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Well, the PR industry in Canada is a-buzzin’ about social media. I think much of this buzz is rooted in the mesh conference held in Toronto as I’d inferenced back on May 16th.

Within my slice of the industry, David Jones recently joined Fleishman-Hillard and is touting the powers of social media to account staff. In conjunction with the iStudio team, which has specialized in online communications for the last seven years, we have been working to increase Fleishman-Hillard’s competitive advantage in the new media space.

Earlier this week, another agency in the Fleishman-Hillard family, High Road Communications, announced a new service offering called VOX focused on leveraging social media and integrating online PR into the mix. Kudos to them for getting this off the ground. Again, the iStudio team was an integral partner in helping the High Road - Microsoft team create and manage the Microsoft Home Ambassadors program.

David Jones and I were questioning whether this approach will help position High Road beyond its core client base. Do agencies really need to brand these services or should online PR and social media simply be something agencies provide to clients as part of the core service offering? I guess it is opportunistic. Until just a few months ago, many PR agencies included online initiatives as “additional considerations” while agencies like iStudio made a business of it. Today, it’s all coming together.

So where do clients turn? Do they go with their PR agency or their online partner? Some of the questions you need to ask yourself are:

• Who gets the new media space?
• Who understands my business?
• Who has the best relationships with my audience?

At the end of the day, it’s all about the results. Work with those that are going to deliver and give your messages legs in the new networked world of communication.

For the past two days, I attended the mesh conference in Toronto. Billed as “Canada’s Web 2.0 conference”, it was an opportunity for people across multiple industries and disciplines to come together and explore how new innovations in technology, marketing and communications are redefining how organizations and people connect.

The event was a real-life mashup. I was really impressed with the variety of speakers and the consistency of insights regardless of people’s expertise. Not everyone agreed though. There were some great dialogues and debates. At the end of the day though, if I had to pick three topics that emerged as the general principles (from my perspective), here’s how they’d look.

• Organizations need to find comfort in relinquishing control over their marketing. Instead, they need to focus on ensuring that the quality of their products, services and overall brand experience are relevant to what customers want from their relationship with an organization. This was reinforced by Jonathan Ehrlich of Chapters Online.
• These are early days. Conference participants are ahead of the curve and need to focus at this point on defining strong models and measures for success. The mainstream will follow, but only once the value is defined. Early adapters see the value and need to package value.
• Those engaging in social media and new communications need to embrace authenticity. This hit home on several occasions by the likes of Steve Rubel who in my opinion correctly dismissed character blogs and Tara Hunt who introduced some great principles for the new communication climate.

I also left the event wondering why people were really there. There were many traditional PR folks I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and working with over the years out in full force. Was it because people realize the need for change or simply because the event was coordinated by some of Canada’s most prominent journalists and new media/marketing minds? Regardless, it was a great turn out and an excellent event. Congratulations to Mark Evans, Stuart MacDonald, Matthew Ingram, Rob Hyndman and Mike McDerment.