Right now it seems that most companies are re-evaluating their marketing mixes, trying to get an even bigger bang for fewer bucks. Everyone’s wondering how you keep a marketing machine humming during a recession.

It’s interesting that this recession coincides with social media emerging into the mainstream. This coincidence provides some unorthodox ways of managing through the downturn.

The social media movement means that people are now regularly getting their news and information online. As a result, it’s become not just cost-efficient but also smarter to invest in online branding tactics. Why keep paying for pricey ads in major daily newspapers that are on the verge of bankruptcy? Those papers are failing not just because the economy is bad, but because people just don’t read newspapers like they used to.

So it’s high time that marketers let go of their dependency on big newspaper and TV spends. Or at the very least, maybe it’s time for them to shift some of those dollars to new forms of brand-building.

Web PR is among the newest ways of getting attention online. The premise of Web PR is that you don’t need to rely on reporters to tell your story anymore. With the right tools and tactics, you can tell your own story. You can broadcast your own videos and get a vast audience on site like YouTube, Viddler and Blip.TV. You can write your own how-to articles and blast them far and wide across the Web.

The secret sauce of Web PR is creating videos and articles that are designed to get found on Google. This is the where public relations is going next. And with the rapid decline of traditional media fueled in part by this financial market calamity, it’s probably worth considering how you can start incorporating Web PR into your brand strategy.