I’m getting ready for our next New Economy Boot Camp event tomorrow evening, so over on the NEBC blog, I do a little social media math in the second part of a two-part series on search and social. It’s informed by the following line of reasoning:

1. Content marketing is fast outpacing social media engagement and other online marketing tactics as a priority amongst both B2B and B2C marketers.
2. Content marketing’s success depends on its impact on both search engine optimization and social media.
3. While social media still only directly contributes a small percentage to most businesses’ website traffic and sales, search traffic typically accounts for one-third of traffic.
4. The influence that social media has on search is growing, such that your search engine results are increasingly influenced by your social network — if your friends like specific content, you’re more likely to see it in your search results.
5. Two of your jobs as a marketer, therefore, are to expand your social network (and those of your employees and advocates) and produce content that your social network will like and share.

I’d really like your thoughts on this line of reasoning, and the math that follows it in the post. And if you’re in the Boston area, join us for a panel discussion on this and other topics Tuesday evening.

Fresh Ground team members Alex Parks, Ruth Bazinet, Brette Querzoli and Todd Van Hoosear.

Alex Parks shows off his Striker Award.

The Fresh Ground team was in especially high spirits yesterday after winning three awards from the Publicity Club, including a Gold Bell Ringer Award for our work with ProfitBricks.

I am most proud, however, of another award: Fresh Ground’s own Alex Parks took home the Striker Award, recognizing Boston’s most outstanding young PR professional, and by extension the hard work we put into finding and refining talented individuals who can help our clients succeed.

Congratulations to everyone at Fresh Ground, and to all the 2013 winners!

It’s an odd thing when the world finally embraces what you do as a necessary skill, then lays you off.

That’s essentially what happened to about 20 photographers who, until this week, worked as photojournalists for the Chicago Sun Times. They will be replaced by iPhone weilding writers, freelancer and citizens armed with various methods of collecting light as pixels.

The layoffs include John Kim, who won a Pulitzer for his work. I guess getting one of the highest honors in journalism isn’t enough to save you.

At the same time you have Quartz, which brings pictures and graphics front and center to create a winning model in a journalism environment that has pushed many publications to the edge. Each story has an enormous image associated with it (usually licensed from the AP or Getty Images) as well as visualizations.

A few of the cameras collecting dust in my house. Taken with my iPhone

I’ve spent my life studying photography and, at various times, came close to making it a career. I’ve shot Bar Mitzvahs, news events, promotional items and had a few art shows. I’ve used SLRs, medium format, Polaroids, point and shoots, rangefinders and various types of camera phones.

What is often lost in the discussion about photography isn’t just that taking a picture is easy. Yes, it’s easy to capture light on pixels. It’s that taking a picture that tells an accurate story is difficult. This isn’t about the tools, it’s about the people behind the tools. Think about how many Instagram shots of food you’ve seen over the last few years, or selfies. It’s easy to shoot a nice picture of food, the lighting is consistent, it’s not moving and it’s been presented to you in a simple format (same with photographing yourself in a mirror). It’s much more difficult to take an image like the iconic image Sports Illustrated put on its cover after the Boston Marathon Bombings, or the beautiful artistic shot on the front cover of Boston Magazine remembering the same event.

This kind of storytelling isn’t something an amateur can do in the heat of the moment

The New York Times has used Instragram on its front page, which is basically an iPhone with lots of software behind it. They’ve also used Instagram for crowdsourcing images from big events, like the storm in February. Even photographers who a few years ago vowed to never give up film can’t resist the pull of digital. I have had a few photos published over the years, mostly stuff taken on film (Polaroid and 35mm) but it all had to be scanned in order to submit. I still pull out my big SLR and get amazing results from it, but that doesn’t mean it’s the most effective camera. The old saying goes, the best camera is the one you have at the moment you need it.

Today, there are millions of cameras at every moment. Just think about the vast number of images the FBI had to work from when investigating the Boston Marathon Bombings. But even with all that information, it took a skilled photographer to truly capture the moment. It took real investigators, not crowds on Reddit, to turn the raw information into usable intelligence.

What does this mean for PR?

The positive for PR (and the part that should concern journalists) is that the need for images combined with the lack of desire to pay for them means more opportunities for our clients to get their messages across. When our client Winston Chen was featured on NPR, the images all came from his blog.

There’s a balance here. Editors aren’t going to run just anything, the image needs to tell the right story, but that’s what PR people do, we take our client’s messages and turn them into stories that people, including journalists, want to share.

It doesn’t matter if we do that with words or images.

What Buzzfeed does is fascinating. I’m not just talking about the lists that seem to capture viral attention, but they way the site blends editorial content (PR people often call it “earned media”) with content paid for directly by marketing dollars.

I touched on this in a previous post, but I should note that the idea is not limited to Buzzfeed. This morning Globe Columnist Scott Kirsner called out BostInno for being part of the trend:

@scottkirsner It’s by far the worst trend in media. And many are doing it.

— Curt Woodward (@curtwoodward) May 10, 2013

He’s obviously not alone in that thought.

I’m guessing that most people will respond with relative revulsion at the collapse of wall that often seemingly exists between editorial and advertising. I still wonder if the wall ever truly existed or if it was just a myth we told ourselves to keep our conscience clear.

Journalists love to look to the past as the best time for journalism (though at least one major journalist believes the best time is now), but even Edward R. Murrow had to bow to the whims of his advertisers. While journalists remember him for See it Now, the show didn’t last all that long, especially once Alcoa pulled its advertising.

I know many writers who make their money both as reporters and as paid freelance writers for companies, many of which can eventually be included in their coverage area. We don’t usually question this.

Over my career I’ve scheduled many reporter meetings with clients, especially at trade shows, that happen to include a publisher who does a sales pitch at the end. This is part of the business and always has been.

Of course, reporters tried not to be directly involved in the process, and one of my journalism professors used to give a speech at the end of the semester imploring his journalism students to not even eat the food that PR people put out at a press event for fear of impacting our reporting.

During a speech concluding Social Media Weekend, Steve Rubel talked about what he saw as the future of paid media engagements that would involve situations similar to the naming rights of baseball fields. Citibank may pay for the naming rights to the Mets’ ballpark, but they have no say in how the team handles itself. The same will be true of journalists, where an organization may pay for a journalistic series of supplement to a website or magazine, but ultimately won’t have much say in what gets written about. Though, they may choose to buy the supplement based no the topic area.

The sounds of dissent in the audience came through loud and clear. Journalists were not happy about this direct relationship with advertisers.

The core question remains difficult to answer. Will the average person care whether the story they’re reading is paid for by an advertiser? Will it change how they judge the copy? Or did they view, say, political journalism in a different light than business reporting or features?

These aren’t easy questions to answer. Does a reporter become biased by working on the advertising side? Or does advertising gain a more objective and compelling style? What limits are in place within the “paid content” world to ensure that the news consumer knows exactly what they’re getting?

It’s what makes this time in communications so incredibly exciting.