The Portsmouth Herald Profiles Patrick Hynes and Hynes Communications
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Hynes Communications President Patrick Hynes was profiled in the weekend edition of The Portsmouth Herald this Sunday. See below for the exclusive by Michael McCord…
The exploding PR frontier of social networking
Hynes: The Social media revolution is now a permanent revolutionBy Michael McCord of The Portsmouth Herald, February 21, 2010
PORTSMOUTH — Patrick Hynes didn’t invent one of the social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube that have become so ubiquitous — but Hynes Communications has become a pioneer in fully utilizing social media communication for corporations, nonprofits and political campaigns.Founded by Hynes in 2006, the company was a spin off from Portsmouth-based Calypso Communications and it has grown into one of the nation’s leading public affairs agencies with a popular niche in social networking and new media outreach.
“I had been blogging for quite some time at that point and I began to recognize that there was this need for large organizations to communicate with opinion leaders online,” said Hynes, who was online outreach coordinator for the 2008 presidential campaign of Republican Sen. John McCain. The company now has offices in Portsmouth and Washington, D.C., and it recently hired a social media expert to expand operations in the southeastern part of the country.
Hynes started the company with a deliberate plan to transcend traditional corporate public relations practices. “We want to help these organizations expand and adapt their communications strategies to maximize the reach of the social Web,” he said. “I didn’t see anyone else out there doing it the way I thought it ought to be done.”
Hynes now has five full-time employees with most working out of the Washington office. While many of the firm’s clients remain secret because of non-disclosure agreements, Hynes said others include the Freedom First PAC of Minnesota Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty, the U.S. Senate campaign of former Hewlett Packard Chairwoman Carly Fiorina in California, the Workforce Fairness Institute, AARP, Mayo Clinic, and the Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease.
Befitting the frenetic, 24/7 pace of social media, Hynes said his day starts at 4 a.m. by collecting as much newsworthy information as possible that impacts his clients and the work doesn’t stop.
“I live in a permanent state of news consumption. We sometimes need to monitor developments online on a minute-to-minute basis,” he said.
It’s work that requires creative problem solving in real time, said Hynes who admits “perhaps to the detriment of my business model, there is nothing formulaic in what we do.” The firm calculates what information is valuable to users of different social networks, the problems and challenges that need to be overcome and begins working its database of contacts.
“I try to package that information up in appealing and compelling ways for people,” Hynes said. “We need to be prepared to insert our clients’ points of view on a moment’s notice. And that means we spend a lot of time researching issues and preparing for various scenarios. Getting caught unprepared in my world is death.”
One of the most effective things the firm has done, he explained, was to put Sen. McCain on regular conference calls with bloggers during the 2008 campaign.
“It helped to give the bloggers access to a major national figure and it allowed Sen. McCain to drive his message outside the filter of the mainstream media,” Hynes said.
The explosive growth of social media communications has changed news coverage and how people get information — and it has altered the boundaries of public relations.
“The Internet has extraordinary power,” Hynes said. “Almost 80 percent of reporters say they get story ideas from things they read or see on the Web. In some cases, reporters are writing first draft material for their event coverage on Twitter.
“Just as important, the Internet gives a large organization the ability to communicate directly to its constituents without passing through the media filter. This is a complicated process that rewards only the most imaginative and adventurous organizations, but people can establish their own communications pipelines outside of the traditional media.”
Despite success in the political arena, Hynes said he wants the firm to maintain its ratio of 75 percent corporate and nonprofit clients and 25 percent political assignments.
“Politics pays less and it requires a great deal work beyond the scope of a contract,” Hynes said. “Because of the huge time commitment, we will limit what we are doing (politically) to large impact races with national implications.”
One of those races will be the anticipated U. S. Senate race in California between Fiorina and incumbent Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer.
Hynes believes the firm will triple in size in the next five years and become “the first choice for large organizations” who need social networking methods of communication to get the word out. The firm is already doing sub-contracting work for larger and more traditional public relations agencies.
“The social media revolution is actually in a fairly advanced state. I’m still a young man, but the communications world of my youth would not be recognizable to a person just entering the workforce today,” said the 37-year-old Hynes. “This is not to say there aren’t more innovations coming down the pike. In fact, the social media revolution really needs to be understood as a permanent revolution.”
At a Glance:Who: Patrick Hynes
What: President and founder, Hynes Communications
Business: Social media public affairs
Where: Offices in Portsmouth and Washington, D.C.