Let me preface this article with a quick note. I really, really want to use names and a specific example here (and I have a great one) but unfortunately doing that would reinforce the problems being created by my example on some innocent client. I do not want to contribute to the issue, just shine a light on the practice that is causing it.

It amazes me how many marketing and more specifically PR people don’t understand online culture. How in the world are you going to be effective at communications if you don’t understand the demographic  you are communicating to? Seems simple right? Apparently not.

I recently ran across a situation that unfortunately is more common than I would like to admit. Someone hired a PR firm to help with a online reputation management problem. While there are a few PR firms out there that get ORM (very few), many just see this as an extension of their existing skill-set. They couldn’t be any further from the truth than if they thought the commercial of Tiger Woods playing golf on the moon was shot on location.

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