This is a guest post by Mike Davies from ITPR.

Social media is a collection of platforms which allows businesses, organisations and individuals to engage with an audience, share content, gain awareness and “be part of conversations”.

If you think that sounds pretty similar – if not the same – to what public relations is all about then you’d be right.

You would also think, then, that public relations would be the natural “owner” of social media campaigning but, as with many other digital shifts, the PR industry as a whole was painfully slow to adapt to the potential of social media.

To fill the vacuum, dedicated social media agencies spawned their very own niche in the market.

Even now, many PR agencies still fail to understand or at least utilise social media in their campaign plans.

This, despite the PRCA’s recent PR and Communications Census finding that Online Communications has increased in importance for PR within the last year, according to 28% of those surveyed.

But with Inbound PR, some agencies are finally realising the potential for their campaigns and for their clients to use social media to reach out directly to prospects, customers and journalists and to increase the impact of their Earned media coverage.

One of the most popular buzzwords nowadays is customer-first or putting your customer at the centre of every business decision and activity.

I stand behind it. The Inbound PR methodology preaches this customer or as I call it persona-first thinking and in fact doesn't really work without it. 

Far too many businesses are still putting their products and services first when it comes to their marketing, sales and communications decisions even though they say they're customer-centric. 

In fact, over 80% of businesses are talking about the benefits of a customer-first approach, but few of these are turning talk into action. 

This stat comes from Optimizely - a leader in customer experimentation technology that did research earlier this year around the digital experience economy. 

I dug into it and I want to share some key findings and learnings: 

8 Key Problems for Customer-First:

This is a guest post by Liuda Nebozhak from Crello.

Every start-up undergoes some trial and error in its first 1-2 years. Those are probably some of the most difficult and crucial learnings of any new business. 

There's a ton start-ups need to figure out, including their own PR and marketing. PR especially plays a key role because as a start-up nobody knows you and you need to get the word out about your existence, your products and the new value that you add in the market. 

Our company Crello - which offers a design tool specifically for marketers and bloggers - has gone through multiple trials and errors but we've learned a lot.

We recently announced and celebrated reaching the major milestone of 1 million users over the course of just 20 months.  However, it took us some time to find our product-market fit and we are continuing to tweak it to this day. Along the way, we are leveraging our product development with the help of PR, brand ambassadors, and market research, amongst others.

Below are my 5 key takeaways for getting your start-up off the ground.

Since the Inbound PR book came out, there have been a number of agencies adopting the practice and creating new Inbound PR services to deliver better value to clients. 

I'm always eager to learn how PR agencies have transformed their businesses with Inbound PR and I know a lot of you're are interested in it too so I'm starting an interview series with agencies owners and CEOs who've made the jump to Inbound PR. 

First up is my now dear friend Maria Gergova-Bengtsson from United Partners - one of the first and most successful PR agencies in Bulgaria. 

Let's see what Maria has to say about how they've transformed their PR agency with Inbound PR and the results they've achieved so far.  

#1 When you first heard of Inbound PR, what did you think?

This is a guest post by Mike Sergeant from Sergeant Leaders.

When I crossed over to PR after 18 years in broadcasting, I assumed that I would have to spend a lot of time ‘selling in’ stories to journalists. I absolutely dreaded it, and I was pretty rubbish at it.

The truth is that, when you’ve spent almost two decades slamming the phone down on PR people, the last thing you want to do is become one of those annoying flacks.

Having been on the receiving end of PR spam and cold calling, making a career out of persuading reluctant journalists to grant you a couple of column inches seems demeaning and depressing.

Plus, as a seasoned media professional, you only have a certain amount of capital (credibility), which can easily be wasted if you try to flog your best newsroom contacts underwhelming stories.

So, like many ex-journalists, I did everything I could to avoid writing press releases and calling flustered correspondents and editors. And a good thing too.

In truth, most career PRs have better contact books anyway. I knew a few people at the BBC; not that many newspaper journos.

But then I discovered I had something far more valuable than a media approach list (which anyone can pay for these days).