Do PR Firms have the leg up in terms of their ability to manage the measurement of social media?

I wanted to round out our current focus on PR firms this week, flowing from our recent survey, Agencies’ and Clients’ perspective on the Social/Digital Landscape. We’ve gotten some great feedback, on Twitter especially, as well as from the blogging community.

Specifically, we were introduced to The Marketing Tech blog and a post by one of its authors, Douglas Karr, that happened to complement our survey findings well. Doug’s post is called Public Relations Firms are Poised to Leverage Social Media. It’s well worth checking out, as is the blog, and specifically Doug makes the following point (bold is mine):

Kyle Lacy has taken it a step further, stating,

“If your public relations firm is not writing, speaking, and educating their clients on how to use social media for brand management or communication… fire them on the spot.”

With all respect, I don’t agree with Kyle.

The war isn’t between Public Relations and Social Media, I still value the expertise that Public Relations brings to the table. No social media expert (and I’d challenge all of them) is poised to leverage these mediums better than a PR agency who understands how to effectively communicate and build communication strategies with the public, working on and offline.

While a bit out of context here, the comment is spot-on and interestingly, hits the nail on the head in regards to our findings (and about a month before, so prescient as well). From our survey:

Of the two primary marketing services disciplines surveyed, it appears that PR Firms have the leg up in terms of their ability/experience in managing the measurement of social media. 60% of PR Firms state that they do measure social media as compared to only 49% of Ad Agencies and 45% of Marketers.

Circling back to our earlier post this week, now is the time for PR firms to grasp what looks to be the leverage in social media expertise.

You can see Doug’s full post here.

We’ll keep you updated on any other interesting takeaways from the survey and thanks to all those who’ve visited our site, commented on and downloaded the survey this week.