PR In Canada

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Social media has exploded in recent years, creating new and exciting opportunities for public relations. Of the seemingly infinite social media tools available, each provides its own way for opening a dialogue between your company and its publics.Social media has been around long enough to accept that it’s here to stay, yet if you aren’t immersed in it yet, it’s certainly not too late. Blogs, micro-blogs and Social networks are just three of the tried-and-true social media avenues that your company could add to its PR tool box.

Blogs

Blogs have been around for ages in Internet-time, though despite over 50 million blogs out there, it’s still new to many. Managing a blog and/or pitching stories to relevant bloggers are two ‘new’ ways you can get some traction in a world of Web 2.0.Blogs have already changed the way media relations work. While many journalists have come to accept untargeted pitches and news release ‘blasts’, this sloppy approach does not work well with bloggers for a few reasons:

• More often than not, bloggers are not under tight deadlines
• Bloggers generally are not under pressure from superiors
• Bloggers are free to say what they want

Some PR professionals have already learned the hard way — take for instance Chris Anderson, editor of WIRED magazine, author and Blogger at thelongtail.com, actually ‘outed’ many PR reps by publicly listing each one’s email address on his blog. Was he wrong to do that? Well it doesn’t really matter at this point because it happened! The consequence is those exposed who weren’t fired, are probably suffering an assault of spam after having their email addresses publicly listed on a popular blog.Creating a blog involves more work, but software like Wordpress, Typepad and Blogger make it fairly easy. The catch with having a blog is it needs to be authentic, updated regularly and transparent. In 2006 while blogs were reaching critical mass, the term ‘flog‘ was created to describe the fake blogs started by PR firms or paid for by companies.However, since the incident of flogs seem to have disappeared and companies embracing this technology properly are reaping the rewards.

Social Networks

Companies wanting to get into the social networking game need to decide if the best approach is to join existing social networks or build their own. It depends on a lot of factors which is the way to go, but personally I would only recommend building your own if:

• You have a decent amount of resources and budget
• You are familiar with existing social networks and how they work
• Your brand has a lot of recognition, or you already have a loyal following of members.

Fortunately if you aren’t in a position to start one, there are already dozens around, with hundreds, thousands and sometimes millions of users.

If you build it…Will they come?

Nope! Bud.tv learned the hard way. So did Wal-Mart’s “The Hub” MySpace-like site. (Note: while these sites may have failed, the brands definitely deserve credit for venturing into un-chartered territory). It’s not a guaranteed success, nor is it a guaranteed failure, take Zip.ca for instance who built an online video sharing community (Zip.tv) for its already vast member base.Probably the most common example of joining an existing social network is Facebook’s recent addition of ‘fan pages’ where anyone can create a page for a brand and users can ‘become a fan’, in this situation you can go edit the brand page with value-added content for your loyal fans. When users ‘become a fan’ it’s also displayed in their mini-feeds, which means word of mouth at its best!

Micro-blogging

Micro-blogging is still a new kid on the block in social media, but its quickly gaining momentum. Micro-blogging is essentially as it sounds - publishing very short content (140 characters per post in Twitter, for example) but on closer inspection, Twitter is like a combination of a message board or chat room, a blog and a social network all in one collection of teeny tiny posts.Web Strategist and Forrester Analyst Jeremiah Owyang often writes about Twitter and even has a comprehensive guide on why Twitter matters for web strategists. A must read for anyone looking to test out Twitter as a PR tool.

Get started!

Before embarking on using social media as PR tools, you do need to understand (or make your boss understand, is probably the case) that social media is more than a fad, it’s changing the way we communicate, and in order to do so, business need to accept some changes, for example:

1. Transparency - participating in social media essentially means you’re putting your company out in the open. You will be vulnerable to negative feedback and criticism and you need to be prepared to deal with it ahead of time.

2. Openness to change - It’s time to let go of ‘Well that’s the way we do it’ in favour of ‘How can we do it better’ in the new online landscape. Things are different and to be successful, it’s best to accept it.

3. Consumers are in control - One wrong move on your company’s part can lead to public scrutiny online in minutes. More than ever, customer service and customer relations matter.While in some respects it may seem a little extreme, the reality is for brands embracing social media, doing it properly and succeeding, the rewards are often overwhelmingly positive.

Categories: Social Media
Tags: Blogs, Micro-Blogging, Social Media, Social Networks