In Conclusion…

To wrap things up, I’d like to first mention this quote from a Q&A in PR 2.0 – the book that sent me in this direction for my blog.

Q: How is social networking changing the way companies do business?

A: “It’s changing the way companies do business in a fundamental way, but we’re still in the early stages of what I think will be a fairly comprehensive restructuring of our society brought on by social media and the culture of participation it’s fostering. So it’s not just business that will be changed, it’s everything. My perspective is that communications systems are foundational, that when a society shifts from one communications model to another, all institutions in society get reinvented according to the logic of the new medium.” – Neal Gorenflo, Vice President of FAS.research

I think this culture of participation will certainly continue to drive the success of social media in the future, meaning the PR industry really needs to find its place among these newer methods of communication. Social media seems to be between disciplines currently, with advertising and digital marketing applications. However, as communication is both the heart of social media and public relations, it seems as though a position needs to be taken sooner rather than later.

This doesn’t have to mean the death of traditional PR as we know it, but quite the opposite. For PR, communicating using social media still involves figuring out the best way to deliver a message to an audience, as our job has always been. Only now, we have new tools and new ways to reach an ever expanding and arguably more attentive audience. Blogging and the democratization of communications and the media tell us that people out there are listening and eager to know what’s new, you just have to find the right way to tell them.

PRs now have more tools than ever to communicate their message. Each application of social media varies between consumer and non-consumer PR, possibly because of the differences in audiences. For consumer PR, the brand is owned by the consumer essentially and marketing these days has become about connecting people with the brand. Social media works well because that’s what the target audience is using to communicate about the brand and in general.

For non-consumer PR, it seems to take a little more effort to find practical applications of communications via social media because its use among the target audience is still developing. However, just as with consumer PR, the right application of social media in a campaign can provide quantifiable results that along with traditional methods, can create success for a campaign.

When communicating with journalists, the idea is to make it as easy as possible to provide relevant information. With the advent of online newsrooms and social media releases, it has become even easier to provide up-to-date and relevant information to journalists when and how they want it. It’s still a matter of getting to know your contacts and how they prefer to receive information.

Social media has a lot of potential for PR and it’s still early so we may not realize the full effects of this new medium for a while. However, upon the advice of many, get to know social media and get comfortable with it because it’s not going anywhere. Proceed with caution and don’t use social media just for the sake of it, but rather as additional method of carrying out a communications strategy. Communicating is what PRs do, and where better to do it than on the biggest forum we’ve ever had at our disposal?

You call that news?

One of the interesting impacts that the web 2.0 revolution has had is the shift in who decides what’s newsworthy. A couple of things have led to this change in the flow of communication, and I’ll start with blogs. The idea here is that each individual blogger gets to decide what’s worth writing about based on their own opinions and interests. This means that stories that might not have had a place in traditional media might still be of interest to a blogger and gain coverage nonetheless.

For consumer brands, the conversation has already extended into blogs, so it would definitely be wise to monitor what’s being said from a PR perspective. One example mentioned in Deirdre Breakenridge’s PR 2.0, which I reviewed in my first post, is Starbucks. If someone posts on their blog how they had to wait 20 minutes to be served one day at a particular location, you might just conclude that it’s a one-off experience and thus not worth looking into. However, if when monitoring the blogosphere you discover that a large number of people have complained recently about a long waiting time at Starbucks, it could be a reflection of a larger operations issue that the company should be made aware of.

Speaking of service at Starbucks, this is a pretty funny, loosely related video. Just for fun!

For non-consumer PR, a blog can be a great place to establish or reinforce a brand’s position. As mentioned in a previously posted Q&A, blogs can serve as the company’s authoritative voice, so what’s written on a blog by a company can potentially be quite influential. For example, if an architecture firm wanted to position itself as an industry leader in sustainable design, they could have one of their executives who is particularly experienced or qualified in that area start a blog. The whole focus of the blog would of course be sustainable design and by having the executive express his or her own viewpoints and convey their knowledge on the subject, it would contribute to the firm’s credibility in the area as well.

Another site that challenges what we define as news is Digg. Content is submitted by users – including news, videos and images – and users who read it either Digg it or Bury it. Content is ranked based on overall popularity so the collective community decides what is newsworthy and not editors.

Finally, I’d like to look at iReport. This topic was again mentioned in the previous Q&A, and many networks have done something similar but this is CNN’s version. Citizen journalists are encouraged to send in their own stories or they can choose an assigned topic from a list that CNN provides. Not only are stories featured on the website, but they have the potential to be featured on CNN’s national broadcast, which motivates people to participate.

All of these new media sites challenge the traditional channels of communication between PRs, the media and the public. The interesting thing to see will be how both industries continue to adapt and incorporate new media and change the way they interact with each other – only time will tell!