????公關無法實現規模化。如果有什么能在商業中管用時，人們都希望盡可能地將其規模化。舉例來說，如果正在進行一項谷歌（Google）關鍵詞推廣活動，商業人士提出的最大問題是再投入多少錢，邊際效應將下降到零。另外，也不清楚如何利用公關上的成功。

????說得天花亂墜也于事無補。亞瑟·W·佩奇（1883年-1960年）是首位擔任大型上市公司董事的公關人，他的原則是：“公眾對一家機構的看法，90%取決于它怎么做，10%是聽它怎么說。”而公關部門往往只能影響這10%。

????下面我們分析一下，為什么公關在社交媒體時代的重要性有望大幅提升：

????相比過去，公關效果能更好地得到監測。過去，匯報媒體報道效果只限于剪報，然后提交給老板。即便是在互聯網1.0時代，媒體發行人也從不公布每篇文章獲得了多少點擊瀏覽量。如今，誰都可以免費查詢一篇文章在Facebook和Twitter等社交平臺上分享的次數。更重要的是，由于社交賬戶的公開性質，可以跟蹤誰在分享你收到的這篇報道，以及他們是否由于這篇報道而采取了什么行動。

????社交媒體可以推進更多的人際交流。正如我在《財富》雜志（Fortune）專欄《慢公關》（Slow PR）中所寫，社交媒體為公關人員與所需打交道的人之間建立良好關系提供了可能。不再是盲目地發送給幾千人，然后期待能有1%的回復率。公關人可以深度調研，與最可能對他們代表的公司感興趣的記者建立強有力的關系。這種互動只到最近才成為可能，因為使用社交媒體的記者比例非常高，我共同創立的公司Muck Rack關注的記者已超過了10,000名。

????現在可以將針對有影響力人士的公關活動規模化，還可以通過推廣文章實現。1997年，史蒂夫·喬布斯重返蘋果時就曾成功采用這一策略。史蒂夫只需再度說服蘋果值得關注的幾名記者，把他的信息發布出去。今天的媒體界已經碎片化。就算是一家已經邊緣化的公司，如果它要發布這樣的信息，也得接觸幾十名甚至幾百名記者、博主和有影響人士。公司需要溝通的人員數量會越來越多，公關技能是處理這些額外關系的最佳工具。

????You can't scale PR.?When something works in business you want to scale it as much as possible. For example, if a Google AdWords campaign is working the biggest question a businessperson has is how much money they can throw at it before it stops being effective. It's unclear how to leverage a PR success.

????There's no use putting lipstick on a pig.?Arthur W. Page (1883-1960), the first PR man to serve on a the board of directors of a major public company,?offered?the principle "Public perception of an organization is determined 90 percent by what it does and 10 percent by what it says." All too often the PR department's only been able to influence the 10 percent part.

????Here's why PR has the opportunity to move center stage in the social media age:

????Effects of PR can now be measured to a greater extent than ever before in history.Reporting on the effectiveness of a press mention used to be limited to clipping it from a newspaper and showing the clip to the boss. Even in the first era of the web a publisher would never share how many pageviews an article received. Now anyone can track for free how many times an article is being shared on social platforms like Facebook and Twitter for free. More importantly, due the public nature of social profiles, you can track who is sharing press you've received and if they're taking action because of it.

????Social media can drive more human communications.?As I wrote about in my Fortune column on?Slow PR, social media offers hope for building better relationships between PRs and the people they need to work with. Rather than blindly pitching thousands of people hoping for a 1% response rate, public relations pros can deeply research and build strong relationships with the journalists most likely to be interested in the companies they represent. This kind of interaction is only recently possible due to the very high percentage of journalists on social media, which the company I cofounded?Muck Rack?has pegged at well over 10,000 journalists.

????You can now scale PR to influencers and by promoting articles.?In a way Steve Jobs had it easy when he returned to Apple in 1997. Jobs only needed to convince a small handful of journalists that Apple was worth paying attention to again to get his message out. In today's fragmented media world, a sidelined company would need to reach out to dozens if not hundreds or even thousands of journalists, bloggers and influencers to tell such a story. The number of people a company needs to interact with will continue to increase overtime, and the public relations skill set is best suited to handle the additional relationships.

????PR departments are starting to be tasked with creating branded content and spending significant amounts of money on platforms that increase distribution for content such as Facebook'sPromoted Posts, Twitter's?Promoted Tweets?and Outbrain's?Amplify.