accurate your ad stats will be. If you only have a few clicks on an ad, that will skew your results. It’s like taking a survey of 100,000 people versus only 10 people. Obviously, those 10 people only represent a small number of the population. However 100,000 people will represent a larger population of people who think the same way. Don’t pause or delete your ads too soon. If there isn’t enough click volume then wait until there is enough volume so you can make a statistically valid decision.

3. Use the statistical calculator. Using the Teasley statistical calculator will assist you in making an informed decision on if and when to pause or delete an ad. Where it says ‘element 1’ and ‘element 2’ is where you will enter your ad text stats. ‘Mailed quantity’ is where you enter your impressions and ‘# of responses’ is where you enter your click data. Below it will show you the response rate (click-through rate) for each ad.

And below that you will get either a percentage of confidence or a ‘not very’ confident that the two elements will continue to perform in the way they are performing currently.

In conclusion, you may want to go back and double-check your ads to be sure you have the ad with the highest click-through rate showing. Of course you can then test different variations of your better performing ad to achieve an even higher click-through rate to improve your Quality Scores.

And next time you run through your PPC accounts looking to pause or delete ads, be sure to follow the steps above and remember more data will represent more accurate results. In the end, your helping yourself gain additional traffic with high click-through rate ads, but you’re also improving your Quality Score which can lead to lower minimum first page keyword bids.

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2009 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.