A lot of chatter about content creation lately… 

Do you consider content management a key factor for your company’s PR efforts? Or perhaps you’re one of those “the future is all about content” marketing soothsayers?

Hey – wake up! Content creation is present-day PR and it always has been. What’s changed/changing is not that public relations people are writing the news; it’s the rate at which news cycles flow, and what media people use to get their news. It’s rapidly changing, expanding, more immediate and more high-tech than ever.

Content creation isn’t just about the news * in words * anymore; it’s about delivering the * content * people want, which includes photos, videos, audio, graphics, tips, tools and further interactive resources. News is on a beeline for multimedia diversity and PR has to make content that leverages that, to be successful in today’s media landscape.

Companies aren’t reliant solely on traditional press/journalism to make their voice heard anymore… PR can travel through any number of social and direct-to-consumer channels – Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and corporate blogs being just the tip of the iceberg. Now we’ve got Instagram, social games (iOS a la Foursquare and Words with Friends, XBLA, etc.), YouTube, LinkedIn, Flickr, Spotify, Turntable.fm, newsletters and proprietary forums… You get the idea.

But if you want to influence consumers, you have to earn some social R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

Why Klout will inevitably matter once it goes mainstream >>> “Anyone can ‘do’ social media, so which ones can I trust?”

I won’t attempt to distill social media strategy into a blog post, but here are a few takeaways –

• Know your audience and speak to them – Ask questions and join in the conversation when your network responds.
• Stay on topic – Don’t abandon your area of expertise because you think your fans are getting bored. That’s probably why they followed you in the first place.
• Be consistent, not boring (voice/tone) – Be sure to insert some added value of your own too.
• Be timely – Old news sucks. News travels faster than ever. Take heed.
• Keep it simple stupid – I refuse to explain this point.
• SEO – Still a go in social media. #andhashtags

Klout makes R-E-S-P-E-C-T quantifiable, visual, comparable and standard for everyone. You may not understand how it works, or believe in the way Klout approaches metrics (or believe they are accurate, for that matter), but Klout metrics are consistent for everyone and thus a valid corporate and consumer measurement tool.

Tips for Klout are applicable to any good web content creation, or PR in general, once you get right down to it. Using social media as a direct marketing channel ups the ante on what you present. Likewise, Klout’s metrics system magnifies the results (along with other analytics like tracking web traffic, incoming requests, etc.) if you use social media to connect and promote your brand – like any good business does.

It is no longer acceptable not to be interested in Klout, or to say its superfluous. It’s also not sufficient to simply sign up and check your score every few months. The feedback from data is too valuable not to use it.