What do Polish computer game players and Cricket fans have in common?

They are both, in one way or another, online communities. Some are big, some are small. But communities they are, and they are all important in their own right.

Public relations traditionally splits their media targets into regions or specific demographics based upon age, income or family status. They copped this practice, like so many others, from advertising. It is not incorrect, but it doesn’t always translate well online.

In America this isn’t so much of a problem, as oftentimes American PR practitioners engage with American-based media. In Europe things tend to get more complicated, but practitioners often engage with media in their country and their country only. A common refrain around the London office is ‘target UK-based media only.’

As you might imagine, this is difficult online. Sometimes bloggers or forums indicate they are in the UK (with a domain name, or in the ‘about’ section.) More often they do not.

Add specific demographics into that mix – ‘we want to engage UK-based Mum bloggers’ – and things get even more complicated.

There are good reasons for this. A client’s product may only be available in the UK. But savvy consumers find ways around these sorts of barriers, especially if they want something badly enough. I have a stack of Region 2 DVDs back in America I imported from Amazon UK, for example.

And I knew about those DVDs because I read about them on a movie enthusiast forum. A social network not based on region or demographics, but based on common interests. More importantly, it is based on a common language (English.)

Communities online eschew old models in many ways, not the least of which is the movement of language. There is a massive Polish-language computer gaming community online, but it is anyone’s guess as to how many of its members are in Poland itself. The UK government knows of around 205,000 Poles working in London, which does not count self-employed workers or families. Across the pond, Edelman home turf Chicago is home to the world’s largest Polish population outside of Warsaw, and there are a large number of first-generation immigrants among them.

Traditional PR practice dictates that if you wanted to tell them about a computer game, you would target media in Poland, target local ex-pat media, and hope that your message stuck.

Online, you simply get in touch with the thriving Polish computer gaming population, which hangs out on a handful of communities regardless of location. Does it matter that you'd be reaching community members outside of Poland itself? Of course not. If anything, this should be counted as a major victory for your PR campaign to reach ex-pats in London, Chicago and other Polish communities around the globe.

Cricket recently experienced a ‘Diaspora’ of sorts as well. It has become less popular in the UK (Twenty20 notwithstanding) but has increased in popularity across the Commonwealth. The unifying factor among Cricket fans is not location, or age, or any traditional demographic. It’s language: the overwhelming majority of them speak English regardless of nationality, race, location, religion, age, marital status, and so forth. If you wanted to engage with cricket fans, the communities you’d target would not be based on region at all – they would be based on interest and language.

Engaging with online communities requires a bit of re-education with both clients and colleagues used to an old demographic model. While you could engage only with UK-based communities, there is a colossal risk of disenfranchising communities interested in what you’ve got to say. Better to look at engagement as language-based – or better, community based – and disregard region altogether.

This means an extra level of abstraction (or ‘work’ if you prefer) for the PR practitioner. It also requires a little extra research into the communities with which you want to engage. You want to target UK-based Mum bloggers? Then think abstractly about which communities they might be engaged with already, and how that relates to your clients and your messages. UK Mums might be on Mumsnet or Netmums (yes, two different sites) but they may just as readily be on a casual gaming network, Eastenders fan forums, or a Guardian blog and its readers. Engage with those communities, and tapping your ‘target demographics’ takes care of itself.

All it takes is a slight re-adjustment of perspective when thinking of a target demographic - and the ability to see language as more important than place.

Image: Donald Bradman, Australian cricket player, from Wikimedia