Social Media: an Unexpected but Welcome ‘Gift’ to Communicators?
Sandra Macleod
CEO
Echo Research Ltd.
It seems that hardly a conference or conversation about PR or reputation goes by without social media taking centre stage. Case in point being a recent Echo Chamber we hosted in New York this month, where Ketchum's Rob Flaherty argued that "The digital revolution and the intersection with the economy provides huge opportunities for PR professionals. If the most influential source is another person, not earned or paid media, relationships become key. It is up to PR to develop content that grab audiences in the right way." The eponymous editor and publisher Paul Holmes remarked that "in terms of social media, the marketing folk jump up and down and shout 'look at me'; the PR folk are at the other end of the spectrum, worrying about risk and wanting to listen. Both approaches are flawed - but the marketing one will likely dominate. Those who are successful in this area find a mid point in between the two and focus on engagement." I would suggest that social media is an unexpected and much welcomed 'gift' to communicators, who have yet to learn to fully embrace its potential beyond online 'press release-speak'. It's to that challenge that PR Week in the UK posted its latest op-ed on whether PR will do so or not:
http://www.prweek.com/uk/news/945508/Sandra-MacLeod-PR-industry-crossroads/
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Comment:
social media marketing offers many ways to generate these links for little or no cost – articles, social media sites and blogs are just a few examples. Social bookmarking is another.With bookmarking, you save bookmarks to blog posts, articles and web pages (including your own).
By Free twitter backgrounds on December, 02 2009
Comment:
I’m sure youve seen this, I found it through Byron Reimus good newsletter FYI. This is a fascinating review of the subject.
And btw, I think Paul Homes, as so often, is right.
http://www.cjr.org/the_news_frontier/something_to_talk_about.php?page=all
Research cited here shows that people are willing to pay eight times as much for point-to-point communication as for content. When given a choice between giving up e-mail or the net, people overwhelmingly chose to give up the web. So, the great attraction of the internet is NOT the easily accessible content. What people value is what the sociologists call interpersonal sociability - i.e. contact and chat. Or, as Clay Shirky says in his book Here Comes Everybody: “Conversation is king. Content is just something to talk about.”
Hard for us old diehard content generators and message control meisters to contend with. But hey, them are the breaks.
By Bjorn Edlund on December, 10 2009
Comment:
Social media sites are not about pitching your wares. Its about connecting with groups of people who have similar interests, are looking for useful information,being a fly on the wall, and keeping up on the latest events.
By Free twitter backgrounds on December, 02 2009