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PR in the Era of Social Media

Blog

By Lindsey Levy
Junior Public Relations Account Executive

The media landscape has changed due to the abundance of online outlets, blogs and social media available, and now we, the masses of Public Relations Professionals out there, must live with those consequences – good and bad.

Good: So many more outlets
Bad: So many more outlets

As the number of media outlets continues to increase, PR Professionals find themselves with more outlets and audiences to target than in years past. All these new outlets create more opportunities and provide more places to tell our clients’ stories. It then is our job, and responsibility, to begin creating relationships.

A main reason for the drastic change to the media landscape is the overwhelming increase of social media. Unfortunately, a large portion of PR professionals will not take advantage of these new opportunities because they won’t build relationships or, more simply, won’t do their homework. PR Professionals should research the people and outlets they are pitching to, before contacting them. Spamming bloggers and traditional reporters alike with supposed “news” that might be irrelevant to their beats and/or interests has become all too common in today’s PR world. Some bloggers have been inundated with spam from PR people and have posted violators’ names/emails on their blogs. Hopefully this scare tactic has worked so media can see PR get back to its roots of relationship building, instead of un-targeted eblasts. Therefore, PR Professionals should learn about bloggers by monitoring their blogs via RSS feeds, showing their interest by adding valuable content via comments on their blog, and interacting with them (without pitching) via Twitter.

Just remember, try to treat others the way you would like to be treated - especially the media.

** In response to a webinar sponsored by public relations software provider, VOCUS and hosted by Jason Falls, director of social media for Doe-Anderson. Jason Falls’ blog, Social Media Explorer can be found at www.socialmediaexplorer.com.

Comments

10.22.08
Posted by Jason Falls

Nailed it! Bravo and I'm glad the webinar proved useful. Nice work.

10.24.08
Posted by Kelli Robinson, PR Coordinator,

Right you are! Social media is reshaping the way we do PR. So many people think PR is nothing more than begging media for placement in a newspaper (true to an extent), but it's so much more. It's relationship building with the new influencers--the bloggers. Wonderful blog! Two very enthusiastic thumbs to the sky, Linz. Can I call you Linz? Just kidding!




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