A Sea Change in PR

It seems to me we have crossed a critical threshold in the PR profession.

I first thought of this a couple of weeks ago while planning for an upcoming presentation to C-level executives on social media.  My co-presenter Jay Krall of Cision pointed out to me that for this type of audience we do not have to get as much into the nitty gritty of the tech as we would, say, at a PRSA meeting.  The implication was that the PR audiences he has been addressing are pretty sharp and up on this stuff.

You can see signs of this elsewhere. PR bloggers abound (see Brendan Cooper's Top 100 list), and we are on Twitter in growing numbers

As I have blogged, the profession as a whole had been slow on the social media uptake but it looks like this is changing.

There is a backlash, and although complaints about pervasiveness (and sometimes cluelessness) of PR people in social media hurts, it is good to see we are trying.  There will always be some conflict at the boundaries of change, it is great to see PR folks (like many others) jumping in full force and  attempting to get their arms around the still relatively new way of communicating.

It shows we are participating in social media in growing numbers even though our missives sometimes strike a sour note and do not have the desired effect.

And, too bad, really, for those who are complaining.  Of course, I wish we would get it right and not tick anybody off.  But do the flamers (or does anyone) have a monopoly on social media? Are they above self promotion and in fact not using the very same tools to build their own brands (and those of friends and associates) too?

I'll continue next week with more about how the profession has been changing in response to the changing media landscape.

Comments

[Brendan]

Hi,

Thanks for the link!

I recently read a great quote about social media (and I wish I could find it again but cannot). It said that social media is a bit like sex: at first no one knows what it is, then someone does it, and is frankly disappointed.

This is partly why I've kind of side-stepped pureplay social media, especially in the context of PR agencies, and decided to strike out as a copywriter, albeit with a strong social media flavour.

My point is that, having worked in social media for PR agencies for some time, I came to the conclusion that it's a very tough place in which to operate. No one really knows what works and what doesn't. This tends to make people angry.

I'm just hoping that, for the sakes of all the people currently stampeding towards it, it does actually eventually work. Otherwise there could be a lot of disappointment around.

Regards
Brendan

[Bob Geller]

Thanks for reading and commenting, LOL, very humorous and I am sure accurate take on the state of the art.

We tell clients not to jump into social media because it seems to be the thing to do. They need to be aware of what it will take and try to align efforts with desired business results.

There is of course also a danger of sitting on the sidelines and sometimes people need to at least dip their toes in the water on good faith while the hard questions - how do you set goals and measure this - get addressed.