Last night driving home from a very engaging dinner with colleagues I Uttered this:
There are a lot of people talking about the future of PR and our direction in the face of social media. This morning I was reading Geoff Livingston's post, "Social Media: PR, Advertising or None of the Above". In the post Geoff continues the conversation concerning where corporate social media fits, and for him it is pushing away from PR and advertising and towards word of mouth marketing (WOMM).
I believe that PR is more entrenched and naturally better at community engagement and word-of-mouth. But here is my caveat...good and talented PR people are a perfect fit to add social media into their quiver of arrows. PR people that learned that the P in PR is "public" not simply "press". The problem, as we have all talked about endlessly over the past 12 months, is that too many PR folks are mistaking social media as a platform where old-handed tactics, blast email and hiding behind a marketing event will lead to success.
Let's get real: people who are really bad at PR are going to be really bad at social media.
- If you don't know how to put the work into building a relationship with a journalist you certainly won't be able to properly engage directly with a community.
- If you believe media relations is the end goal of every campaign you won't succeed in social media.
- If you don't understand how to properly use technology for word of mouth and social networking you won't succeed in social media.
- If you think an online video and a Facebook Group is enough you won't succeed in social media.
I don't believe corporate social media can be a separate entity, rather it must be a part of an overall strategy of communications. There is no better place than the PR group to make that happen...the question is whether PR people can adapt quickly enough and shed themselves of the weak links in order to be the next social media leaders? I have a feeling that many folks out there believe that corporate social media is a separate entity, I see it as a natural and evolutionary extension of public relations. Can't wait to hear everyone else's thoughts.
/kff
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