GETTING their message across online has become a priority for public relations (PR) agencies in recent months.

In the past four months, multinationals Edelman and Waggener Edstrom have launched digital arms in Singapore while others, like Burson-Marsteller, have hired experts to advise clients on new media and get the firm's other employees up to speed.

The increased interest in online PR is hardly surprising, said Mr Melvin Yuan, director of Waggener Edstrom's digital strategies group.

As more people venture online, organisations are increasingly mindful of the need to hear - and respond - to what users are saying about them in cyberspace, he said.

That puts public relations agencies, the experts in this area, firmly in the spotlight.

Mr Charles Pownall, Burson-Marsteller's Asia-Pacific director for digital communications, said PR firms must be ready to answer questions when clients start asking.

He added that many clients have already begun asking for advice on online PR, and demand is expected to rise. This has prompted companies like Burson-Marsteller to put in resources.

Mr Pownall pointed to firms in the technology and health-care industries as being the most adventurous in online PR.

Technology firms, he said, have to 'walk their talk', and the heavily regulated health-care industry saw the Internet as a way to get around regulations on marketing and advertising, by getting their users to generate some positive online discussions that they cannot initiate on their own.

Mr John Kerr, Edelman Digital's Asia-Pacific head, warned that firms should be 'authentic and transparent', and avoid taking tempting short cuts when trying to build a good relationship with their online community.

He said the meteoric growth in online media has seen a corresponding spike in less-than-ethical practices by companies eager to sway public opinion.

For example, some companies create dummy sites expressly designed to redirect users to the firms' real sites. Others engage in online 'shilling' - creating a multitude of fake blogs or user accounts on popular forums to talk up their products and slam their competitors' offerings.

Mr Yuan said the PR industry's challenge now is to educate clients to harness the tremendous potential of the online world, but ethically.

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RISE IN LESS-THAN-ETHICAL PRACTICES

MR JOHN Kerr, Edelman Digital's Asia-Pacific head, warned that the growth in online media has seen a corresponding rise in less-than-ethical practices by companies eager to sway public opinion:

• Some companies create dummy sites to redirect users to the firms' real sites.
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• Others engage in online 'shilling' - creating several fake blogs or user accounts on popular forums to talk up their products and slam their competitors' offerings.
  Mr Kerr said such practices are so effective that there are now firms that specialise in helping clients to combat them.

However, he does not think that companies set out to deliberately deceive online users.

He said it was likely that some companies' marketing staff simply did not know that 'shilling' and other tricks are unethical - or realise that the backlash from being found out would be much worse than any possible benefit.