**Author:** [[3. Resources/Authors/Brian Solis, Deirdre K. Breakenridge|Brian Solis, Deirdre K. Breakenridge]] **Readwise highlights:** [[3. Resources/Readwise/Books/Putting the Public Back in Public Relations]] # Book Overview ![[Putting the Public Back in Public Relations Visual.excalidraw]] ## About the Authors Brian Solis is a digital analyst, anthropologist, and futurist who studies the effects of disruptive technology on business and society. He's the author of several books on new media and digital transformation. Deirdre K. Breakenridge is a PR practitioner, speaker, and author focused on the evolution of communications in the digital age. Together they bring both the analytical and practitioner perspectives to the transformation of public relations. ## Central Thesis PR is no longer about audiences -- it's about people. Solis and Breakenridge argue that the social web has fundamentally changed the relationship between organizations and their publics. The old model -- craft a message, distribute it through gatekeepers, measure impressions -- is dead. The new model requires PR professionals to become genuine participants in communities, building relationships through listening, conversation, and authentic engagement rather than broadcasting and persuasion. The book presents a comprehensive framework for this transformation. It addresses how PR professionals should read the publications and blogs they pitch, participate in communities before pitching, use social media channels for dialogue rather than distribution, and build personal brands that earn trust. The shift isn't just tactical (use Twitter instead of press releases) -- it's philosophical: PR must move from persuasion to information, from audiences to people, from broadcasting to conversation. The authors also address organizational change, arguing that this transformation touches communications, advertising, PR, customer service, product development, and sales simultaneously. The community manager role emerges as a critical new function, operating as community advocate, brand evangelist, editorial voice, and product feedback channel. ## Why This Book Matters Published in the early days of social media's impact on corporate communications, this book captured a moment of genuine transformation. While some of the specific platform references have dated, the core principles -- participate before pitching, listen before speaking, earn trust through presence -- remain foundational to modern communications strategy. The book's insistence that PR is about relationships rather than media placement anticipated the influencer economy, community-led growth, and the collapse of the gatekeeper model that has only accelerated since publication. --- # Key Themes and Highlights ### From Audiences to People The book's central reframe shifts PR from managing abstract audiences to engaging with actual humans. This isn't semantic -- it changes every aspect of how PR operates. > "We can take off our marketing hats and have real conversations with people." > "PR is no longer just about audiences. It's now about people." > "PR is about people and relationships, not just new tools." The authors challenge PR professionals to ask themselves hard questions: Do you read the publications you pitch? Do you use the products you represent? Do you participate in the communities you're trying to reach? If the answer is no, you're doing PR the old way. ### The 10 Principles of New PR The book lays out a clear framework for how PR communications should work in the social web era, distilling it into actionable principles. > "Elevate the message. Inform, don't persuade. Write with balance. Include traditional and New Media. Be informative. Provide resources and add links. Use available Social Media channels to open up and distribute dialogue. Listen. Converse. Learn." This framework replaces the old model where PR's job was to craft the most compelling (often hyperbolic) version of the message. The new model emphasizes being a useful resource. The shift from persuasion to information is the most significant change -- it requires PR professionals to trust that good information, delivered to the right people in the right context, does more work than spin ever could. ### Strategic Outreach and Community Management The book provides detailed process frameworks for both media outreach and community management in the social web context. > "Determine your value proposition and the most likely markets that will benefit from your news. Humanize and personalize the story. Identify the people you want to reach and how they prefer to see information. Read and watch their work. Participate in their communities." > "The Four Tenets of the Community Manager: A Community Advocate, Brand Evangelist, Savvy Communication Skills Shapes Editorial, Gathers Community Input for Future Product and Services." The community manager framework is notable for how it positions the role as a bridge function -- not just marketing, not just support, but a strategic position that feeds community intelligence back into product development. The outreach process emphasizes homework and relationship-building before any pitching happens. --- # Analytical Reading - **Central Argument:** PR must transform from broadcasting messages to audiences into building genuine relationships with people through participation, listening, and authentic engagement on the social web. - **Key Evidence:** The 10 principles of new PR; the four tenets of community management; the detailed outreach and launch process frameworks; the socialization of all business functions (communications, advertising, customer service, product development, sales). - **Methodology/Approach:** Practitioner-oriented with step-by-step frameworks and process guides. The authors combine strategic philosophy with tactical playbooks, including specific steps for launches, community monitoring, and measurement. - **Strengths:** The frameworks are actionable and well-structured. The 9-step monitoring and participation loop (Observe, Listen, Identify, Internalize, Route, Process, Participate, Provide Feedback, Repeat) is comprehensive. The insistence on personal brand-building for PR professionals was ahead of its time. - **Limitations:** Some platform-specific references have dated. The book's era-specific enthusiasm for social media tools may overshadow the enduring principles. The measurement section (identify criteria, measure, define goals) is more of a framework sketch than a complete methodology. --- # Personal Reflection The book's core insight -- participate first, pitch later -- has only become more relevant. In the DevRel context, this maps directly to the principle that developer advocates should be genuine community members, not marketing proxies. The distinction between "being compelling" and "pitching" is subtle but important: compelling content pulls people in, pitching pushes messages out. The former builds trust over time; the latter depletes it. The community manager framework anticipates modern DevRel and community-led growth strategies. The four tenets -- advocate, evangelist, editorial voice, product feedback channel -- describe a role that sits at the intersection of marketing, support, and product. The emphasis on routing community input back to product development is the mechanism that turns community engagement into a business function rather than a cost center. The measurement framework, while sketched rather than detailed, introduces the right principle: reverse-engineer from business goals to PR activities, then measure the activities against the goals. This connects to modern OKR thinking -- define the outcome you want, identify the activities that drive it, measure those activities. --- # Action Items - [ ] Apply the "participate before pitching" principle to any new community engagement -- spend time listening and contributing before making asks - [ ] Audit current outreach processes against the 10 principles: inform vs. persuade, listen vs. broadcast, converse vs. distribute - [ ] Develop the community-to-product feedback loop: formalize how community insights route to product development decisions