Public relations is no longer about relationships.

Traditional PR is now about trying to get journalists to notice you and your sensational little stunts. It’s about getting the media to do the relationship building for you.

This is why public relations practitioners are failing online, especially in the social media space. By its nature, and by name, social media is about developing relationships with others, whether they’re content producers or consumers.

But public relations isn’t about long-term relationship building anymore. It’s about the short-term instant return of sending out a press release and seeing how many bites you get—if any actually get past the spam filters. It seems some PR people still have the attitude that bloggers are like journalists and you can send them whatever you feel like.

Chinese Democracy, the album that Axl Rose has been working on for over ten years, has almost become the stuff of legends. After so many delays, leaks and band line-up changes, it’s hard to believe that this album will ever be released.

But we can certainly learn some marketing lessons Chinese Democracy and Guns N’ Roses: from both the mistakes they’ve made and the things they’ve done well. First lesson: