Sam Ford is a Fast Company expert blogger at the intersection of business, digital and culture. I raved about his blog yesterday in a review. I posed some questions to Sam and here are his replies. Check out his multi-disciplinary take on twitter @sam_ford or his blog.

1. How does thinking shape the PR world? e.g. what are the core beliefs or premises behind PR as an idea?

As with any profession, I think it’s the sad but true fact that thinking does not guide us often enough. In an agency world, where the interests of clients shape most of the discussion, or the desire to get new clients, we don’t get to have the “state of our industry” discussions as often as we should have. That being said, the blogosphere and the instantaneous publishing that digital communication affords has given more room than ever, I’d say, to discussions about best practices in the public relations space. Both best practices and, perhaps more often, worst practices have regularly become case studies for marketers of all sorts to discuss what is and is not, or should or should not be, professional ethics, and organizations from WOMMA to the PRSA are finding ways to help guide discussions about what professional standards and ethics in PR look like. I come from an agency, Peppercom, where both co-founders blog several times a week and tackle sometimes weighty issues in our field, which is a blessing (Ed Moed’s Measuring Up and Steve Cody’s RepMan). And, as the walls between various marketing disciplines break down, as well as the divisions between marketing and research, marketing and customer service, etc., discussions of professionals across various fields can happen more now than ever. I think this is key, because public relations is—now less than any time in the past few decades—more truly public relations, as the management of relationships has moved beyond just the press and toward a greater number of stakeholders. That holistic view, in my mind, is where public relations firms/professionals must be headed, to think through ways to think about and communicate with a wide variety of constituents.

2. What does it take for people to get beyond just purely promoting themselves when seeking to get ideas out there? What should we hold the real purpose of PR as being in the world of ideas which no one really owns?

First of all, we can just look at it pragmatically: only talking about yourself won’t ultimately be that successful in terms of promotion, because people don’t want to just hear about you in most cases. Instead, ideas that spread are ones that fit the conversations people are already having with one another, the topics they care about and want to talk about, etc. We’ve seen many social network sites being quite resistant to being over-commercialized. And, when a site becomes too saturated with offensive marketing, people find quieter spaces in which to have their conversations—that’s not to say that brands can’t find great success on Twitter and Facebook or other online platforms. In most cases, though, they’ve done so by straying beyond just talking about product and marketing messages. Here’s the issue: companies need to be able to cede some of their illusion of control. Obviously, when you craft a message, listen and research its potential reception, etc., you do what you can to think about what you are communicating. But as soon as a message leaves the brand and goes out into the world, the brand no longer has dominion over what that message means. This has always been true, but the Internet has done a lot to make visible the trails of word-of-mouth and to give evidence of just how little brands control how people discuss and use their marketing. And the way audiences pick up your messages might be how you intended, irrelevant to how you intended, or perhaps even directly counter to how you intended as a marketer. I would suggest that listening to and knowing one’s audience provides the best insurance for a smaller gap between intended use of a message and what the audience actually does with it, but companies also have to be ready to be surprised, to listen to how messages are being received and potentially to tweak their approach based on the audience’s wants and needs. But the desire for control and ownership, of a less conversational tone and more budget spent on restricting your brand than opening up dialogue around and with it, seems to be waning. The only brand you can have complete control over is the one you keep in your head and never share with a second person. The moment a brand becomes social is the moment a marketer loses control.

3. What does it take to change an impression or action of others, on line, when you cannot see people who are connecting with your blog? and does it matter?

Again, I think writing compelling content has to do with listening. We may not be able to see those who we interact with, but we have unprecedented abilities to get feedback from readers, to ask them questions, to perhaps even research them, what they write and think, through their own sites, profiles, etc. I think that sharing compelling content, listening to one’s audience, and realizing that some content will spread and some won’t is the key approach. For instance, I write in a variety of venues and share my thoughts online in various articles, etc. I’ve learned that there’s a bit of science and a lot of unpredictability about exactly what will resonate with an audience, no matter how much listening I might do. Sometimes, you’ll see a column or tweet get picked up and spread widely that you didn’t think much about. Other times, you’ll carefully craft a message that doesn’t really seem to go far. That element of surprise is key. As much as I believe listening to one’s audience and trying to craft material to be more spread is key, “putting all your eggs in one basket” is likewise dangerous, because you don’t know what will connect with people. And, likewise, remembering that the Internet has a long shelf life is key as well. The “Long Tail” theory of Chris Anderson’s emphasized that niche content can become valuable over time. If we think about a blog post, for instance, in that way, we realize that some content may not generate that many views at once but may continue to influence people over time. So, we don’t know what might influence others the most and don’t have complete dominion over that, but I think we should listen to our audience to make our communication as targeted and relevant as possible and then be willing to communicate regularly, not knowing what might resonate the most at a particular time with an audience. After all, the spread of ideas depends on individual people and their own motivation for picking up and sharing, or debating, an argument.

4. How will social media reshape our sense of ourselves and therefore our sense of what we want to be public about? Will PR ever die or be outdated?

We’ve seen a fundamental shift in what it means to be public. Our modern notion of “the right to privacy” can, in some ways, be traced back to the beginnings of photography and people’s concerns about having their image captured. The idea of completely private space versus public space in a mediated sense has helped shape our modern notions of a “right” to complete privacy. Obviously, the idea of private ownership stretches back much further. And I attended a lecture not too long ago from media scholar John Fiske about the ways in which technology helped create and strengthen notions of individuality centuries ago, when the design of tables, the invention of table utensils, etc., helped further the idea of individual plates, a lack of physical interaction while eating , etc. Fiske pointed out that, for centuries, our technologies have been focused on providing extensions of the external body that allow us to limit and control the ways we interact with the physical world. However, the Internet age is bringing with it a dedication to technologies that allow us to externalize the internal, to share and become more connected—less private. Fiske called on media studies scholars to dedicate themselves to better understanding this fundamental shift and what it might mean for communication and our culture. This has a fundamental impact on public relations, and PR professionals should prepare to be outmoded if they don’t change their approach. The importance of press releases, of influence over journalists, of pitch emails, etc., is still a key way for PR to share a brand’s story, but the centrality of that importance has lessened and will continue to. PR professionals can serve great utility to a company by being storytellers, that is by finding compelling ways to tell the company’s story and by listening to the audience. In an ideal world, the PR professional would always see itself as serving as an intermediary between two clients: the brand and the audience. That approach runs counter to negative views about the PR industry and “spin,” but I think it’s what public relations work should strive to do.

5. What/Who shaped you and your ideas that seem to be driving you to bring humanity into the social web and PR? Why bother?

We’ve had plenty of stimulating discussion along the way at Peppercom, so I certainly can credit some colleagues in helping shape the formation of these ideas. I’ve been blessed to be working in a digital age where we can read so many thought-provoking pieces out there and to have easy ways to stay connected to my personal network of fellow professionals in marketing, public relations, media and entertainment, etc. And my academic background has greatly influenced the position I take and the angle in which I look at issues. I remain actively involved in researching and writing about digital culture, so I have to credit my grad school mentor and current co-author on a book project called Spreadable Media, Henry Jenkins; my long-time collaborator and other co-author on that book, Joshua Green; and the many academics and professionals who take part in the network surrounding the MIT Futures of Entertainment event at MIT. As for the “why bother” part, I believe that what any communicator does impacts people. If people give us their time to consider or think about the messages we put in motion, we need to be good stewards of that time and respect them. Marketers are the interlopers…if we don’t prove ourselves useful, then we have performed a grave injustice on the audience we have communicated with. Thus, I think responsiveness, empathy, ethics…these are fundamental issues with which our industry can be concerned. I am fortunate to have some time dedicated to thinking and communicating about these issues, in a world where the hecticness of the day-to-day obligations of the job too often leave these conversations in the background.