The Online Basecamp

Every brand needs to pri­or­it­ise its online basecamp.

I’ve been devis­ing pro­fes­sion­al brand strategies for over a dec­ade, and I’m in awe of the power of social media. It’s a cul­tur­al melt­ing pot of ideas and expres­sions on a glob­al scale.

But as PR pro­fes­sion­als, we’d be wise to remem­ber that social media is a mass phe­nomen­on. Few brands actu­ally enjoy the type of suc­cess often asso­ci­ated with influ­en­cers.

In the cor­por­ate uni­verse, it’s digit­al-first.
Not neces­sar­ily social media first.

A brand’s web­site — its online base­camp — is often under­used, under­es­tim­ated, and under­ap­pre­ci­ated.

But it shouldn’t have to be that way.

This post will do its best to provide you with sev­er­al argu­ments as to why your organ­isa­tion might be wise to shift its focus away from social media and onto the brand’s web­site instead.

Let’s get into it:

It Might Be Time To Rethink Social Media

Social media has been a pri­or­ity for many organ­isa­tions for many years. But digit­al-first is more than just social media. And, let’s face it: social media doesn’t work for all organ­isa­tions alike.

A brand’s web­site should be its online base­camp, a place for like-minded people to come togeth­er, test ideas, put up your roadmaps and go over logs.

But web­site pub­lish­ing is seen as boring.

Social media, on the oth­er hand, keeps us on our toes. Social net­works like YouTube, TikTok, Twitch, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Snapchat keep us on our toes. And they have a knack for dom­in­at­ing our newsfeeds.

But the truth is … very few brands do well in social media.

Social Media PR Challenges

Social media pub­lish­ing for brands comes with sig­ni­fic­ant PR drawbacks:

Social Media Can Be Pretty Bleak

Examples of Social Media PR Issues

Social media isn’t all sun­shine and rain­bows. With massive change come new types of issues we must deal with.

Here are a few examples of social media issues:

• Bot accounts
• Filter bubbles (social media algorithms)
• The silent switch
• Echo cham­bers
• Ghost fol­low­ers
• Dark social
• Cyberbullying
• Online trolls
• Online hate
• Polarisation
• Electoral tam­per­ing
• Fake news and altern­at­ive facts
• Conspiracy the­or­ies
• National pro­pa­ganda and disinformation
• Government sur­veil­lance
• Cyber ter­ror­ism
• Facebook zero
• Spam
• The cul­ture war
• The use­ful idi­ot syndrome
• Online fraud
• Online wan­nabeism
• The copy­right mafia
• De-plat­form­ing
• Cancel cul­ture
• Techlash
• The splin­ter­net
• Paywalls (journ­al­ism)
• Clickbait journ­al­ism
• Social media fakers
• Fear of screen time
• Mental health issues
• Programmatic brain­wash­ing
• Information over­load
• Filter fail­ure
• Deepfakes

Read also: Social Media: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

💡 Subscribe and get a free ebook on how to get bet­ter PR ideas.

Resistance is Futile

If social media mar­ket­ing works for you, that’s great.

However, social media mar­ket­ing doesn’t work for lots of brands. They could prob­ably do much bet­ter if they shif­ted their focus away from social media and dir­ec­ted those resources to their website.

Because com­plain­ing about social media won’t give you results.

Neither search engines nor social net­works are known to give in to user demands; either you play by the rules of the social net­work — or you don’t play at all.

Of course, it’s pos­sible for any brand to lever­age the full power of social media. But it’s not pos­sible for too many brands to suc­ceed at once. Even if many more brands did great on social media, there simply wouldn’t be enough human atten­tion to go around.

For brands, prag­mat­ism is crit­ic­al. We must lever­age all dif­fer­ent media chan­nels so that they a) make busi­ness sense and b) works in tan­dem with spe­cif­ic formats.

PR Must Rethink Website Publishing

I star­ted blog­ging before it was cool, and I kept blog­ging well past the hype days — and I’m still at it. I wouldn’t trade hav­ing a fully con­trolled online pres­ence for any­thing. And neither should you.

Website pub­lish­ing extends well bey­ond what we typ­ic­ally think of as blog­ging.

Because here’s the thing:

Websites are uniquely flex­ible. One single web­site can sim­ul­tan­eously accom­mod­ate sev­er­al high-level PR strategies on auto­pi­lot. And the entire infra­struc­ture is under your con­trol. Social media mar­ket­ing can’t do this.

And it’s not like we can ignore the power of web­site pub­lish­ing for too long, either.

We need online base­camps to accom­mod­ate inbound audi­ences, argu­ably the most sig­ni­fic­ant paradigm shift for the PR industry in decades:

Inbound vs Outbound

The inbound mind­set is a fun­da­ment­al shift in pub­lic rela­tions.

Instead of focus­ing on try­ing to spawn non-exist­ing audi­ences, PR can do so much more with exist­ing online pub­lics. ¹Silfwer, J. (2015, June 11). The Publics in Public Relations. Doctor Spin | The PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​p​u​b​l​i​c​s​-​i​n​-​p​u​b​l​i​c​-​r​e​l​a​t​i​o​ns/

If your inbound PR strategy is good enough, you might not even need an out­bound PR strategy.

Read also: The Inbound First PR Strategy: Beauty From Within

💡 Subscribe and get a free ebook on how to get bet­ter PR ideas.

Why All Brands Need an Online Basecamp

As the paradigm of inbound mar­ket­ing entered the online uni­verse, it has been proven that many brands must rely on “pub­lish­ing a con­tinu­ous stream of new content.”

Is blog­ging the best way to describe a con­tinu­ous stream of new content?

Some like to call their web­site streams news­rooms. Some call them blogs. Some call them con­tent hubs. Some don’t call them anything.

I’ve star­ted refer­ring to cli­ents’ web­sites as their online base­camp.

The online base­camp is one of the few con­trolled envir­on­ments to which a brand can always revert if a social net­work sud­denly changes the rules of engagement. 

An online base­camp can host sev­er­al strategies and serve as a com­munity for like-minded people. In this com­munity, all mem­bers of the exped­i­tions ahead can come togeth­er, exchange exper­i­ences, and try out new ideas.

The online base­camp is where you and your team put up your roadmaps, review your logs, share ideas and dis­cuss solu­tions. So far, the base­camp ana­logy has res­on­ated very well with sev­er­al of my clients. 

In oth­er words:

If social media isn’t a good fit for your organ­isa­tion, stop banging your head against the wall. Shift your focus to the brand web­site, your online base­camp, instead.