Public Relations on the Net: Winning Strategies to ... (ISBN 0814479871)

The best PR is two-way and symmetrical:
I had the good fortune to learn the art and science of public relations in a large organization (a trade association for a financial services provider). We had a ten-person PR team, each with a specialty. This was the 1980s and we used "one-to-many communications." Now I'm having to un-learn that. As part of my re-education as a PR practitioner I read "Public Relations on the Net." Shel Holtz wrote it to help communicators like myself and our organizations figure out how to achieve measurable business results by using the Internet to communicate. In addition to its value as a guide to strategically incorporating new media into a PR program, I recommend this book as a reminder of what the public relations field is all about - or is supposed to be. One point Holtz keeps emphasizing is that the best public relations efforts are two-way and symmetrical - they afford both the company and the strategic audience equal opportunities to participate in the discussion and, even more important, equal opportunities to achieve their objectives. As a whole, PR practitioners like myself have work to do in terms of using new communications media. The public often does a better job of online public relations than the professionals themselves, Holtz says, citing examples of activist groups and other passionate people who do a better job of understanding the Internet's networked nature and using it to their advantage. To effectively employ a medium as part of a communication strategy communicators must be intimately familiar with the medium. Holtz says to become better at online public relations, communicators must spend time online. PR practitioners should be the "eyes and ears" of the organization online, monitoring constituent content, extracting value from that content, and providing intelligence based on that content, which our organization can use to make strategic business decisions. EducationPR http://pbaker.wordpress.com

FAIRLY DECENT MIXTURE BUT NOT ENOUGH:
This book contains some really neat ideas con how to practice public relations on the net. The problem is that almost all the information that the book contains are simple and obvious topics that a public relations pro already should know but some how or other the author, Shel Holtz, managed to link them to topics regarding the net. Read this book definitely wasn't a waist of time but if you work in the public relation field think twice before buying this book; Chances are you already know everything contained in "PUBLIC RELATIONS ON THE NET".

Excellent on Fundamentals:
Public Relations on the Net successfully covers all the basics that pr pros should already know. Neophytes would be well-advised to learn these basics. But, that is where Holtz stops. For learning more advanced methods about pr on the net, I found Guerrilla PR: Wired by Michael Levine to successfully handle the advanced techniques. Holtz's book is not without merit, but if you're in the industry, then it's highly unlikely you'll learn anything new here. Well-written, though.

The Communicator vs IT Staff?:
Over all a good book. The author explains new concepts very clearly. I do have a comment about a dichotomy. The author seems to pigeon-hole people into two categories the Communicator and IT Staff. He neglects to mention the graphic artists, multimedia and web developers and programmers who play extremely important roles in public relations. He describes the Communicator stepping into the IT world or IT staff resolving to accomodate every beck and call of the Communicator. The fact that there are millions of people world-wide working in creative/technical fields dealing directly with public relations seems to evade the author completely. Yet there is still a contradiction in the way the author describes IT Staffers as "the printers of the digital, network world" and in the way he describes multimedia as being so much more than print including audio, video and "all forms of interactivity". Do Communicators always have the technical know-how to produce multimedia projects and do IT staff always have the creativity and skills to design relevant communication tools? This is the question the author fails to address in his book. But the book does address a great deal regarding Internet communication fundamentals so long as the reader recognizes the whole spectrum of industry professionals surrounding it.

Good overall introductory book!:
This is a good introductory book for Public Relations as well as Marketing professionals. The world of Internet communication is a fairly huge topic and can be very overwhelming to the uninitiated. In my Internet communication consulting as the TMA Guild (tmaguild.com), I continually come across a vast number of professionals with extensive talent and experience that are struggle over how to integrate Internet more into their strategic plan. Shel Hotlz's book gives these people a good framework to start from for what can be done and why for both offensive and defensive strategies. I believe this book is good in that it identifies Internet communication as having it's own strategic planning requirements and helps expand the perception of the Internet beyond a "tactic" among many other tactics. With that, this is not an exhaustive book of online tactics. But it does make my consulting easier when I have educated clients that know better what they are trying to do with the Internet.