Writing a good press release doesn’t quite do it anymore. Social media tools - blogs, podcasts, video casts and so on - are just that – tools unless you do decide to use it to build something. The rate of development in the field is such that already, in certain quarters, there exists a certain nostalgic fondness for the days ‘when a blog was just a blog’.
This mix of bulletin board, instant messaging and signpost blog becomes our own personal newsflash. We can alert our communities to the most recent activity our organization has undertaken, stay in sync with other developments and within seconds communicate in real time so we can exchange goods and services, explain the intricacies of a new development or simply use that real time to further build the relationship.
Having said this, we must always remember to retain the human touch. Creating meaningful conversations with the individuals within our communities so that we can, together, build something a bit more lasting than a one-laugh wonder viral campaign is still the best tool ever.
If you want to use a blog to build a personal following, earn your money from GoogleAds or similar, then by all means go for the mass-media model. Over the last five years or so, many people have done that extremely successfully and some, sadly, have fallen victim to the dangers of online celebrity.
But from a practitioner perspective, social media conversations need to enhance understanding, share knowledge, add some value and create discussion - but within the context of the relationship building process.
So while some have dubbed social media interaction as the “NewPR’ or PR 2.0, it isn’t. Public relations is about building relationships and while social media tools and tactics have provided considerable food for thought, altered the approaches that can be taken and created new models and methods of operation, the central purpose of building relationships hasn’t changed.
As practitioners we need to be well versed in the use of these tools and while some of them are a bit more exciting than others, they are the means to an end, rather than an end in themselves.
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