Many PR professionals are familiar with HARO (Help a Reporter Out) run by Peter Shankman. We all live for his daily updates of reporters wanting help with articles so we can pitch our clients. I personally thrive on the Twitter updates which allow me great opportunities to beat others since I’m armed with an iPhone and the quickest texting fingers in the US. In one of his email alerts a few weeks ago he opened the listing with one of the best quotes ever: “if you don’t know how to network in the first place, all social media can do is give you the chance to screw up to a much larger group of people in a much shorter amount of time.”
What initially resonates with me is the sheer simplistic truth of it all. Where most agencies and brands go wrong is that they embark on social media ventures in the same way that they do traditional advertising programs. They assume that social media/social networks are just other avenues to repurpose the same creative and peddle their wares AT people. We all know that this is not the case. Social media outlets and venues are built and supported on the principle of the two-way conversation. You can’t talk AT people. You have to talk WITH them. And if you can’t do that, then you can’t do social media.
So what is a brand to do? Assuredly we have yet to find a client that doesn’t find value in our social media management engagements. We have case studies proving brand recognition increase, traffic increase, sales conversions, and even some off kilter monetization of Twitter “campaigns” of sorts. The key for the agencies and for the brands is to hire a team that DOES socialize naturally. A good social media firm (like ours, of course) works with you to manage conversations – not solely push a one sided agenda.
By nature of those who choose to go into public relations as a profession, they likely will make amazing social media managers as time goes on and training extends. In the meantime, we suggest that PR firms partner with social media experts and zealots (like us with 15 years experience in this stuff) to help you integrate social media into you killer PR plans. And from there, we will all learn to use social media properly, and have a better chance of not screwing up those social interactions at all.
