I just finished reading a blog post on davefleet.com about social media and how it should tie in to the world of public relations. This blog was suggested by Ellen Mrja on her Twitter account.
This blog post asks a very simple question: Does social media let everyone act as their own PR agency? The answer is simple. No, social media does not give everyone the skills to be a PR agency.
PR is not something you can just jump into a be great at. While people can be good at one or more aspects of PR, there is no way you can decide to do PR and be instantly good, or even great, at all the facets of the business.
It can be compared to journalism. You may be a good writer, but unless you know how to write in AP Style or a specific paper or magazine's style, you will not be a very good match for any publication and will not get published. This is the same with pretty much any profession.
PR is not an easy industry to make it in, even if you have training in it. As I said before, you need to know at least a little about everything from writing to pitching ideas to creating and designing a website. There is so much that can be done that clients expect to be represented in every way possible.
This means expanding to blogging, Facebook, Twitter and any other form of electronic media. Everyone uses them, so clients want to be represented on them all in order to get their name out there.
That being said, it would be very valuable for all PR agencies to expand to social media sites and to require that knowing how to use and navigate these sites.
I also think that just because you write on a blog about something does not mean your an expert or even slightly know what you're talking about it. It only means you have an opinion that you would like other people to hear. I have learned so much in my classes about ethics, how to write better and hands-on experience. Without these tools it would be very hard to suceed in a dog-eat-dog kind of world.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you Jena.
ReplyDeleteI also think you just can't jump into PR, even if your a good writer. It takes skill and practice. There is more then just communicating with people, you need to know the language of writing as well as the technical aspects.
There are the certain few that it all comes easy too. I do think if you have knowledge in social media, this will take you a step farther then the employees that do not have much knowledge in the technical field of computers.
Journalism and blogging can be compared but I think it is hard to determine who actually knows what they are talking about. This makes it confusing to know that we have to expand the business into blogging and twittering where anyone can join but it is clearly effective for us to do so as a way to market ourselves and our company.
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